This also allows the health insurer to provide interim insight on specialist care use for pilot providers. health status. 1s building blocks. The historical expenditures that together form the base of the benchmark create a starting position that should lie within reach for pilot providers. Although there are only a few empirical studies of good quality on this topic [49], research suggests that the abolition of this fundholding scheme led to an increase in admission rates for chargeable elective admissions of between 3,5 5,1% [50]. The payment limit is based on a percentage of provider revenue. A fourth opportunity arises from the small scale of the pilot. The pilot includes a large Dutch health insurer and a national chain of primary care providers. Equity and excellence: liberating the NHS. Regarding (1), we use the health insurers administrative database to identify its insured and use its claims database to identify capitation payments, which proxy for the PCP list (2). The Dutch health care system has a fragmented structure and providers are typically small in size. Savings are then defined with respect to historical performance, which is trended forward to the performance year by extrapolating the providers growth trend. As shared savings payments are determined with respect to the care continuum, pilot providers are furthermore motivated to change their configuration to one that supports substitution of specialist care, coordination across silos, prevention and self-management. Benchmark data on hospital care (e.g. The Next Generation ACO Model was an initiative for ACOs that were experienced in coordinating care for populations of patients. To date, even countries that are considered to have a relatively strong primary care setting (like the UK and the Netherlands) [1], are looking for ways to address the needs of an ageing and frail population, in which the number of patients with comorbid conditions rises [3, 4]. In carrying out its activities, the project groups members form and chair subcommittees, comprised of employees from a wide variety of departments (depending on the matter at hand, e.g. Attributing patients to accountable care organizations: performance year approach aligns stakeholders interests. its population), may not be within the providers reach. Table1 provides relevant characteristics of the three pilot providers. To explain how shared-savings programs work, we first have to introduce one of the most talked-aboutyet least understoodentities in health care today: the accountable care organization (ACO). These pilot programs, we found, vary considerably on several dimensions (Exhibit ES-1). Important moments in history that led to today's current challenges. Any State Group health plan enrollee is eligible to receive a rewardable healthcare service by using the Healthcare Bluebook website or receiving a "bundled" medical service ACOs that choose to become accountable for shared losses . The project teams reports are used as an input for the discussion. As scores change from year to year depending on population characteristics, we chose not to impose this penalty for declines smaller than 5% already. In contrast, patients that do not visit the provider except in case of emergency will not be assigned to the provider under the Medicare Shared Savings Program, because emergency care is not part of the definition of primary care services upon which assignment is based [42]. In several countries, health care policies gear toward strengthening the position of primary care physicians. Our Scorecard ranks every states health care system based on how well it provides high-quality, accessible, and equitable health care. Similarly, the growth trend is adjusted for case mix differences between control providers and the pilot provider, such that they reflect what the growth in health care expenditures would have been, had the control group witnessed a change in case mix similar to that observed in the pilot provider. 2014:cmu027. ACOs can be made up of and led by hospitals or physiciansor both. We distilled the designs of earlier shared savings models [1823] into five overarching building blocks of shared savings models, which we use here to ease exposition (Fig. In contrast, under GP Fundholding, research documented a drop in patient satisfaction [52], which is explicitly monitored and rewarded here. That is, even though a provider may have an equal number of men and women assigned to it, the average assignment length ultimately determines the reported proportion. