“CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure and CMS Innovation Center Director Elizabeth Fowler continue to forge ahead with the Biden-Harris Administration’s plans to evaluate and streamline the alternative payment models being tested at the Innovation Center. The most recent example, announced late last month, includes the redesign and renaming of the controversial Global and Professional Direct Contracting (GPDC) model that aims to introduce value-based payment arrangements in traditional Medicare. The newly announced model, renamed the Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health (ACO REACH) Model, aligns with CMS’s restated goals for the Innovation Center—as outlined in its October 2021 “strategic refresh” white paper—to drive accountable care, advance health equity, support care innovations, improve access by addressing affordability, and partner to achieve system transformation.”
“CMS noted it had redesigned the stalled Trump-era GPDC model to advance the Administration’s commitment to health equity ‘and in response to stakeholder feedback and participant experience.’ Rather than scrap the controversial model altogether as some providers, patient advocates, and policy makers had called for—raising concerns it would threaten patient care and outcomes ‘due to the encroachment of profit-driven organizations on their care,’— CMS chose to adjust the model. According to the CMS fact sheet, the goals of the redesigned model are to improve quality of care and care coordination for patients in traditional Medicare, especially for patients in underserved communities.”
“ACO REACH is different from the GPDC model in several ways…” Read the full article here.
Source: CMS Innovation Center Redesigns Direct Contracting Entity Model, Launches ACO REACH – By Troy A. Barsky, Janet Walker, Savanna Williams & Stacie Heller, March 15, 2022. Crowell Health Solutions.
