The AARC has co-signed a letter to the director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), outlining steps the innovation center can take to achieve its “full potential as an agent of patient-centered system transformation.”
The AARC is one of 65 organizations addressing the letter to CMMI director Elizabeth Fowler praising many of the priorities she has already outlined for the center, including prioritizing health equity and reducing unnecessary complexity and overlap in ongoing models being tested, while also encouraging greater transparency, communication, and collaboration with healthcare stakeholders.
CMMI, created by the Affordable Care Act, is the entity that tests new healthcare payment and delivery models intended to improve healthcare quality and strengthen cost efficiency.
“Healthcare entities should have regular, open two-way communication with CMMI leadership that includes the opportunity to propose new payment and delivery models based on their hands-on experience. We believe that this frequent and substantive communication at the front end of the process will pre-empt downstream differences and result in greater success in developing models that work,” the groups wrote.
The letter also recommends that participants in payment and delivery models receive real-time data on a project’s effects. “It is essential for providers to have this level of transparency and collaboration if they are to be advocates of system innovation while also being able to monitor the effects of change on their patients,” they wrote. They suggest, as well, stronger information sharing between model designers and model evaluators.
Email newsroom@aarc.org with questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you.
