By Modern
Healthcare | September 20, 2017
In a Wall Street Journal op-edpublished
Tuesday evening, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said her agency will issue a
"request for information" on new ideas that would redirect the
Innovation Center responsible for creating new provider payment models.
Verma said the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation was a powerful tool in improving healthcare quality and reducing costs.
"This administration plans to lead the Innovation Center in a new direction," Verma wrote, adding that on Wednesday the agency would request ideas on "the path forward."
"We will move away from the assumption that Washington can engineer a more efficient health-care system from afar—that we should specify the processes health-care providers are required to follow," she wrote.
Verma said the Innovation Center's old policies had led to consolidation that has been widely blamed for growing overall healthcare costs.
The CMS' commitment to value-based care, the impetus for the center's creation during the Obama administration, is evident as Verma states that the industry must shift away from fee-for-service and hold providers accountable for outcomes and innovation.
But "providers need the freedom to design and offer new approaches to delivering care. Our goal is to increase flexibility by providing more waivers from current requirements," she wrote.
The need for stakeholder input supports the rationale stated this summer when the CMS chose to make some previously mandatory bundled payments for replacing knees and hips, voluntary.
It also eliminated the expansion of bundled payments for heart attacks, bypass surgery, hip and femur fractures, and cardiac rehabilitation.
HHS Secretary Tom Price, a former surgeon and member of Congress who is now Verma's boss, has long criticized the mandatory nature of some of the payment models that came out of the Innovation Center. But policy experts argue that providers otherwise might not have an incentive to abandon what could be the more lucrative fee-for-service reimbursement.
Verma said the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation was a powerful tool in improving healthcare quality and reducing costs.
"This administration plans to lead the Innovation Center in a new direction," Verma wrote, adding that on Wednesday the agency would request ideas on "the path forward."
"We will move away from the assumption that Washington can engineer a more efficient health-care system from afar—that we should specify the processes health-care providers are required to follow," she wrote.
Verma said the Innovation Center's old policies had led to consolidation that has been widely blamed for growing overall healthcare costs.
The CMS' commitment to value-based care, the impetus for the center's creation during the Obama administration, is evident as Verma states that the industry must shift away from fee-for-service and hold providers accountable for outcomes and innovation.
But "providers need the freedom to design and offer new approaches to delivering care. Our goal is to increase flexibility by providing more waivers from current requirements," she wrote.
The need for stakeholder input supports the rationale stated this summer when the CMS chose to make some previously mandatory bundled payments for replacing knees and hips, voluntary.
It also eliminated the expansion of bundled payments for heart attacks, bypass surgery, hip and femur fractures, and cardiac rehabilitation.
HHS Secretary Tom Price, a former surgeon and member of Congress who is now Verma's boss, has long criticized the mandatory nature of some of the payment models that came out of the Innovation Center. But policy experts argue that providers otherwise might not have an incentive to abandon what could be the more lucrative fee-for-service reimbursement.
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