Recently The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) announced an overhaul to the Affordable Care Organization program. The overhaul would be specific to EHRs and risk-based payment models.
My favorite proposed changes in this rule:
- Reduce administrative burden by streamlining quality measures that ACOs are required to report.
- Allow ACOs to provide incentive payments to patients in order to boost beneficiary engagement.
- Primary Care Providers must notify each beneficiary that they are a part of an ACO and explain what this means for their care.
- Total estimated savings of $2.2 billion in Medicare dollars over 10 years.
- ACOs with multiple years of poor financial performance would be terminated from the program.
- Advance interoperability and give patients more control over their medical information by implementing criteria around the number of clinicians using electronic medical records
- Reimburse ACOs for telemedicine services and virtual visits in rural areas.