November 8, 2022
Transition to Value
  • The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center released a strategy to test models and innovations that support access to high-quality, integrated specialty care across the patient journey. The strategy is comprised of key learnings and short-term and long-term objectives across four key elements: 1) Enhance transparency of specialist data and performance measures to increase access to high-quality, accountable specialty care and integration with primary care; 2) Maintain momentum established by episode payment models; 3) Create innovations to improve coordination and collaboration, including at the point of referral, between primary care and specialty care physicians; and 4) Create a targeted set of financial incentives for accountable care organizations (ACOs) to actively manage specialty care, through possible beneficiary alignment changes and episode cost and quality measures specific to specialist-managed conditions. The Innovation Center also released a report providing an update on its efforts to align value-based payment efforts across different federal payers, and to continue making its payment experiments more equitable. (Strategy here; Report here)