Modern Healthcare
By Melanie Evans
Posted: October 20, 2011 – 11:15 am ET
Final rules for Medicare’s accountable care organizations, released today by the CMS, made significant changes to proposals widely rejected by hospitals and physician groups.
Accountable care under Medicare offers financial incentives to providers that achieve quality and cost-saving targets. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act calls for Medicare to offer accountable-care agreements starting in 2012. The agency released draft rules in March for three-year agreements that providers sharply criticized as too risky and burdensome. More than 1,200 comments were submitted, according to the CMS.
Final rules reduced quality measures to 33 (PDF) from the 65 originally proposed…
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Be sure to visit www.accountablecareforum.com for all the latest updates surrounding the final ACO rules!