CMS NEWS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, April 23, 2018
Contact: CMS Media Relations
(202) 690-6145 | CMS
Media Inquiries
Feedback on New Direction
Request for Information (RFI) Released,
CMS Innovation Center’s Market-Driven Reforms to Focus on
Patient-Centered Care
Request for Information on Provider Contracting Issued
Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced
that it has released the comments submitted by patients, clinicians,
innovators, and others in response to the CMS Innovation Center’s New
Direction Request for Information (RFI). Last fall, CMS released the RFI to
collect ideas on a new direction for the agency’s Innovation Center to
promote patient-centered care and test market driven reforms that: empower
beneficiaries as consumers, provide price transparency, increase choices
and competition to drive quality, reduce costs, and improve outcomes. The
Innovation Center is a central focus of the Administration’s efforts to
accelerate the move from a healthcare system that pays for volume to one
that pays for value and encourages provider innovation.
CMS received over 1,000 responses to the RFI from a wide variety of
individuals and organizations located across the country, including medical
societies and associations, health systems, physician groups, and private
businesses. Since the RFI comment period closed last November, CMS has been
reviewing the responses, which provided valuable insight on the potential to
improve existing models as well as ideas for transformative new models that
aim to empower patients with more choices and better health outcomes.
“HHS has made shifting our healthcare system to one that pays for value
one of our top four department priorities,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar.
“Using bold, innovative models in Medicare and Medicaid is a key piece of
this effort. We value stakeholder input on the new direction for the
Innovation Center, and look forward to engaging on especially promising, groundbreaking
ideas such as direct provider contracting.”
“We recognize that the best ideas don’t come from Washington, so it’s
important that we hear from the front lines of our healthcare system about
how we can improve care” said CMS Administrator Seema Verma. “The responses
from this RFI will help inform and drive our initiatives to transform the
health care delivery system with the goal of improving quality of care
while reducing unnecessary cost.”
The responses focused on a number of areas that are critical to
enhancing quality of care for beneficiaries and decreasing unnecessary
cost, such as increased physician accountability for patient outcomes,
improved patient choice and transparency, realigned incentives for the
benefit of the patient, and a focus on chronically ill patients. In
addition to the themes that emerged around the RFI’s guiding principles and
eight model focus areas, the comments received in response to the RFI also
reflected broad support for reducing burdensome requirements and unnecessary
regulations.
CMS is sharing the feedback received to promote transparency and
facilitate further discussion of how to move the Innovation Center in a new
direction. The RFI was a critical step in the model design process to
ensure public input was available to help shape new models. Over the coming
year, CMS will use the feedback as it works to develop new models, focusing
on the eight focus areas outlined in the RFI.
Today, CMS is also taking a next step to develop a potential model in
the area of direct provider contracting, informed in part by the RFI. A
direct provider contract model would allow providers to take further
accountability for the cost and quality of a designated population in order
to drive better beneficiary outcomes. Such a model would have the potential
to enhance the doctor-patient relationship by eliminating administrative
burden for clinicians and providing increased flexibility to provide the
high-quality care that is most appropriate for their patients, thus
improving quality while reducing expenditures.
As part of its process to gain further insight from the public in this
area and ask more focused questions, CMS is issuing a follow up RFI. The
information being requested is detailed in nature and is intended to
provide CMS the data needed to potentially design and release a model in
this area. CMS is excited to continue to evaluate the concept of direct
provider contracting and is also focusing its attention on other areas
guided by input and feedback from the New Direction RFI as well as the
public.
The public comments that were received by the CMS Innovation Center in
response to the New Direction RFI are available at: https://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/direction.
The Direct Provider Contracting RFI is available at: https://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/direct-provider-contracting/.
Comments are due by 11:59 EDT on
May 25, 2018.
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