Dive Brief:
- Results for the Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative’s second round in 2015 showed improvement over the first year, with 95% of participating practices meeting quality of care requirements and four out of seven regions sharing in savings with CMS, the agency announced.
- During its second performance year, the initiative generated $57.7 million gross savings in Part A and Part B expenditures, CMS said, essentially matching the $58 million it paid in care management fees to the participating practices.
- The 2015 results show more than those for 2014, as it is the first year for which CMS has included electronic Clinical Quality Measures (eCQM) performance in its shared savings determinations.
Dive Insight:
The initiative appears to have hit its stride in its second year, with CMS noting primary care transformation takes time and that gross savings almost doubled compared to the first performance year. Results from last fall showed participants achieved $24 million in gross savings, but few generated net savings by saving more than what they were paid.
The results are based on the efforts of 481 practices that served more than 2.7 million patients in 2015, including more than 376,000 Medicare beneficiaries. The four participating regions that achieved net savings for 2015 were the states of Arkansas, Colorado, and Oregon, and the Greater Tulsa region of Oklahoma.
Those regions notably generated sufficient savings to offset the net losses of the other three participating regions, allowing for care management fees across the program to be offset and for the majority of participating practices to receive a portion of $13 million in earned shared savings.
CMS highlighted that in addition to generating savings, the CPC practices were high on quality, showing lower than expected hospital admission and readmission rates, favorable performance measures and exceeding of national benchmarks on eCQMs.
The new CPC+ initiative, which will build on the original CPC model, is set to begin January 1, 2017. CMS is currently reviewing applications from practices in the 14 selected regions.