“The coordinated, physician-led care provided by Accountable Care Organizations resulted in better care for over 7.7 million Medicare beneficiaries while also reducing costs”, CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt said in a statement.
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In 2015, Medicare Accountable Care Organizations had combined total program savings of $466 million, which includes all Accountable Care Organizations’ experiences, for 392 Medicare Shared Savings Program participants and 12 Pioneer Accountable Care Organization Model participants. Overall the program’s net savings was $37 million. For example, 42% of ACOS that started in 2012 generated savings above their Minimum Savings Rate, compared to 21% of those that started in 2015. Similar to the Pioneer ACO Model, improved care at lower costs have been important outcomes with these commercial payers.
Through a fourth year of top financial performance in the Pioneer ACO Model, while simultaneously improving its quality score year-over-year for four consecutive years, Banner Health Network has demonstrated that it is possible to bend the Medicare cost curve while providing the best in quality care as part of this ACA demonstration program.
Those quality and savings results are crucial to the “next steps” for ACOs and other alternative payment models, Conway noted, such as the CMS’ goal to have 50% of all Medicare payments delivered through alternative models by 2018. The program changed its financial benchmarking in 2015. While the beneficiary cohort decreased by almost a third between 2014 and 2015, the Pioneer Model generated more than $37 million in savings a year ago. Nine of those organizations had quality scores over 90 percent previous year, the agency said.
About Aurora Health Care:Aurora Health Care is a not-for-profit Wisconsin-area health care provider and a national leader in efforts to improve health care quality.
Eighty-three ACOs had healthcare costs lower than their benchmark but did not qualify for shared savings.
Notably, no ACOs in Track 2 of the model owed the federal agency shared losses. That means 190 of those ACOs – 49 percent – did not generate any savings in 2015. Despite that less than a third of ACOs earned shared savings payments, the data suggests Medicare ACOs are improving over time in both generating savings and improving quality. Only 37 percent of 2013 starters, 22 percent of 2014 starters, and 21 percent of 2015 starters achieved greater savings above their minimum savings rate.
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The CMS report also indicated there were more ACOs shared savings in 2015 than 2014. Average quality performance increased by 15 percent on key preventive care measures for fall, depression and blood pressure screenings and follow-ups.
