Boehler talks transformation to value-based payment

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Innovation Center must provide transparency, predictability and timely data to help support providers participating in value-based payment arrangements, Adam Boehler, director of the center, said today. “The onus is on us to do that,” he said, during a wide-ranging discussion with Ashley Thompson, AHA senior vice president of public policy analysis and development. Boehler, who took the helm of CMS’s Innovation Center last April, talked about the progress that has been made in moving to value-based payment models and said, “I think we’re through the experimental phase, and it’s time to operationalize and make a business case.” He emphasized that it is important for the center to “get out of the way and let providers do this work,” and take away unnecessary burden – whether “they be quality metrics that don’t actually measure quality or requirements that are administrative that take the eye off the ball of things that actually impact patient care.” In addition, Boehler said the center would be looking to do more related to end-of-life care, primary care and kidney care, and that the center was in the soliciting feedback phase related to a possible post-acute care model.