ACOs Moving Ahead
89 New Accountable Care Organizations Join Program to Improve Care for Medicare beneficiaries
89 New Accountable Care Organizations Join Program to Improve Care for Medicare beneficiaries
Mission Health Partners has been selected as one of
89 new Medicare Shared Savings Program Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs),
providing approximately 1.6 million additional Medicare beneficiaries with
access to high-quality, coordinated care across the United States, the Centers
for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today. That brings the
total to 405 Shared Savings Program ACOs serving over 7.2 million
beneficiaries.
Doctors,
hospitals and healthcare providers establish ACOs in order to work together to
provide higher-quality coordinated care to their patients, while helping to
slow healthcare cost growth. Mission Health Partners will be one of 405 ACOs
participating in the Shared Savings Program as of this January 1st.
Beneficiaries seeing healthcare providers in ACOs always have the freedom to
choose doctors inside or outside of the ACO.
ACOs share
with Medicare savings generated from lowering the growth in healthcare costs
when they meet standards for high quality care. ACOs are groups of doctors,
hospitals, and other healthcare providers that work together to give Medicare
beneficiaries in Original Medicare (fee-for-service) high quality, coordinated
care. ACOs can share in any savings they generate for Medicare, if they meet
specified quality targets.
“Mission Health Partners will be joining a program that is one part of this Administration’s vision for improving the coordination and integration of care received by Medicare beneficiaries,” said Sean Cavanaugh, Deputy Administrator and Director, Center for Medicare. “We look forward to continuing this partnership with Mission Health Partners in increasing value and care coordination across the health system.”
“Mission Health Partners will be joining a program that is one part of this Administration’s vision for improving the coordination and integration of care received by Medicare beneficiaries,” said Sean Cavanaugh, Deputy Administrator and Director, Center for Medicare. “We look forward to continuing this partnership with Mission Health Partners in increasing value and care coordination across the health system.”
Since ACOs first began
participating in the program in early 2012, thousands of healthcare providers
have signed on to participate in the program, working together to provide
better care to Medicare’s seniors and people with disabilities. The 89 new ACOs
will bring approximately 23,000 additional physicians and other providers into
the ACO program starting January 1.
ACOs are
starting to see promising results. This fall, CMS released the early findings
from the ACOs who started the program in 2012. ACOs improved on 30 of the 33
quality measures in the first 2 years, including patients’ ratings of
clinicians’ communication, beneficiaries’ rating of their doctors, and screening
for high blood pressure. ACOs also outperformed group practices reporting
quality on 17 out of 22 measures. ACOs are also demonstrating promising
results on cost savings with combined total program savings of $417 million for
the Shared Savings Program and the Pioneer ACO Model.
While CMS is
encouraged by what they have seen so far, they also understand there are
opportunities to improve the program to make it stronger. Earlier this month,
they published a proposed rule to update the guidelines for the program. CMS is
looking forward to receiving comments from ACOs, beneficiaries, and their
advocates, providers, and other stakeholders interested in seeing the ACOs
succeed long-term.
ACOs are
also just one way that CMS is working to reduce the rate of growth in Medicare
spending while improving care. Medicare spending per beneficiary was
essentially flat in nominal dollars in fiscal year 2014, and from 2010 to 2014,
Medicare spending per beneficiary grew at a rate that was 2 percentage points
per year less than growth in GDP per capita. While
the recent slow cost growth has multiple causes, our reforms in the Medicare
and Medicaid programs are meaningful contributors to these gains and are
improving quality as well. Preliminary data for 2013, for example,
indicates improvements in patient safety has resulted in 50,000 fewer deaths,
1.3 million fewer patient harms, and $12 billion in avoided healthcare
spending. Recent research implies that many of these reforms may
be generating savings in the private sector as well.
Ultimately,
today’s announcement is about delivering better care, spending dollars more
wisely, and having healthier people and communities. ACOs drive progress in the
way care is provided by improving the coordination and integration of health
care, and improving the health of patients with a priority placed on prevention
and wellness.
More
information about the Shared Savings Program is available at https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-Fee-for-Service-Payment/sharedsavingsprogram/index.html?redirect=/sharedsavingsprogram/
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