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the Medicare Shared Savings Program ACO Fast Facts. RIVM rapport 260013001. Kirschner K, Braspenning J, Jacobs JA, Grol R. Design choices made by target users for a pay-for-performance program in primary care: an action research approach. For specific subgroups, such as for patients with end-stage renal disease, different expenditure caps were defined such that it created a similar exposure above group mean expenditures [19]. Furthermore, the prospect of receiving savings in overall expenditures incentivizes to actually deliver the enhanced primary care as envisioned by policy makers. A second challenge is that specialist care is billed retrospectively. Shared savings programs fit the concept of enhanced primary care. 8600 Rockville Pike An accountable care organization is a care delivery model in which a group of providers (hospitals or physicians) join together to deliver on a shared-savings contract on a specific population with a payer. The strength of primary care in Europe: an international comparative study. A first implication is that the incentives will be less strong for this delayed lump-sum as people tend to discount future payments [45]. The health insurer and pilot providers agreed on a sharing rate and a shared savings payment limit, which are not reported here for reasons of confidentiality. Providers only assume accountability for the patients and services under the scope of the program, and only savings made within the scope of the shared savings program count towards shared savings payments. Health Home Information Resource Center, 1-13. Under a shared savings program payers hold providers accountable for the overall costs and quality of care for a predefined population of patients [16]. However, an assignment system based on registration could provide incentives for risk selection: providers could deny access to high risk patients, or may take actions that lead to an outflow of high risk patients to neighboring providers. they inform about the percentage change in provider expenditures in response to a change in B, or D). Eijkenaar [31] provides an overview of the contributions done in the area of the design of quality payment programs. In our model we include case mix variables, year dummies and an interaction between the year dummies and the control providers p=c. The case mix variables are operationalized as proportions, expressed in assignment days (e.g. A provider was deemed capable when it is able to (1) routinely collect data on the quality of care, as needed for the calculation of the net sharing rate (building block 5), (2) analyze these and other data such that opportunities for improvement can be identified, (3) create a forum where these opportunities are discussed with its affiliated care providers, and where business plans are made and implemented. : Nuffield Trust. Agency theory: An assessment and review. According to Eijkenaar [31], this is preferred in case improvement needs collective action, which we believe holds in our setting where a multitude of disciplines cooperates in the treatment of a wide range of patients, and where quality is measured on dimensions related to, among others, chronic care and patient satisfaction. In an additional file we provide an overview of all variables and how they are adjusted for (see Additional file 2). that savings will be split evenly between the payer and provider. A first step in designing a shared savings program is to decide on which patients and which health care services to include. Also from a theoretical perspective, introducing some form of risk-sharing in which the insurer shares the risk of achieving high costs or suboptimal value with providers, may help to align interests in a setting where interests tend to diverge [12]. Due to the log-transformation of provider expenditures, the parameter estimates in B and , can be used to estimate the percentage change in provider expenditures as a response to either changes in case mix and periodic effects pertaining to the provider (inflation). This is the year prior to the start of the pilot (baseline; 0 in subscripts). Following this research, it is expected that a combination of both approaches yields better performance (especially for low performers) than when the benchmark is shaped according to one approach only: outperforming the counterfactual might prove too easy, whereas a benchmark that does not take into account the particularities of the respective provider (e.g. The Shared Savings Program is a voluntary program that encourages groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers to come together as an ACO to give coordinated, high-quality care to their Medicare beneficiaries. Zorgatlas. To ensure quality of care remains high, shared savings arrangements typical include quality performance measurements providers must meet. and transmitted securely. We adjust the benchmark for case mix differences in demographics, socioeconomic status and health, and periodic effects (further explained in the implementation section below), as they have explained variation in health care expenditures between providers before [37]. Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, dpt. Structuring payment to medical homes after the Affordable Care Act. National Participation As a means to enhance incentives for prevention and cure, we therefore adjusted for health status on a prospective base and use concurrent risk-adjustment for all other variables. Quality indicators. Chronische ziekten en multimorbiditeit. Due to the log-transformation of provider expenditures, the parameters can be interpreted as semi-elasticities (i.e. For example, the parameter estimate women informs about the percentage change in average provider expenditures in response to a change in the proportion of women. Public programs commonly hedge against paying undeserved savings [18], by requiring that the difference between benchmark and provider expenditures passes a minimum threshold level. benchmark for changes during