How Should The Trump Administration Handle Medicare ’s New Bundled Payment Programs?

Conclusion The Department of Health and Human Services has several options for addressing Secretary Price’s prior objections to the hospital-at-risk structure of the CJR and EPM models that could maintain the integrity of these payment reform initiatives. In our view, however, the Department does not have a good alternative to the mandatory structure used for CJR and EPM that could preserve the integrity of the models tests and the scope of their potential impact. Making these models optional would be a severe blow to efforts to use bundled payments to improve care delivery in orthopedics and cardiac care, and to the chances for bringing bundled payments to scale nationally in the coming years. Note 1 The prospective payments systems Medicare uses for inpatient and outpatient services are arguably bundled payments relative to older payment arrangements based on individual items and services. For purposes of this paper, however, we focus on arrangements that span an entire episode of care over a period of time measured in months rather than days and that cover the services of multiple providers of care.
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Costs and Spending Featured Medicare Quality bundled payment Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative CMS Innovation Center Comprehensive Care for Joint Care Model Episode Payment Model oncology care model Seema Varma tom pri Source Type: blogs