Hard to trust....
On Thursday, the CMS announced that its Innovation Center would like to design a payment or service delivery model to improve healthcare quality and access for Medicare, Medicaid or Children's Health Insurance Program beneficiaries with behavioral health conditions.The model may address the needs of beneficiaries battling substance use or mental disorders. It could also target Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.
The Innovation Center will be soliciting ideas at a public meeting on Sept. 8 at CMS headquarters in Baltimore.
The announcement comes at a time when agency officials say they are still committed to value-based care. For months, there have been concerns the CMS would abandon its move toward value-based pay models after Dr. Tom Price became HHS secretary. Price had been critical of the Innovation Center and bundled-pay efforts when he was a member of Congress.
These concerns intensified when the CMS delayed the effective dates for four Obama-era bundled-payment initiatives covering cardiac and orthopedic care and announced it was seeking public comment on the overall future of the models. The agency also announced plans to allow up to 800,000 small and rural providers to be exempt from the new quality reporting system outlined in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act.
Since then, CMS officials have reiterated that clinicians who have invested millions in implementing pay models or the quality reporting system under MACRA don't need to worry about the CMS changing course.