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Demonstrations being conducted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) continue to provide strong evidence that offering financial incentives for improving or delivering high quality care increases quality and can reduce the growth in Medicare expenditures.

On Monday CMS announced new results from three of these demonstrations, one for large physician practices, one for small and solo physician practices, and one for hospitals. CMS is also announcing the start of three additional value based purchasing demonstrations.



"We continue to be encouraged by the progress of our ongoing programs that test value-based purchasing across a variety of health care services," said Charlene Frizzera, Acting Administrator of CMS; "Building on those efforts, we are pleased to announce the start of our Nursing Home Value-Based Purchasing Demonstration and two gainsharing demonstrations."

"What we learn from the various Medicare demonstrations helps to achieve the Administration's goals of paying for high quality and efficient health care in America," said Jonathan Blum, director of the CMS' Center for Medicare Management and acting director of the Center for Health Plan Choices. "Building on these findings, we will aggressively test new demonstration concepts to continue to meet these goals."

The CMS value-based purchasing (VBP) initiative is designed to tie Medicare payments to performance on quality and efficiency and is part of CMS' effort to transform Medicare from a passive payer to an active purchaser of higher quality, more efficient health care.

Entering its fifth year, the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) shows continued quality improvement among participating hospitals. In addition, physician practices participating in the Physician Group Practice (PGP) Demonstration continue to improve quality for patients with chronic illnesses or requiring preventive care.

And more than 560 small and solo physician practices participating in the Medicare Care Management Performance (MCMP) Demonstration are being rewarded for providing high quality care in the delivery of preventive care and care for patients with chronic illnesses.

New demonstration programs include the Nursing Home Value-Based Purchasing Demonstration, the Medicare Hospital Gainsharing Demonstration, and the Physician Hospital Collaboration Demonstration.

The nursing home demonstration program will reward facilities that can improve or deliver high quality care in four specific areas: staffing, resident outcomes, avoidable hospitalizations and reductions in deficiency citations.

Continue reading Medicare Demonstrates That Paying for Quality Pays Off...

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