Home Health Care Policies via CMS.gov:
By Dr. Patrick Conway, CMS Deputy Administrator for Innovation and Quality and Chief Medical Officer has stated:
"Today, we at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are excited to announce the promising findings from two large-scale tests of advanced primary care: the Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative and the Multi-payer Advanced Primary Care Practice (MAPCP) Demonstration. The CPC initiative, in its first year, decreased hospital admissions by 2% and emergency department visits by 3%, contributing to the reduction of expenditures nearly enough to offset care management fees paid by CMS. The MAPCP Demonstration generated an estimated $4.2 million in savings through the use of advanced primary care initiatives.
These two programs are part of broader efforts to deliver better care, spend dollars more wisely, and have healthier people and communities." (cms.gov)
Comprehensive Primary Care initiative
With authority from the Affordable Care Act, the CPC initiative is a unique multi-payer partnership between Medicare, Medicaid private health care payers, and primary care practices in four states (Arkansas, Colorado, New Jersey and Oregon) and three regions (New York’s Capital District and Hudson Valley, Ohio and Kentucky’s Cincinnati-Dayton region, and Oklahoma’s Greater Tulsa region). This initiative includes providing care management for those at greatest risk; improving health care access; tracking patient experience; coordinating care with hospitals and specialists; and using health information technology to support population health. Practices receive non-visit based care management fees from the participating payers, and the opportunity to share in savings.
In the first year, 492 practices participated, serving about 345,000 Medicare beneficiaries and more than 2.5 million patients overall. Results from this first year suggest that CPC has generated nearly enough savings in Medicare health care expenditures to offset care management fees paid by CMS.
▪ The primary sources of the savings were reduced rates of hospital admissions and emergency department visits.
▪ The bulk of the savings was generated by patients in the highest-risk quartile, but favorable results were also seen in other patients.
▪ Over 90 percent of practices successfully met all first-year transformation requirements.
▪ The expenditure impact estimates differ across the seven regions.
▪ Additional time and data are needed to assess impact on care quality.
Results should be interpreted cautiously as effects are emerging earlier than anticipated, and additional research is needed to assess how the initiative affects cost and quality of care, beyond the first year. Because the effects of the CPC program are likely to be larger in subsequent years, these early results are consistent with the possibility that the model will eventually break-even or generate savings.
Multi-payer Advanced Primary Care Practice Demonstration
The MAPCP Demonstration is multi-payer initiative in which Medicare is participating with Medicaid and private health care payers in eight advanced primary care initiatives in Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Unlike CPC, the states convene the participants and administer the initiatives rather than CMS. Under this demonstration, participating practices and other auxiliary supports (e.g., community health teams) receive monthly care management fees from the participating payers and additional support (e.g., data feedback, learning collaboratives, practice coaching).
More than 3,800 providers, 700 practices, and 400,000 Medicare beneficiaries participated in the first year. During the first year, the demonstration produced an estimated $4.2 million in savings. Also, the rate of growth in Medicare FFS health care expenditures was reduced in Vermont and Michigan, driven largely by reduced growth in inpatient expenditures. There is less evidence that the state initiatives were able to reduce hospitalization, readmission and emergency department visit rates. Additional findings in this evaluation period include:
▪ The MAPCP payments provided needed support to help practices transform the way they deliver and coordinate care, including use of nurse care managers or care coordinators, restructuring of staff, improvements in patient flow, adoption of health information technology, and more frequent staff meetings.
▪ Medicare was able to integrate seamlessly with the structure and organization of the eight state initiatives. Medicare’s participation sent a strong signal about the importance of primary care and the potential of these programs, helping to affirm payer and provider commitments.
▪ Although collecting and using data was a recurring challenge, health information systems facilitated the transformation process.
These first-year results illustrate the potential for steady improvements in the participating practices’ advanced primary care capabilities. CMS anticipates continued improvements as the participating practices deepen and refine their methods of delivering advanced primary care so that patients can continue to receive improved quality and coordination of care.
More information and comprehensive research findings can be found here: http://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/Comprehensive-Primary-Care-Initiative/
