Dr Kate Goodrich Discusses Success of CMS Move to Value-Based Payment

CMS reached its 2016 goals for transition to value-based payments early in part because of providers’ enthusiasm for new programs, said Kate Goodrich, MD, director of the Quality Measurement and Value-Based Incentives Group in CMS.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What do you attribute to CMS successfully reaching its 2016 goals for moving to value-based payments 9 months before the deadline?

I think we were able to do this because there have been so many collaborators and partners out there who have been really excited about joining in with the alternative payment models that the Innovation Center had out there. So in the latest few years, we’ve had not only of course the Medicare Shared Savings Program, the three different tracks of that shared savings program, the Pioneer Program which is also an ACO program, as well as our bundled payment programs. And last year we launched the Comprehensive Joint Replacement Model, of course that didn’t go into effect until April of this year so it didn’t have that impact yet.

But I think because we launched a number of models but with tremendous enthusiasm from in particular the provider community, but also from other payers who really wanted to join in with us in aligning the incentives for clinicians in practice, we were really able to leverage that enthusiasm to be successful with the 30 percent goal, as you stated, much earlier than we anticipated.