Medicare Makes Enhancements to the Shared Savings Program to Strengthen Incentives for Quality Care

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today released a final rule improving how Medicare pays Accountable Care Organizations in the Medicare Shared Savings Program for delivering better patient care. Medicare is moving away from paying for each service a physician provides towards a system that rewards physicians for coordinating with each other. Accountable Care Organizations are a major part of that transition, rewarding providers that deliver high-quality, efficient, and coordinated care for patients.

Medicare bases Accountable Care Organizations’ payments on a variety of factors, including whether the Accountable Care Organization can deliver high-quality care at a reasonable cost.  The final rule should help more Accountable Care Organizations successfully participate in the Medicare Shared Savings Program by improving the shared savings payment methodology and providing a new participation option for certain Accountable Care Organizations to move to the more advanced tracks of the program.

"Today’s changes will encourage more physicians to improve patient care by joining Accountable Care Organizations, while also refining how the program measures success, so that current participants are better rewarded for quality,” said CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt. “These new flexibilities are based on significant input from participants and will help physicians prepare for the new Quality Payment Program, part of bipartisan legislation Congress passed last year repealing the failed Sustainable Growth Rate.”