Physicians receive increased payments for value-based care
For 2015, nearly 7,000 physicians in 14 group practices are receiving an increase in their Medicare payments because they met quality of care goals and kept costs down. Other physicians will see a decrease in their payments.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services executives Sean Cavanaugh and Patrick Conway made the announcement in a blog post on the CMS website.
The program, called the Physician Feedback Program/Value-Based Payment Modifier, is a CMS initiative that compares physicians and medical practice groups on their ability to improve quality and reduce costs.
Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Burwell announced on Jan. 26 that HHS wants to tie 85 percent of Medicare payments to quality or value by next year and aims for 90 percent in 2018.
For the Physician Feedback Program/Value-Based Payment Modifier program, 127 groups of 100 or more physicians were subject to an adjustment because they opted to have their payments tied to the quality of care they deliver.
Of the 127, 14 groups had an increase in their Medicare payments, 11 had a decrease and 102 had no change in their payments.
The groups receiving increased payments had a hospital readmissions rate of 14.3 per 100 admissions compared with a benchmark of 16.4 per 100 admissions. They also had a lower admissions rate on average for acute and chronic ambulatory care sensitive conditions.
Next year, all groups with at least 10 or more physicians will be subject to the program. All groups and solo practitioners will be in the program in 2017, while non-physicians will be added in 2018.
Cavanaugh and Conway noted HHS is attempting to improve the way providers are paid, improve care delivery and share information to providers and the general public without compromising privacy issues.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.