Home Health & Hospice Week

A large new Medicare alternative payment model for physicians may help your patients. Under the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+) program, physicians must offer patients 24-hour access to care and health information, help patients with chronic diseases achieve their health goals, deliver preventive care, engage patients and their families in their care, and work with other clinicians to provide better coordinated care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says in a release. In return, practices will collect a monthly care management fee in addition to fee-for-service payments under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (track one) or collect the management fee plus receive a hybrid of reduced FFS payments and up-front comprehensive primary care payments for those services (track two), CMS explains.

The catch: Practices may have to repay the money if they don’t meet quality benchmarks. CMS expects the program to impact 20,000 physicians and other practitioners at up to 5,000 practices nationwide. The agency will announce the affected regions in the future. More information is at www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Fact-sheets/2016-Fact-sheets-items/2016-04-11.html.