Healthcare Providers May Be Participating in CMS's Bundled-Payment Experiment and Not Know It

Last week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the names of the 450 healthcare providers who will be testing bundled payments in place of the traditional fee-for-service.

We’ve heard rumors–repeat, rumors–that the business office staff of at least one provider did not even know that they had applied to be part of the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement experiment.

While far from a trend, we recommend our readers head over to the CMS’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and see if their name is on the list.

Under the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiative, “organizations will enter into payment arrangements that include financial and performance accountability for episodes of care,” according to CMS. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation will be testing four bundled-payment models, with the objective of improving care and reducing costs:

Model 1: Retrospective Acute Care Hospital Stay Only

Under Model 1, the episode of care is defined as the inpatient stay in the acute care hospital. Medicare will pay the hospital a discounted amount based on the payment rates established under the Inpatient Prospective Payment System used in the original Medicare program. Medicare will continue to pay physicians separately for their services under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. Under certain circumstances, hospitals and physicians will be permitted to share gains arising from the providers’ care redesign efforts. Participation will begin as early as April, 2013 and no later than January, 2014 and will include most Medicare fee-for-service discharges for the participating hospitals.

Model 2: Retrospective Acute Care Hospital Stay plus Post-Acute Care

In Model 2, the episode of care will include the inpatient stay in the acute care hospital and all related services during the episode. The episode will end either 30, 60, or 90 days after hospital discharge. Participants can select up to 48 different clinical condition episodes.

Model 3: Retrospective Post-Acute Care Only

For Model 3, the episode of care will be triggered by an acute care hospital stay and will begin at initiation of post-acute care services with a participating skilled nursing facility, inpatient rehabilitation facility, long-term care hospital or home health agency. The post-acute care services included in the episode must begin within 30 days of discharge from the inpatient stay and will end either a minimum of 30, 60, or 90 days after the initiation of the episode. Participants can select up to 48 different clinical condition episodes.

Model 4: Acute Care Hospital Stay Only

Under Model 4, CMS will make a single, prospectively determined bundled payment to the hospital that would encompass all services furnished during the inpatient stay by the hospital, physicians, and other practitioners. Physicians and other practitioners will submit “no-pay” claims to Medicare and will be paid by the hospital out of the bundled payment. Related readmissions for 30 days after hospital discharge will be included in the bundled payment amount. Participants can select up to 48 different clinical condition episodes.

Those providers that are testing the first model “agree to provide a standard discount to Medicare from the usual Part A hospital inpatient payments,” CMS said in its announcement.

Models 2 and 3 involve a retrospective bundled payment arrangement where actual expenditures are reconciled against a target price for an episode of care, CMS said. Model 4 involves a prospective bundled payment arrangement, where a lump sum payment is made to a provider for the entire episode of care. Over the course of the three-year initiative, CMS will work with participating organizations to assess whether the models being tested result in improved patient care and lower costs to Medicare, according to CMS.