the performance period in health status and demographic factors of assigned beneficiaries. This process will repeated throughout the pilot, should data needs change. Shared savings is the foundation of most risk-based contracts. Irrespective of these challenges, incorporating a shared savings program does reward taking accountability for overall costs and quality results, and could thereby improve the sustainability of the primary care setting. The general idea is that providers are held accountable for the overall costs and quality results of patients that have received care from them. Formally, the model is described by: In which pt is an m1 column vector of m demographic, health (care) and socioeconomic variables (Additional file 2), Dyear are year dummies and Cp is an indicator variable for whether a provider belongs to the set of 50 providers that together form the control group of randomly sampled non-participating providers (N=50). on performance, Up to 75%, split among providers: one-third to hospital; one-third to care management; one-third to physician groups, 21 quality measures; and reductions in use of high-cost services, such as emergency department and hospital readmissions, Minimum quality gate, then confidential algorithm, Must achieve net 6% reduction in cost of PAC to receive payout, EXHIBIT ES-1. Similar to the choice for a cut-off point, leaving out deductible payments would have introduced additional risk that could not have been managed by the care providers. The program was incorporated in the existing payment model, which is a mix of quarterly capitation fees and fee-for-service. To predict what this rate of growth had been had the control group witnessed a change in case mix similar to that observed in the pilot provider p, we must impute pilot provider ps values for t and t-1. Dusheiko M, Gravelle H, Yu N, Campbell S. The impact of budgets for gatekeeping physicians on patient satisfaction: evidence from fundholding. Final rule. Choosing the right downside-risk model can be tricky. Edwards ST, Abrams MK, Baron RJ, Berenson RA, Rich EC, Rosenthal GE, et al. gates) and reward for both absolute performance and improvement such that, in principle, low performers are also incentivized [31]. Any successful accountable care organization has three key needs. Organisatorische samenwerkingsverbanden binnen de eerste lijn-een verkenning. Furthermore, the shared savings payments to pilot providers are determined over a full year of care provision and over a care continuum which extends well beyond the providers own setting. Absent a correction for casemix, the composition of a population may play a too large role in determining savings (as determined by the model). Another approach is to design the benchmark such that additional incentives for inefficient providers follow from it. The design of this element requires a choice on the dimensions of quality that will be monitored, the operationalization of the quality indicators, scoring, and how these scores will be tied to shared savings payments. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Fourth, in the Shared Savings Program, a link is established between the level of shared savings payments and the quality of care, which could lower the incentive to skimp on quality or to stint on care to save costs. this totals 1,05 for an estimated change in expenditures of 5%). Thanks you! Patients are entitled to (a reimbursement of) non-acute non-incidental PCP care only when they are registered with the providing PCP. First and foremost, the pilot GPs are not tasked with commissioning health services of behalf of their patients, which is still done by the health insurer. A brief description of the Dutch primary care sector. Under both of these arrangements, a provider's actual experience is compared to a contractually agreed upon financial target. ACOs come in all shapes and sizes, but each model has two main components: a financial side and an organizational side. Earning points for absolute performance. Another reimbursement model growing in popularity is shared savings, specifically bundled payments. Van Winssen K, Van Kleef R, Van de Ven WPMM. According to CMS, shared-savings programs saved $739 million in 2018. Methods of assigning patients to providers have elicited strong debate within US accountable care programs, as concerns were raised about the extent to which prevailing methods yield an accurate reflection of a providers patient population [25]. Payers use many targets, including: Some care management and health coaching may be available, Tools and services to help payers and providers use the Prometheus Payment software and share best practices, Minimum number of patients per practice group, Minimum number of patients with certain conditions and treatments, Retention of initial percent of savings by payer, Payer takes upfront share (discounted PAC allowance), 30%50%, depending Key design elements of shared-savings payment arrangements. Approximately 1.8 million Medicare Fee-for-Service beneficiaries are attributed to participating CPC+ Practices every quarter. Second and related, since the method of assigning patients to pilot providers is not based on actual health care usage but on enrollment instead, less patients will be lost to follow-up [42], because also the scores on quality indicators for patients that do not (regularly) visit the provider count towards the providers average. Performance Differences in Year 1 of Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations. Like the savings threshold, the presence of either a sharing rate or performance payment limit serves as a hedge against making undeserved shared savings payments [18]. A third opportunity is that the shared savings payments are at the provider level (and not on the level of the individual PCP), which encourages collaboration within pilot centers and recognizes that potential successful interventions are group efforts. 