Medicare in the 21 st Century: Understanding the Program to Promote Improvements.

Medicare is the largest single purchaser of health care in the United States and currently helps to pay medical expenses for approximately one-fifth of the US population. The impetus for Medicare to move away from fee-for-service and toward value-based care payments reflects the need to incentivize and improve healthcare quality while containing increasing costs. This primer provides a detailed overview of several interrelated topics for an improved understanding of the Medicare program for orthopaedic surgeons, other clinicians, healthcare administrators, policymakers, and business leaders. An improved understanding may stimulate additional ideas for successful program advancements.

Adapting to the Reimbursement Landscape: The Future of Value-Based Care.

This article explores one of the undeniable driving forces in health care: payment, and the shift toward value-based reimbursement as a lever to better align provider incentives toward appropriate utilization of health care services. The increasing burden of heart failure has made it an attractive target for many payment reform efforts and alternative payment models. As the ultimate goal of "value-based care" interventions is to reduce costs and improve quality outcomes and experience for patients while simultaneously improving the caregiver experience, financial models require a level of clinical translation to yield sustainable care redesign improvements.

Piloting a Financial Counseling Intervention for Patients With Cancer Receiving Chemotherapy.

PURPOSE: National organizations encourage communication about costs of cancer care; however, few data are available on health system models for identifying and assisting patients with financial distress (FD). We report the feasibility and acceptability of a financial counseling (FC) intervention for patients who receive chemotherapy at a comprehensive cancer center. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Patients were randomly assigned 1:1 to FC or standard care. The FC arm received education, financial assistance screening, and an estimation tool with total billed charges and out-of-pocket (OOP) cost of one cycle of chemotherapy from a financial counselor through phone call and in-person visit. Participants completed measures of FD, health-related quality of life, and acceptability. RESULTS: Ninety-five participants enrolled (mean age, 61 years; 72% white; 50% commercially insured), with a 32% attrition rate between assessments. Rates of completion for the phone call, in-person, and entire intervention were 98%, 47%, and 30%, respectively. The OOP estimation tool was considered understandable and acceptable to the majority of participants. No significant changes in FD were found between arms. Emotional functioning was negatively associated with having high FD (95% CI, -0.13379 to -0.013; P = .0189). Being married was associated with a decrease in log-odds of having high FD (ß = -1.916; 95% CI, -3.358 to -0.475; P = .0092). CONCLUSION: Implementation of an FC program that provides transparent cost data is feasible and acceptable. Incorporation of FC into clinical workflow, including phone counseling, is important to improve feasibility. Additional work is needed to develop tailored educational materials that are patient specific.

Taking Risk: Early Results From Teaching Hospitals' Participation in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative.

The authors describe observations from the 27 teaching hospitals constituting the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) cohort in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) initiative. CMMI introduced BPCI in August 2011 and selected the first set of participants in January 2013. BPCI participants enter into Medicare payment arrangements for episodes of care for which they take financial risk. The first round of participants entered risk agreements on October 1, 2013 and January 1, 2014. In April 2014, CMMI selected additional participants who started taking financial risk in 2015. Selected episodes include congestive heart failure (CHF), major joint replacement (MJR), and cardiac valve surgery. The AAMC cohort of participating hospitals selected clinical conditions on the basis of patient volume, opportunity to impact savings and quality, organizational and clinical team readiness, and prior process improvement experience. Early financial results suggest that focused attention to postacute care utilization and outcomes, rapid changes in care processes, program pricing rules, and team composition drove savings and losses. The first cohort of participants generated savings in MJR, CHF, and cardiac valve episodes; losses were experienced in stroke, percutaneous coronary intervention, and spine surgery. Although about one-quarter of U.S. teaching hospitals are participating in BPCI, the proliferation of existing and new payment models, as well as the 2015 announcement to increasingly pay providers according to value, mandates close scrutiny of program outcomes. The authors conclude by proposing additional opportunities for research related to alternative payment models.