Dive Brief:
- Adam Boehler, the outgoing director of CMS' innovation and payment modeling arm, thinks the healthcare industry will be "very happy" with his replacement, though the agency can't yet disclose the incoming Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation leader.
- "I worked very closely with the administration to identify somebody that has extremely similar values, that's concentrated on doing the right thing," Boehler said Tuesday at the annual HLTH conference in Las Vegas. "They will not only continue what we've done, but will advance and build and come up with their own innovative spin."
- The ex-Landmark Health founder was sworn in as head of the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., a newly-formed agency that oversees financial investments in foreign countries, last week. One potential frontrunner for his replacement is Brad Smith, who founded palliative care provider Aspire Health with former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, per Politico reporting.
Dive Insight:
Boehler predicted people will be "very happy" with his replacement as they "believe very much in what we've done" at CMMI. Boehler took the job at the innovation center in April last year.
Boehler founded home healthcare company Landmark, which assumed risk for its more than 80,000 patients, many of whom are chronically ill or elderly, and oversaw roughly 1,000 employees. At CMMI, Boehler was able to take a broader tack: The agency issued 16 payment models in the first year of Boehler's tenure, impacting millions of people.
He boasted of that pace as "unbelievably blistering" Tuesday, saying: "We went places where a lot of people wouldn't go." Boehler said he has an "extremely high degree of confidence that fee-for-service will be limited" in the U.S. in the future, partially due to CMMI's work.
CMMI unveiled a voluntary Medicare payment model, called Primary Cares Initiative, in April. The agency predicts as many as a quarter of the 40 million Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries will be incorporated into the five-year program. Another widely-piloted model, Direct Contracting, includes 1,050 providers covering 50% to 70% of the U.S.
"When these roll over the next two, three years, you're going to see fee-for-service dwindle down to nothing," Boehler said. "There will be a very minor portion of people in fee-for-service based on how that's set up."
According to Politico, Smith, a former Rhodes scholar and McKinsey consultant, is still undergoing HHS review.