2. 50% primary care spending, Incentive payment based on 2012;172 (7):5846. Therefore, strengthening the primary care setting is a widely observed policy response to conditions that threaten the sustainability of a health care system. This improves the prediction of the counterfactual. In the Netherlands, a pilot with a shared savings program for primary care was introduced for a group of primary care providers (in an additional file we provide a brief description of Dutch primary care, see Additional file 1; primary care providers are hereafter referred to as (pilot) providers). In case these patients are assigned to benchmark providers instead, the investing provider may actually be harmed by its own investment. Provider participation in an ACO is purely voluntary. Including this type of care thus would have introduced risk that could not have been adequately managed. Rather one wants to calculate the expenditures of an average provider, had he served provider Xs population. Understand how we got here and how to move forward. A second initiative does not require providers to serve a minimum number of patients to participate, uses a control group and 21 quality measures to determine payouts to participating providers, but has not yet demonstrated cost savings. Shared Savings Arrangements (Gain-Sharing) Shared Risk Arrangements (Risk-Sharing) Episode of Care (EOC) Payment Global Bundling Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) Delivery. The resulting domains predominantly reflect health care services that are delivered or coordinated by the pilot providers themselves. Shared savings models are designed to reward a group of physicians and clinicians for working together to deliver care that meets performance standards for quality of care and lowers health care . But, CMS paid about $646 million in shared savings bonus payments to high-performing ACOs, leading to a net loss of . JS contributed to the conception and design of the study and critically revised the manuscript. the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health. Dubbed the Making Care Primary (MCP) Model, the model will be open to primary care providers with limited or no value-based care experience . Assesses performance relative to projection or control group 3. For those programs adopting a blended approach to designing the benchmark, the historical expenditures that make up the benchmarks base may reflect a patient population with a case mix different from the providers current population. Research also documents a lower growth rate in prescribing costs in fundholding practices [51]. Guiding principles for the use of financial incentives in health behaviour change. Year 1: maintain performance 2015. In: Nationaal Kompas. Providers earn 1 point for passing a gate (implying a 1:3 ratio for improvement and absolute performance [38]). Thus, in case a patient withdraws from the PCP list, the expenditures incurred for medical care received after the withdrawal date no longer count toward a providers expenditures under the shared savings program. The pilot providers were asked to indicate their data needs. But if the provider spends above the target, theyre financially responsible for covering the difference. most expensive specialisms, hospital treatments, laboratory tests at the population level, health care usage of the most expensive patients). In an additional file we provide an overview of all quality indicators (see Additional file 3). Fast Facts - All Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs and Pioneer ACOs. The .gov means its official. David G, Gunnarsson C, Saynisch PA, Chawla R, Nigam S. Do PatientCentered Medical Homes Reduce Emergency Department Visits? An ACO's . Managing director, Life sciences research, 2 free members-only resources remaining this month, free members-only resources remaining this month, Unlimited access to research and resources, Member-only access to events and trainings, The latest content delivered to your inbox. Nevertheless, these domains may be changed in later waves to include more specialist services, should pilot providers start engaging in formal contractual arrangements with specialist providers. Archives of internal medicine. Health care professionals proposed to develop risk-sharing arrangements that cover a wide(r) range of services, instead. Hypothesis testing provides a more accurate way of addressing the random variation in health care expenditures and the odds of outperforming the benchmark by chance. For each gate passed, a provider receives one point. Ultimately, the percentage of savings shared depends on the providers overall quality