CMS' Medicare Shared Savings Program added 100 new accountable care organizations and renewed contracts with nearly 150 ACOs on Jan. 1.
With the new cohort, more than 15,000 physicians will be participating in the program this year and a total of 434 ACOs will be in the program, covering 7.7 million patients, according to CMS.
"[ACOs] are improving quality of care and spending dollars more wisely. These new initiatives place patients at the center of a coordinated care delivery system and give providers the tools to achieve better outcomes," Patrick Conway, deputy administrator for innovation and quality and CMO for CMS, said in a statement.
This year also marks increased interest in taking on risk with 22 ACOs now in Track 2 or Track 3, which require organizations to take on more performance-based financial risk.
HHS is working to move 30 percent of traditional Medicare fee-for-service payments into alternative models, like the MSSP ACO, by the end of the year, and move half of payments to alternative models by the end of 2018. Through its collective ACO programs, CMS will have 8.9 million patients covered under alternative payment models and a total of 477 ACOs across all programs, with 64 in risk-bearing contracts.
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