CMS to Allow Participants to Withdraw from Bundled Payment Model in March

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will allow participants in the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced model to retroactively withdraw all or some episode initiators and clinical episodes from the model in March 2019, the agency announced Friday. The announcement came as CMS began uploading new preliminary target prices and claims data for some applicants due to inaccurate allowed amounts for some inpatient claims. “While we are retaining our initial Oct. 1 start date, to accommodate this update in preliminary target prices and to recognize some applicants’ requests for a later start date, we will be allowing all participants to retroactively withdraw episode initiators and/or clinical episodes in March 2019,” the agency said. CMS last week extended the deadline for submitting signed participation agreements and selecting clinical episodes for the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced model by one week to Aug. 8, and the due date for program deliverables to Sept. 14. AHA has urged CMS to offer in 2019 two additional start date options for the model, currently set to begin Oct. 1, noting that many applicants had yet to receive data from the agency on episode target prices and summary and raw claims data.