CMS Unveils New Center for Innovation

BALTIMORE — Earlier today, CMS officially launched the new
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to study various ways
of delivering care and paying providers that could be possible
money-savers for the massive health care programs and, at the same
time, improve quality.

Created under the Affordable Care Act, the new center is looking
for input from stakeholders across the health care sector,
including hospitals, doctors, consumers, payers, states, employers,
advocates and federal agencies, to build its operations, according
to CMS.

“The center will identify and test care models that provide
beneficiaries with a seamless care experience, better health and
lower costs,” Richard Gilfillan, M.D., acting director for the new
center, said in a release. “By working together with innovative and
committed providers we can create a system that works better for
everyone. We want to identify, validate and scale models that have
been effective in achieving better outcomes and improving the
quality of care, but may be relatively unknown.”

CMS also announced several new initiatives to strengthen primary
care and better coordinate care for patients, including tests of
“health home” and “medical home” concepts:

• Eight states have been selected to participate in a
  demonstration project to evaluate the effectiveness of doctors and
  other health professionals across the care system working in a more
  integrated fashion and receiving more coordinated payment from
  Medicare, Medicaid, and private health plans. Maine, Vermont, Rhode
  Island, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, and
  Minnesota will participate in the Multi-Payer Advanced Primary Care
  Practice Demonstration that will ultimately include up to
  approximately 1,200 medical homes serving up to one million
  Medicare beneficiaries.

• The Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) Advanced Primary
  Care Practice Demonstration will test the effectiveness of doctors
  and other health professionals working in teams to treat low-income
  patients at community health centers. The demonstration will be
  conducted by the Innovation Center in up to 500 FQHCs and provide
  patient-centered, coordinated care to up to 195,000 people with
  Medicare.

• A new state plan option under which patients enrolled in
  Medicaid with at least two chronic conditions can designate a
  provider as a “health home” that would help coordinate treatments
  for the patient. States that implement this option will receive
  enhanced financial resources from the government to support “health
  homes” in their Medicaid programs.

CMS also announced upcoming demonstration projects to examine
programs that integrate care for dual eligibles who receive both
Medicare and Medicaid. The agency will award up to $1 million each
to 15 state programs.

“Health care is often fragmented, causing confusion, waste and
sometimes poor outcomes,” said CMS Administrator Donald Berwick,
M.D. “Primary care that is person-centered, coordinated and
seamless — creating a ‘health home’ — is a foundation
upon which a high-performing system that delivers health, not just
care, needs to be built.”

For more on CMS’ new Innovation Center, see www.innovations.cms.gov.