“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has redesigned one of its Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) to focus more on addressing health care disparities for underserved communities — and it’s currently soliciting cohort participants.”
“CMS ACOs are groups of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who work together to provide coordinated, high-quality care to Medicare patients. The setup reduces duplication of services and also prevents medical errors.”
“The “Global and Professional Direct Contracting (GPDC)” ACO is now called the “Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health (REACH)” model.”
“‘CMS is renaming the model the ACO REACH Model to better align the name with the purpose of the model: to improve the quality of care for people with Medicare through better care coordination, reaching and connecting health care providers and beneficiaries, including those beneficiaries who are underserved, a priority of the Biden-Harris administration,’ according to a notice on its website…”
“A key role for ACOs has been to bridge providers to take responsibility for the quality and total cost of patient care.”
“’CMS is testing a redesigned model because accountable care organizations make it possible for people in traditional Medicare to receive greater support managing their chronic diseases, facilitate smoother transitions from the hospital to their homes, and ensure beneficiaries receive preventive care that keeps them healthy,’ said Elizabeth Fowler, CMS deputy administrator and innovation center director, in a press release…”
“The redesigned ACO REACH model relies more upon data analytics to monitor the use of services over time and assess beneficiaries’ access to care, especially for underserved populations. Fowler said CMS is collecting more health equity data on a standardized basis across the agency.”
“’When we look back at our past models, if we’re improving quality, are we improving quality for everybody? Or does it only affect some groups?’ Fowler said at Academy Health’s Datapalooza event last week. ‘Collecting this data will be able to give us the ability to say whether we’re improving quality based on some of these factors…'” Read the full article here.
Source: Redesigned CMS ACO Emphasizes Health Equity – By Katherine MacPhail, April 13, 2022. GovCIO.
