Medical Groups to Split $29.4 Million Savings, Quality Incentive

Four of 10 participating medical groups will split $29.4 million for achieving quality and savings targets in the fifth year of the Medicare Physician Group Practice Demonstration Program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today. Six groups did not qualify for shared savings for this portion of the program, whose objectives encompass better coordinating care across settings to improve patient care caliber and reduce Medicare costs. Seven groups achieved all 32 performance benchmarks in the fifth year, up from two groups in the first year. Additionally, all 10 participants achieved benchmark performance on heart failure, coronary artery, and preventive care measures. Over the five-year period, participants also increased their quality scores an average of 11.0 percentage points on diabetes measures, 12.4 percentage points on heart failure measures, 6.0 percentage points on coronary artery disease measures, 9.2 percentage points on cancer screening measures, and 3.8 percentage points on hypertension measures. I Including the shared savings, Medicare has paid a total of $110 million in incentives to seven participants in the demonstration. All 10 practices will continue to participate in the PGP Transition Demonstration, a two-year supplement to the original demonstration that began in January. For more information, visit www.cms.gov. To read the press release, click here: http://www.cms.gov/apps/media/press/release.asp?Counter=4047&intNumPerPage=10&checkDate=&checkKey=&srchType=1&numDays=3500&srchOpt=0&srchData=&keywordType=All&chkNewsType=1%2C+2%2C+3%2C+4%2C+5&intPage=&showAll=&pYear=&year=&desc=&cboOrder=date.