Roji Intel Blog

Dave Halpert 0
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2025 CMS PFS Final Rule
ACOsAPP ReportingCMS RulesMerit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)Value-Based Health Care
November 6, 2024

The 2025 CMS PFS Final Rule: The Five-Pronged Strategy Towards Comprehensive Accountable Care

The 2025 CMS PFS Rule landed with a bang, and it’s not just the weight of the 3,088 pages. We’re one year closer to 2030, the year that CMS intends to have all Traditional Medicare patients in a relationship with a clinician who is accountable for total cost of care. The push to the finish line is the primary driver behind each of the QPP-related policies in this Rule. For CMS to accomplish its goal within its stated time-frame, accountable care programs must promote equity, expand into rural and underserved areas, and align to reduce administrative burden. A slew of…
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Theresa Hush 0
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APP Reporting
ACOsAPP ReportingCMS Rules
November 5, 2024

Your ACO May Already Be Late for APP Reporting. Here’s How to Catch Up!

With one year remaining before mandatory APP Reporting in 2026, the idea that you’re already late may sound exaggerated. But consider the significance of what you’re undertaking: This is your first effort to report quality on all your beneficiaries, not just a tiny sliver of patients. It’s a huge leap that requires a lot of advance work. Throughout the 2025 Performance Year data for reporting in 2026, you will be accumulating measure data—or not. You have no chance to improve your quality metrics once 2025 is closed. For your ACO to be ready for APP Reporting in 2026, you must…
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Theresa Hush 0
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Roji Health Intelligence, data best practices, ACOs, health care data aggregation
ACOsAPP ReportingData AggregationData Best PracticesValue-Based Health Care
August 16, 2024

To Unlock ACO Access to Real Savings, Start with Trusted Data

Value-Based Care payment models are based on a clear CMS goal: lower Total Cost of Care and its counterpart, Total Per Capita Cost. But neither TCoC nor TPCC gives you the information you need to target your cost efforts. How to start? Begin by evaluating what initiatives you need to do in the five key areas: Community Referrals Avoid High-Risk Events Cost Variation Chronic Disease Intervention Physician Episode Sharing Your ACO may look at these five areas and think many of them are already underway through population health and other activities. But while population health efforts can help get patients…
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Theresa Hush 0
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ACOsAPP ReportingData AggregationData Best PracticesValue-Based Health Care
July 31, 2024

5 Ways Your ACO Should Leverage Data for Cost Control

In creating your strategies for cost control, your ACO must consider how to reduce Total Per Capita Cost (TPCC) while ensuring the financial survival of your ACO and participating providers. This balancing act is the dilemma facing all providers adopting Value-Based Care: how to achieve more savings while replacing revenue lost from services. Here’s how data can guide your efforts to sustain your ACO while stewarding high quality and affordable care: Total Cost of Care Is a False Starting Point If you are looking at Total Cost of Care (TCOC) or TPCC as your primary metric for cost control, you’re…
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Dave Halpert 0
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ACOsAdvanced Alternative Payment ModelsAPP ReportingCMS RulesMerit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)MIPS Value Pathways
July 16, 2024

CMS Presses for Accountable Care, Better Quality Measurement for Physicians and ACOs in New Proposed Rule

July brings us baseball, fireworks, and CMS’s Proposed Rules. In 2,248 pages of proposals, CMS has outlined its plans for MIPS, ACOs, and other Advanced Alternate Payment Models, and how they will transition from fee-for-service into a value-based care arrangement through the Quality Payment Program (QPP). We already know from the 2024 Final Rule that CMS plans to phase out Traditional MIPS in favor of MIPS Value Pathways (MVPs), and is committed to having all Traditional Medicare beneficiaries in an accountable care relationship by 2030. These Proposals continue to build on that framework, but it wouldn’t be a July ballgame…
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Theresa Hush 0
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ACOsAPP ReportingData AggregationData Best PracticesFuture of Health CareValue-Based Health Care
June 27, 2024

Strategies for Right Now to Control Patient Care Costs

Policymaker confidence in Value-Based Care and the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model has, so far, prevailed despite only small overall savings. There is still enduring belief that ACOs can rationalize health care and produce affordability by transformative strategies. But here’s where wishes and reality conflict: ACOs have, until now, lacked the data and tools to transform health care. The ACO savings results support the promise but not the delivery of affordable health care. The fact is that ACOs must deliver on the affordability of the promise, or as the shift to risk payment models continues, there will be financial consequences…
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Theresa Hush 0
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Roji Health Intelligence Terry Hush ACOs Need a Strategic Map for Cost Control
ACOsData AggregationMedicareValue-Based Health Care
June 5, 2024

ACOs Need a Strategic Map for Cost Control

For ACOs to remain relevant and viable under risk payment models, they must step up now to generate more cost savings for Medicare patient care. Medicare’s budget cuts are once again under consideration as political pressure mounts to lower governmental spending. CMS is expanding risk through Medicare value-based payment models, such as the new ACO PC Flex model, which is designed to create per-patient reimbursement for small ACOs in trade for higher reimbursements and funding for infrastructure. Most newer CMS payment models are now incorporating per-patient payments designed to lower the total cost of care. As the provider-driven vanguard in…
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Dave Halpert 0
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2022 QPP Performance Report
ACOsAlternative Payment Models (APM)Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)Quality Payment Program
May 23, 2024

2022 QPP Experience Report: Address 3 Key Findings Now to Avoid Future Penalties

At first glance, CMS’s recently released 2022 QPP Experience Report (PDF) seems reassuring, because the majority of clinicians avoided financial penalties under MIPS. Don’t be fooled! While overall success and failure rates in the report may lead you to conclude that merely participating in the QPP (either in MIPS or as an APM) is enough to do well, trends in the report tell a very different story: Without a concerted and cohesive strategy to simultaneously improve efficiency and demonstrably improve quality, providers will begin to see their consistent results fall short of minimum performance thresholds. The QPP Experience Report details participation…
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Theresa Hush 0
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APP Reporting, APP Measures, health care cost savings
ACOsAPP ReportingData Best PracticesValue-Based Health Care
March 4, 2024

3 Ways Your ACO Can Convert APP Reporting Data into Higher Savings

Controlling costs is a key Value-Based Care goal, a fact well-known to ACOs that share savings with CMS. Even as individual ACOs have generated tens of millions of dollars in savings, however, MSSP ACOs as a whole have only been able to reduce their Total Cost of Care (TCOC) by a fraction. That is a program vulnerability and one reason why value-based payments are increasingly incorporating population-based payment. Plainly stated, claims data (especially 2-5 months old) isn’t a great tool for identifying patient risks, Medicare HCCs notwithstanding. The timeline for cost prevention is before events occur, not when you’re looking…
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Theresa Hush 0
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Roji Health Intelligence 2024 Health Care Trends Theresa Hush
Artificial IntelligenceConsumers & PatientsCorporate Health CareData Best PracticesFuture of Health CareValue-Based Health Care
January 25, 2024

These Five Trends Are Steering Your Future Path to Value-Based Care

Buckle your seat belt. Health care is changing at warp speed. The Value-Based Care movement and leaps in technology and Artificial Intelligence are rapidly generating advances that will transform the health care environment. These factors will redefine health care providers and services, and how consumers access them. How you respond strategically will determine your survival as a health system, ACO, and health care provider. All of this rests on one essential fact: Value-Based Care in 2024 has graduated from a voluntary movement into certainty. There is arguably no one in health care who believes that there is an “out.” While…
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