Jury yet out over whether Medicare ACOs secure money

While the CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) is touting the victory - eleven months ahead of time table- of tying and involving 30 percent of fee-for-service Medicare payments to alternative payment models like ACOs (accountable care organizations) and bundled payments, queries still sustain over how much money value-based policies will save.

In the year 2014, CMS claimed the twenty ACOs in its Pioneer program and the 333 in the Medicare Shared Savings Program, saved a total of nearly $411 million.

Although, after paying bonuses to the powerful performers, the ACO policy reported an average loss of approximately $2.6 million.

And the logic that merely nine health systems sustain to be in Pioneer ACO plan is informing as many jumped ship over penalties tied to benchmarks deemed too much high.

In fact, Three: Beacon Health in Maine, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in the places of New Hampshire, and Franciscan Alliance in the state Indiana all of them owed money.

When it the time came to sign up for Pioneer's evolution into Next Generation ACO plan, which initiated on the month of January 1, the two New England networks that each lost over nearly $3 million in Pioneer, came to very distinctive decisions.

Beacon Health created the leap to Next Generation, merging twenty-one other contributors in the recent ACO model, while Dartmouth-Hitchcock made a decision to take a break from both the policies.

Beacon Health CFO Jeff Sanford claimed the shift made sense, as the increased threat of Next Generation also meant a greater share in the possible savings. If Beacon is on edge to make the turn to population health management, Sanford demonstrated that he would instead go all in.

"The major takeaway for us, the entire population over the long run has an improved opportunity of doing great," said Sanford. "I have talked to many CFOs who previously founded it not appealing, but if I am going to go to population health, I would rather take on more threat. If (contributors) succeed they will acquire much more."

The least risky Medicare Shared Savings policy gives little reward, Sanford stated. If contributors decrease the utilization by 10%, they just get half of that, he urged. Under Next Generation, the return is 80%, Sanford claimed.

"If I own the infrastructure and were aware of the financial upside, it is worth it," he claimed.

Pioneer had other drawbacks and disadvantages, he emphasized.

One, the model utilized a national trend to measure and scale out the baseline, instead of regional benchmarks that would have demonstrated that in the northeast, medical prices trend higher; 2, the methodology did not appear to work for low-cost contributors, which was the case with Beacon; and 3, Beacon was increasing its population through acquisitions in the year 2015, which put it at a loss.

Next Generation accounted for the regional distinctions in the health cost trends, and by the year 2016, Beacon had a more stable and balanced population.

"The next thing CMS executed was modify the equation on how population threat is evaluated and factored in," said Sanford. "They started making this change in Pioneer. It really becomes more primary in Next Generation. We were eager to have a major mix of dual eligibles."

Next Generation has more detailed risk-scoring methodology, he urged.

It also engages a prospectively, instead of retrospectively set benchmark and tests beneficiary incentives such as increased presence of telehealth and care coordination facilities. The latest model permits for modified home health visits after the service of hospitalization.

"One major thing that we noticed and learned in the Pioneer, once you get behind, it is not possible to catch up," Sanford urged. "We made an analysis from the 1^st - quarter outcomes it was not going to work for us in the year 2015. It was whether going to Next Generation, or does what Dartmouth did and pauses for a year."

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center was included among the three hospitals that made a decision to drop out of both Pioneer and Next Generation. The other two were Brown and Toland Medical Group in the state of California and Mount Auburn Cambridge Independent Practice Association in the Massachusetts. Dartmouth-Hitchcock compelled that it would defer merging Next Generation until the year 2017, a decision that was shocking as initially it had demonstrated that it would step into the next level of the risk-sharing model.

The esteemed trauma center urged that it anticipated for more attainable economical aims in the year 2017, after losing out money in Pioneer for two years, in accordance to Dr. Robert Greene, executive vice president and chief population health management office.

"When we made an analysis at the proposed benchmark aim," Greene stated at of the 2016 model year, "we would be at danger for a primary loss again."

The annoying thing for Dartmouth-Hitchcock was that it was implementing all that it could come up to the CMS benchmarks, in accordance to Greene.

Hence, the start of the Next Generation is motivational for contributors willing to take on the Medicare shared-risk model, in accordance to Christopher Kerns, executive director, Research and Insights at the research and consulting firm.

The nervousness in the market is coming from the proposed private payers, he stated.

"CMS is shifting very aggressively," stated by Kerns. "Contributors are very eager to take risk-based payment from Medicare and agree to the logic that CMS requires moving the contributor industry towards more threat."

Kerns admits that Next Generation gives contributors an improved incentive through the higher, 80 sharing rate.

"It offers contributors greater capability to reap the profits of the savings they are making," claimed by Kerns. "It makes the contributors ever closer to complete and accomplish the risk-based payment. For those contributors aggressively shifting towards population health, this is a major economical incentive to do so."

The downside to Next Generation is that contributors not able to decrease utilization have to pay back the Medicare.

The riskier ACO models are created for the most experienced, and few would say, larger health systems, that can afford to contribute and invest in infrastructure, latest data networks and care management and coordination improvements.

The majority of contributors in ACOs are in less-risky models. In the year 2016, there are over 477 ACOs (accountable care organizations) across the Medicare Shared Savings Program, Next Generation, Pioneer, and a Comprehensive End-Stage Renal Disease Care Model, in accordance to CMS.

"I think these programs can save much money," compelled Richard Barasch, chairman and the famous CEO of Universal American Corp., whose subsidiary, Collaborative Health Systems, operates twenty-five Medicare ACOs (accountable care organizations).

He informed that nine of their ACOs acquired $27 million in shared savings. The most primary distinction, he stated, is that it gives contributors better tools to involve beneficiaries. For example, presently under fee for service, a sufferer must be in the hospital for three days before being qualified for a skilled nursing facility.

Under the proposed beneficiary engagement, a waiver is there to send those sufferers straightly to a skilled nursing facility, he asserted.

Contributors and doctors are aware of the fact that pay for performance is coming and require scoring great whether they get paid for that or not, Barasch urged.

Jeff Goldsmith, a health industry analyst and professor at the institution of University of Virginia, has a distinctive opinion.

ACOs (accountable care organizations) have restricted the leverage to handle the prices incurred by largely paid experts like surgeons and cardiologists. Sufferers in ACOS can yet go to any doctor who accepts to Medicare's fee-for-service procedure of paying.

The ACO (accountable care organization) plan has such a worse enough repute in the contributor community the program cannot rise sufficiently enough to replace the regular Medicare, Goldsmith asserted.

Although, Attorney Deborah Dorman-Rodriguez, a partner at Freeborn and Peters in the state of Chicago, stated that ACOs are not the recent HMO, the health maintenance agencies that became the popular method to contain prices in the time period of 1970s and '80s.

"There is the real intent and expectation that by giving comprehensive care and sharing a threat, the quality is improved," Dorman-Rodriguez claimed. "It is not just about monetary; that can be very thrilling to contributors."

Even in an election year and with the control of the House and Senate at the stake, Kaufman compelled that most think few of the reforms will remain in the place.

"I have a belief in the long term, these kinds of models are where the federal government is going to be," he urged. "It is going to be very complex not to be engaging in it."