Though not entirely unexpected, the announcement last Thursday evening (August 9) by Administrator Seema Verma and her fellow senior officials at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) nonetheless created quite a stir within patient care leaders in U.S. healthcare. As Managing Editor Rajiv Leventhal reported that evening, “The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing a new direction for ACOs (accountable care organizations) in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), with the goal to push these organizations into two-sided risk models…”
“In other words, Verma and her fellow CMS officials are banking on the proposition that they can compel/force hospital, medical group, and health system leaders to move quite quickly from upside risk to upside/downside risk, and not simply drop out of the MSSP program.”
“So, just how risky (pardon the embedded pun) is that gamble on the part of Verma and CMS? Well, the proposal has elicited quite a range of responses from the industry in the past few days. But, as Leventhal reported on Friday, one very major player in this landscape, NAACOS—the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of ACOs—is pretty much hopping mad, calling the proposal “misguided,” and noting that the changes, if finalized, “will…” Read the full article here.
Source: Assessing CMS’s Risky Move on Risk: Has Seema Verma Pushed MSSP ACOs Into Uncharted Territory? – By Mark Hagland, August 13, 2018. Healthcare Informatics.
