The National Association of Accountable Care Organizations has teamed up with physicians, hospitals, medical associations and almost all Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs in the country to pen a 36-page letter in response to CMS and the Office of Management and Budget's December notice of proposed rulemaking to improve the MSSP.
The letter calls on CMS to focus improving on the one-sided shared savings model.
"Why not fix the program for 99 percent of the ACOs before it is too late? Since CMS is receiving substantial savings from the one-sided ACOs, why is it so important to push everyone to the two-sided risk tracks?" NAACOS CEO Clif Gaus said in a statement.
The letter included the following recommendations.
- Make the beneficiary assignment process more predictable and prospective.
- Consider specialists and non-physician providers in the assignment process.
- Give Medicare patients the choice to align with their PCP and ACO.
- Allow ACOs to waive co-pays to reduce financial obstacles for primary care.
- Establish increased savings ratios to balance between risk and reward.
- Strengthen quality incentives.
- Adopt payment waivers to simplify care coordination.
- Consider geographic cost variation in the benchmark methodology.
- Provide ACOs with more timely, accurate and complete data.
Organizations that collaborated on the initiative include the American Academy of Family Practice, American College of Physicians, American Medical Association, American Medical Group Association, Association of American Medical Colleges, Medical Group Management Association, National Coalition on Health Care, Premier Inc., Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health and Universal American Collaborative Health Systems.
See the full letter here.
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