Statement on CMS' New Bundled Payments for Cardiac Care and Hip Fractures

Tom Nickels
Executive Vice President Government Relations and Public Policy

July 25, 2016

The new mandatory payment models proposed by CMS today represent additional efforts by the Administration to attempt to coordinate patient care across multiple settings. America’s hospitals already are participating in many programs to redesign care delivery to better serve patients.

However, the proposal to bundle payments for cardiac care is the third mandatory demonstration project from CMS in a little over a year. Further, the agency is layering this new program on hospitals already working to implement the mandatory hip and knee bundled payment model. CMS also is proposing to expand and further complicate the hip and knee program less than four months after it began and before evaluating its results. CMS is putting the success of these critical programs at risk. Hospitals are under a tremendous burden to help ensure these complex models work for patients.

America’s hospitals are committed to improving care coordination thoughtfully and systematically in order to create better value for our patients and communities. Thus we were pleased that CMS will allow the models to qualify as advanced alternative payment models under MACRA. We will fully analyze the proposals and we look forward to improving them so they are reasonable and workable for patients.

About the AHA

The AHA is a not-for-profit association of health care provider organizations and individuals that are committed to the health improvement of their communities. The AHA is the national advocate for its members, which include nearly 5,000 hospitals, health care systems, networks, other providers of care and 43,000 individual members. Founded in 1898, the AHA provides education for health care leaders and is a source of information on health care issues and trends. For more information, visit the AHA website at www.aha.org.