CMS Urged to Expand Start Date Options for New Bundled Payment Model

On behalf of our nearly 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other health care organizations, and our clinician partners – including more than 270,000 affiliated physicians, 2 million nurses and other caregivers – and the 43,000 health care leaders who belong to our professional membership groups, the American Hospital Association (AHA) is writing to request additional start dates in 2019 for the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) Advanced model.

The AHA is deeply supportive of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) efforts to shift the health care system toward the provision of more accountable, coordinated care. As detailed in our February 12, 2018 letter, we agree with the principles underlying the BPCI Advanced model and believe the model could help further our members’ efforts to transform care delivery.

However, in order to make informed decisions as to participation in BPCI Advanced and to succeed in the model if they do participate, applicants need both a complete suite of data from CMS (including episode target prices, and summary and raw claims data) and sufficient time to analyze that data.