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Tag: MSSP

CMS Launches CPC + Multipayer Regions: Applications Process Opens to Practices

Amid growing consensus that MACRA may delay from its 2017 performance year start, CMS is moving ahead with next year’s launch of the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+) program.

Fourteen multi-payer regions and all participating payers were announced August 1, (listed below) and practices can now begin applying through September 15. CMS has launched an application portal for practices.

CPC+ is part of MACRA, as one of six Advanced Alternative Payment Models, but certainly can be undertaken on its own. CMS has a deadline of November 1 to produce a MACRA final rule, but can announce MACRA’s fate anytime prior.

Also newsworthy within CPC+ is CMS’ recent announcement that primary care practices can participate in a CMS MSSP ACO and the CPC+ program at the same time.

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Preparing for Updates to the Medicare Shared Savings Program

farzad_mostashariLater this month – perhaps as early as this week – the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is poised to release a proposed rule to update to the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). MSSP is the national program which allows providers to create ACOs, and it is the program under which Aledade ACOs operate. This will be the first update to the program in three years, and we expect there will be a great deal to unwrap once the rule is public (we also acknowledge that we are among the few who await publications of CMS rules with the anticipation of children on Christmas morning). I’m sure we’ll spend the day of the release tweeting our initial reactions — be sure to follow @Farzad_MD, @Travis_Broome, and @Aledade_ACO for those updates.

The new rule will contain a lot to unpack; but we believe that the decisions that CMS makes in 4 key areas will play a large role in whether participation in the program continues to be robust and whether the program succeeds in being the flag-bearer for new payment models.

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The ACO Hypothesis: Farzad Mostashari Responds

Farzad Mostashari’s  post last week provoked a heated (to put it mildly) discussion between supporters and critics of the ACO model.

Farzad writes:

Commenters have raised several points regarding the early results of the Medicare Shared Savings Program that bear further discussion and clarification:

-The need for more details on the participants by name, along with their characteristics, actions, and outcomes.

I agree. We strongly encourage CMS to release more detailed information about the results of the program to date. As someone who’s been on the other side, I can attest however, that lack of transparency can occur despite the intentions of leadership, and even when there’s nothing to hide. CMS has taken great steps towards open data in recent years- unparalleled in its history (or in comparison to private sector payors and most states), but there is more work to be done to overcome institutional inertia, and concerns regarding the “privacy of providers”.

How is the MSSP different from an HMO?
A major similarity between managed care and “shared savings” programs is that physicians that make decisions about treatment, diagnostic, and referral options do have an incentive to reduce cost. I was trained in an era where we were not supposed to think about (or even be aware of) the cost implications of our care recommendations. I now believe that we need physician engagement in addressing the truly unsustainable rise in healthcare costs that threaten to bankrupt our nation.

However, policymakers have learned a few lessons from the backlash against managed care:

Quality Matters
Reducing cost cannot be the only outcome. In the MSSP, in the first year only can you qualify for savings simply by reporting quality measures. In future years, ACOs will have to not only reduce total cost but also perform well on measures of patient satisfaction, clinical quality, and utilization (such as ambulatory care sensitive admissions) to collect shared savings payments.

What about patient choice?
If the patient doesn’t like the care they’re getting, they can get care elsewhere. This is a sore point for many ACOs, especially those that have been successful in managed care arrangements, but the current regulations in no way limit patients’ ability to seek care elsewhere. MSSPs are required to notify patients that they have formed an ACO, and patients have the option of opting out of the sharing of their claims data with the ACO.

Shared Savings versus capitation
Finally, the MSSP program is indeed layered on top of fee-for-service payments (versus prospective payments/ capitation), and most MSSPs have opted for the “upside only” track for the first three years. We acknowledge that where the ACO includes a hospital sponsor, they must contend with “demand destruction” on their fee-for-service lines of business if they reduce procedures, admissions and emergency department visits. However, physician-led ACOs are not similarly encumbered, and this model provides them with a “safe” transitional path towards taking risk. It is also worth noting that “one-sided risk” during the riskiest early transition period would tend to reduce the likelihood of a physician having to choose between limiting needed care and going bankrupt.

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ACOs: Is There a “There” There?

recent analysis of the ACO market by Oliver Wyman market suggests we’re well on our way toward being “there.”

My personal take on this report:

Provocative, fresh, thoughtful, well reasoned, expansive — albeit a bit of a stretch

However, I suspect many others will describe it as:

Speculative, harebrained, unsupported, overly extrapolative, out-to-lunch, wishful to the point of being woo woo.

So now that I hopefully have your attention, what’s this report all about? In a nutshell:

The healthcare world has only gotten serious about accountable care organizations in the past two years, but it is already clear that they are well positioned to provide a serious competitive threat to traditional fee-for-service medicine. In “The ACO Surprise,” our analysis finds that 25 to 31 million Americans already receive their care through ACOs—and roughly 45 percent of the population live in regions served by at least one ACO.

Let’s dig in to the report. In this blog post, I’ll summarize their math, surface their critical assumptions and observations, and comment on their reasoning. I’ve indented direct quotations from the report.

While I don’t agree with all of Oliver Wyman’s math and assumptions, I applaud them for the process they have gone through. Please take my commentary as “quibbling at the edges” and that overall I’m on board with their methodology and conclusions.

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Summary of CMS Proposed Rule on Accountable Care Organizations

(Second in a series. See Part 1.)

CMS recently released the proposed rule that will regulate PPACA’s Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). The MSSP relies on the accountable care organization (ACO) model in order to generate and distribute savings. HealthReformWatch.com has discussed the general framework for ACOs before. Clocking in at nearly 500 hundred pages, the proposed rule helps to flesh out what was largely a philosophical exercise in cooperative health care delivery. Below are what I believe to be a number of key pieces of the proposed rule.

Proposed Rule Highlights

The 2 ACO Models – (425.7)

There will be two ACO models. The choice between models appears to be largely geared towards minimizing ACO risk while hospitals and providers are first bringing their ACOs online.

  • One-Sided Model: A one-sided ACO shares in the savings, but is not on the hook to share in any of the losses (i.e., costs surpassing the ACO’s benchmark as determined by CMS, see below).
  • Two-Sided Model: A two-sided ACO shares in both the savings as well as the losses.

Basic Time frame and Structure

Not surprisingly, ACO hopefuls must form an agreement with CMS directly. ACOs under the MSSP must last for not less than three years after the application has been approved. (425.18).  The performance period will be 12 months. The ACO must have at least 5,000 beneficiaries, and must include a sufficient number of primary care physicians to treat the ACO beneficiary population.Continue reading…

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