Medicare has achieved its goal of tying 30 percent of all Medicare payments to alternative payment models a year early, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has announced.
As of January of 2016, 30 percent of Medicare payments are tied to alternative payment models. In January of 2015, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced the target but said she hoped Medicare could achieve it by 2017.
Among the alternative care models to which Medicare payments are now tied are:
- Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP)
- Pioneer ACOs
- Next Generation ACOs
- Comprehensive End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Care Model
- Comprehensive Primary Care Model
- Multi-Payer Advanced Primary Care Practice
- End Stage Renal Disease Prospective Payment System
- Maryland All-Payer Model
- Medicare Care Choices Model
- Bundled Payment Care Improvement
Learn more about these alternative payment models here.
Another new alternative payment model, which mandates bundled payments for hip and knee replacements, begins in about 25 percent of the country on April 1.
To learn more about how Medicare achieved this goal and why federal officials believe moving in this direction is so important, see the CMS fact sheet “Better Care. Smarter Spending. Healthier People: Improving Quality and Paying for What Works.”
