Wachler & Associates Health Law BlogHHS Sets Timelines for Focus of Reimbursement to Shift from Quantity to Quality
On January 26, 2015, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), for the first time ever, announced a timeline and corresponding goals to shift the basis of Medicare reimbursement away from the quantity of care provided towards the quality furnished to beneficiaries. With the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) in 2010, Congress created several new payment models, including Accountable Care Organizations (“ACOs”), primary care medical homes, and new models of payment bundling for care. These models all share the commonality that they incentivize physicians to coordinate care for their beneficiaries, maintain quality, and control costs. With the proliferation of these models that focus on quality over quantity, HHS was compelled to reform the Medicare reimbursement process.
Specifically, HHS announced its goal of tying 30 percent of fee-for-service Medicare payments to quality output through alternative payment models, like ACOs or bundled payment arrangements, by the end of 2016. Furthermore, HHS plans on increasing that amount to 50 percent by the end of 2018. If this goal is met, half of all payments to physicians and hospitals will be made through alternative payment models by 2018. Additionally, HHS set a timeline for tying 85 percent of fee-for-service, or traditional, Medicare payments to quality output by 2016 through the Hospital Value Based Purchasing and Hospital Readmissions Reduction Programs. This number is also set to increase to 90% by 2018.
To accomplish this, HHS has created the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (“the Network”). The Network is an organization made up of health care stakeholders including private payers, consumers, providers, employers, and state Medicaid programs. The Network, which will hold its first meeting in March 2015, plans to expand alternative payment models nationwide into all areas of health care. HHS hopes that the intensity exhibited by the Network will even surpass its initial goals for program expansion.
In a separate announcement, the President of the American Medical Association, Robert Wah, MD, stated that the HHS timeline “aligns with the [AMA’s] commitment to work toward innovative care delivery reform.”
In 2011, Medicare essentially made zero payments to providers through alternative payment models. However, today the use of alternative payment models has increased to about 20 percent of all Medicare payments. HHS has already noted significant savings from the use of alternative payment models–reporting a $417 million savings to Medicare as a result of ACO programs. Moreover hospital readmissions have been reduced by eight percent, which is 150,000 fewer readmissions from January 2012 to December 2013.
If you or your healthcare entity have any questions regarding the implementation of new alternative payment models, please contact an experienced healthcare attorney by phone at 248-544-0888 or via email at wapc@wachler.com. Wachler & Associates will continue to keep you updated on HHS and Medicare news. If you are interested, please subscribe to Wachler & Associates’ health law blog by adding your email address and clicking “Subscribe” in the window on the top right of this page.