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HHS announces new Affordable Care Act initiative to help improve patient care
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced a new initiative to help improve care for patients during their hospital stay and following discharge, according to Health and Human Services press release.
The new program, called the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative, was made possible by the Affordable Care Act. Physicians, hospitals and other health care providers can apply to participate in the program, which is designed to align payments for services delivered across an episode of care rather than keeping payments separate.
“Patients don’t get care from just one person — it takes a team, and this initiative will help ensure the team is working together,” Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stated in the release. “The Bundled Payments initiative will encourage doctors, nurses and specialists to coordinate care. It is a key part of our efforts to give patients better health, better care and lower costs.”
The initiative will reportedly bundle care for a package of services patients receive to treat a specific medical condition during a single hospital stay, as well as recovery from that stay. The bundling of payments, according to the release, will encourage providers to better coordinate care.
The releases also noted that those who participate in the program will have the flexibility to choose which episodes of care and which services will be bundled together — enabling providers of difference sizes and levels of readiness to participate.
“The American Medical Association (AMA) appreciates [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS’)] responsiveness to our interest in bundled payments,” AMA immediate past-president Cecil B. Wilson, MD, stated in an AMA release. “We are pleased the initiative provides flexibility and a range of models. This may be an important opportunity to learn how to organize these approaches to improve patient care, quality, cost of care, and practice economics. We look forward to reviewing the details of the application criteria, and we urge CMS to encourage applications for physician-led bundling initiatives.”
“We urge CMS to be prepared to provide technical assistance and data to interested physicians who may not have experience with bundled payment models," he added in the release.
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