Health information technology will lead the way for the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, which has selected 500 primary care practices in seven regions to participate in the new Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative (CPC), according to a story by Joseph Goedert.
The CPC is a multi-payer initiative bringing together public and private healthcare payers to strengthen primary care, Goedert reported. Medicare will work with commercial and state health insurance plans to offer bonus payments to primary care doctors who better coordinate care for their patients. Additionally, primary care practices that choose to participate in this initiative will be given resources to better coordinate primary care for their Medicare patients.
First announced by CMS in late 2011, the agency selected markets and began soliciting physician and payer participants this year. The program will begin in Arkansas, Colorado, New Jersey, Oregon, New York’s Capital District-Hudson Valley region, Ohio and Kentucky’s Cincinnati-Dayton region, as well as the greater Tulsa region in Oklahoma, with Medicaid and private health plan participation, Goedert noted.
The nation is experiencing a shortage of primary care doctors that is expected to get worse as our population ages. Richard Akinhe nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.", president and CEO of the Healthcare Network of Southwest Florida noted in a column that the Wall Street Journal, in 2010, revealed, “T
And it’s only getting worse. Fox News recently noted that fewer students are entering internal medicine than ever before, causing a looming reduction in those who will go on to become specialists in this area.
Officials are hoping that programs like CPC will turn that situation around. Under the four-year program, CMS will pay an average care management fee of $20 per Medicare beneficiary per month in years one and two, and about $15 in years three and four, according to Goedert.
Participating practices were selected based on their use of health information technology, ability to demonstrate advanced primary care delivery, participation in practice transformation initiatives, and diversity of practice size, geography and ownership, among other factors.
CMS estimates about 2,100 providers will serve 313,000 Medicare beneficiaries under the four-year initiative, authorized under the Affordable Care Act, Goedert wrote.
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Edited by
Allison Boccamazzo
