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CMS

Six Quick First Impressions of the CMS Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative (BPCII)

This afternoon CMS announced the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative (BPCII). For details, start reading here.

Here are six quick first impressions:

1. It’s very creative and innovative. CMS has demonstrated out-of-the-box thinking and leaves a lot of room for applicants to propose their own approaches. Expect to have to read the materials 2-3 times to wrap your thinking around it.

Unlike the Medicare Shared Savings ACO rule, the BPCII is flexible.  Anticipate some innovative and non-traditional proposals from diverse applicants. Unlike […]

Tire Kickers Need Not Apply: 8 First Impressions of the Medicare ACO Rule

On March 31, CMS released the long-awaited “Medicare Shared Savings Program: Accountable Care Organizations” document (ACO Rule). Read the details here (strong suggestion: unless you’re working on your PhD in ACOs, start with the fact sheets).

There are many surprises. Here are eight first impressions on this 429 page tome:

The bar has been set high…very high.  Tire kickers need not apply.
Don’t expect to see many or any small ACOs.
Patients will be confused by ACOs.
Concerns over maintaining competition and avoiding antitrust are […]

Is “CMS Innovation Center” an Oxymoron?

A press release earlier this week announced the new CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.

If you went to their Twitter feed today, here’s what you’d see:

This struck me as a great pictorial representation of the broader challenges the CMS Innovation Center faces:

They’ve kinda sorta figured out there’s a conversation going on out there — they’ve joined Twitter
They haven’t figured out that they need to listen:  Following = 0
They haven’t figured out they they need to talk:  Tweets = 0

I remain hopeful, […]