score. Propensity scores can be used to account for selection-into-treatment [55]. - Health plans and employers: wanted to pay for value, not infrastructure - Primary care practices: wanted to get off the pay-for-volume . Calculating an appropriate shared savings approach, thus, is an integral step toward achieving a more accountable approach to care delivery. At present, over 7.7 million Medicare beneficiaries are covered by ACOs. Kahneman D. Maps of bounded rationality: Psychology for behavioral economics. Acceptance among clinical staff including an acknowledgement that the ACO delivery model requires changes and adjustments. During the pilot, providers receive support in a number of respects. Careers, Unable to load your collection due to an error. Systematic reviews of the effectiveness of pay-for-performance programs suggest that these programs are most effective at changing simple, discrete and time-limited behaviors [40], which, by their nature, may not be the behaviors that lead to significant or enduring savings by the end of the performance year. Shared Savings and Shared Risk are two types of arrangements that exist under the umbrella of Value-based reimbursement. Lists all the quality indicators and their source. Accountability goes beyond reporting about performance to actually share in savings in overall health care expenditures, once quality targets have been met. Including a large number of services into the shared savings program is congruent with the pivotal role Dutch PCPs play in the health care system. In case a patients costs exceed this threshold, the part above the threshold does not count towards provider expenditures. A stable population furthermore improves the confidence with which savings can be attributed to changes in population management. To learn more about becoming an ACO, visit the Application Types and Timelines webpage. For each gate passed, a provider receives three points. By subtracting the proportion of women in provider p in base year 1 from that of base year 3, and subsequently multiplying this number by women, one can estimate the change in provider expenditures for base year 1, had the provider witnessed a similar proportion of women back then. (amount confidential), Services excluded: transplantation, behavioral health, and out-of-area services, Reports, data feeds, and software Lists all the variables we use for casemix adjustment, and whether these are adjusted for on a prospective or retrospective base (DOCX 14kb), Quality indicators. Due to this small scale, it is not computationally burdensome to calculate savings thresholds for each pilot provider separately. The collaborative care model: An approach for integrating physical and mental health care in Medicaid health homes. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, In terms of expenditures, we are able to use difference-in-difference designs commonly used to evaluate Shared Savings Models [53, 54]. Having a strong primary care setting contributes to the functioning of the health care system [1]. Performance with respect to these interventions is a recurring theme during provider meetings. Provides important information of the Dutch primary care sector (DOCX 11kb), Casemix variables and method of adjustment. Another similarity between shared savings and bundled payments is that if the provider spends below the target amount, they can share in a portion of the savings. Some alternative payment models, however, require providers to take on downside financial risk. Landon et al. . Dehejia RH, Wahba S. Propensity score-matching methods for nonexperimental causal studies. Rather than removing these variables from the risk adjustment model a third choice is to decide on the timing of risk adjustment. National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. Provides important information of the Dutch primary care sector (DOCX 11kb)Additional file 2:(14K, docx) To learn more about ACOs, how CMS is influencing providersboth hospitals and physiciansto take on financial risk for the patients in their care, the MSSP, and the Next Generation ACO Program, download part four of our complimentary resource, Medicare and the Transition to Value-Based Care. A pay-for-performance modelin which bonuses or penalties tied to process adherence, quality scores, or patient satisfaction scores are added to FFS paymentswill look different from a shared savings model, in which a share of the difference between actual and budgeted medical expenses is distributed to participating hospitals, physicians, and o. number of treatments per specialism and types of treatment per specialism (inpatient, outpatient, same day admission/discharge)) were obtained from the Dutch National Atlas of Public Health [41]. There are several approaches to designing a benchmark. To obtain this rate, we estimate a model of the log of provider expenditures (see expression 2). care coordinator, Shared savings based on comparison with a control group, Shared savings for reducing potentially avoidable complications (PAC) associated with treating a chronic condition, High-cost claims truncated at $250,000 to $500,000, depending on contract, High-cost claims (episodes exceeding two standard deviations) truncated.
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