Primary Care Initiative To Provide Bonus Pay to 500 Health Centers
On Monday, CMS announced that the Advanced Primary Care Practice Demonstration project will launch on Nov. 1, CQ HealthBeat reports.
Under the project -- which was created by the federal health reform law -- 500 community health centers in 44 states will receive about $42 million in bonus payments for providing primary care to Medicare beneficiaries. The project will reward clinics that provide day-to-day primary care to beneficiaries, in an effort to reduce the number of emergency department visits (CQ HealthBeat, 10/24).
The program also is intended to help patients manage chronic conditions, including diabetes (Baker, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 10/24). Participating centers will receive a monthly care management fee of $6 for each Medicare beneficiary to help offset the cost of care coordination. CMS expects about 200,000 Medicare beneficiaries to be involved in the project.
In a fact sheet explaining the aim of the project, CMS wrote, "Practices must shift from an acute care, complaint-driven primary-care paradigm that fragments health care delivery to one that is geared to maintain the patient's overall health and anticipates when additional services or coordination needs occur" (Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 10/24).
This is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.