by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | September 21, 2016
Under the ACA, the Medicare Shared
Savings Program is yielding results
The Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), which is part of the ACA, has brought about "small but significant" improvements in the use of mammography in its first three years, according to a new study published online in the journal, Radiology.
MSSP enables physicians, hospitals and suppliers to create or participate in accountable care organizations (ACOs). Its goal is to improve the quality of care for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries while also cutting costs.
The ACA is encouraging the industry to experiment with different payment models like value-based programs. MSSP is the largest value-based population reimbursement program in U.S. history.
Dr. Anand Narayan of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and his colleagues investigated the impact that the MSSP ACOs had on the use of mammography screening.
The researchers evaluated Medicare data on women between 40 and 69 years old who underwent screening between 2012 and 2014. The ACOs in the MSSP experienced a mean increase of 2.6 percent in the use of mammography screening — 128 of 208 of them reported improvements.
Histogram shows screening mammography use in 333 ACOs in 2014
In the fee-for-service populations, the researchers found that the use of mammography screening either remained the same or decreased over the studied time period.
"Pay-for-performance incentives in ACOs can facilitate collaboration among various stakeholders across the health care continuum to improve mammography screening utilization and other key population health metrics, results which will become increasingly relevant as imaging reimbursements transition from fee-for-service to alternative or value-based payment," Narayan said in a statement.
CMS publicly announced that it intends to carry out most of the fee-for-service Medicare payments through value-based programs by 2018. Narayan believes that its important that radiologists work with other stakeholders to develop the best approaches for improving population health.
"In radiology, we can take an active role in working with other clinicians to ensure that people get appropriate preventive health services," said Narayan. "For instance, if a 50-year-old woman comes in for a screening mammogram, we could check to see if she is following screening recommendations for colorectal cancer, cervical cancer and other conditions."
More research is needed to figure out the approaches that the most successful ACOs used to improve screening. However, the researchers do know that communication such as phone calls, letters, group health education sessions, peer counseling, and home visits play a role.
