CMS Announces New IT Investment Model For ACOs
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
A CMS initiative will help ACOs in rural locations use health IT for better access to care.
CMS announced that $114 million dollars in funding will be available to aid ACOs that participate in the Medicare Shared Savings Program. "The ACO Investment Model will give Medicare accountable care organizations more flexibility in setting quality and financial goals, while giving them greater accountability for delivering quality care efficiently," said CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, according to Healthcare IT News.
"We are working with these organizations to make necessary investments that encourage doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers to work together to better coordinate care and keep people healthy," she said.
CMS explains the new initiative “is a model of pre-paid shared savings that builds on the experience with the Advance Payment Model to encourage new ACOs to form in rural and underserved areas and current Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs to transition to arrangements with greater financial risk.”
Under this new model, the ACOs will receive three types of payments to boost their use of technology:
- an upfront, fixed payment
- an upfront payment based on the expected number of assigned beneficiaries
- a monthly payment based on the size of the ACO to address the fixed and variable costs of creating a new ACO
CMS made this announcement shortly after a survey from Premier and the eHealth Initiative was released. Study results showed ACOs cited several problems when it came to IT:
- 100 percent of respondents said accessing external data was challenging
- 95 percent cited costs
- 95 percent cited a lack of interoperability
- 90 percent cited a lack of funding or return on investment
- 88 percent said integration of disparate data from other EHR systems and other sources was a barrier