Photo of Brenda Boschetto

The Trump Administration has rolled out its first CMS Innovation Center Medicare bundled payment initiative, the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced (BPCI Advanced). Under the new voluntary model, CMS will test whether bundled payments for 29 inpatient and 3 outpatient clinical episodes will lead to reduced Medicare expenditures while improving quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries. CMS anticipates that the performance period of the BPCI Advanced model will begin on October 1, 2018 and run through December 31, 2023.

BPCI Advanced builds on the ongoing Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) initiative, which was launched in 2013 and runs through September 30, 2018. As in the BPCI model, BPCI Advanced seeks to incentivize providers to coordinate care to furnish services more efficiently while maintaining quality. Specifically, participants may either realize a gain or loss depending both on (1) how successfully they manage total Medicare fee-for-service costs of care (with limited exceptions) throughout each 90-day episode of care and (2) performance on specified quality measures.

There are key differences between the original BPCI and BPCI Advanced models, including the following (among others):
Continue Reading Trump Administration Unveils Its First Bundled Payment Initiative — BPCI Advanced

In 2016, an estimated $41.1 billion in improper Medicare fee-for-services payments were made to providers. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) believes that provider education plays an important role in ensuring payments are made properly; CMS has delegated authority for provider education to the Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs).

In a recent report,

The GAO recently reported that fewer than 1% of Medicare and Department of Defense (DOD) beneficiaries and 12% of Veteran’s Administration (VA) beneficiaries utilized telehealth and remote patient monitoring services, even though patient and provider associations believe these services may improve or maintain quality of care. These associations cited payment and coverage restrictions as barriers,

Federal health fraud recoveries for FY 2016 totaled $3.3 billion, according to the latest HCFAC program annual report.  The HCFAC program is credited with more than $31.0 billion in Medicare Trust Funds recoveries since it began in 1997. With regard to criminal fraud, the Department of Justice (DOJ) opened 975 new criminal health care

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a report, “Vulnerabilities Remain Under Medicare’s 2-Midnight Hospital Policy,” which assessed changes in hospital inpatient and outpatient stays since implementation of the “2-midnight” policy. This policy generally provides that an inpatient stay generally requires at least

At the request of Congress and others, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a review of “high-priced drugs” (defined by OIG as exceeding $1,000 per month) and their impact on the Medicare program.  The OIG found that 2015 federal payments for Part D catastrophic coverage, which is triggered when a beneficiary’s out-of-pocket costs exceed