The Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) program has — counter to its goals and initial popularity among home health care provider circles — resulted in the Medicare program losing hundreds of millions of dollars.
That’s at least according to a new report on the initiative released Tuesday.
Under BPCI, providers agree to split a set reimbursement amount for a patient’s single episode of care, with the overall goal of reducing costs across the spectrum. That general idea inherently presented opportunities for the home health industry, widely seen as the lowest-cost care setting.
The Model 2 track — the largest in the BPCI program in terms of episodes — cost Medicare $202.1 million between the fourth quarters of 2013 and 2016, or $268 per event, according to the new report, released by health care consulting firm the Lewin Group.
The Model 3 initiative, meanwhile, resulted in an $85.2 million hit during that span, or $921 per episode.
While total episode payments declined, the BPCI program lost money because of reconciliation payments to providers that met certain performance benchmarks. The Lewin Group placed specific blame on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) decision to eliminate providers’ downside risk. Under the program, providers could only share in any potential savings, but not face any monetary penalties for failing to perform.
“Reconciliation payments were greater than anticipated because CMS eliminated downside risk during part of the intervention,” the Lewin Group stated in its report.
The Lewin Group also found, however, that BPCI models lowered episodic payments by shifting patients away from skilled nursing facilities and into lower-cost home health options for post-acute care (PAC).
“Among the hospital-initiated clinical episodes, reductions in total standardized allowed payment amounts were associated with decreases in institutional PAC payments, particularly SNF payments, and increases in HHA [home health agency] payments,” the Lewin Group observed.
The report came out the same day that CMS announced a roster of 1,299 participants under its new BPCI Advanced model, which includes downside risk for its participants. Unlike previous iterations of BPCI, the Advanced track excludes skilled nursing providers as episode initiators, though they can still partner with the providers that directly participate in the program.
That new cohort includes 832 hospitals and 715 physician groups across 49 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, CMS noted in its announcement.
The BPCI Advanced model, which launched Oct. 1 and will run through Dec. 31, 2023, was specifically developed with risk in mind, as CMS and the Department of Health and Human Services have moved to hold providers financially accountable.
“The Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced model was the Trump administration’s first Advanced Alternative Payment Model, and today we are proud to announce robust participation,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. “We look forward to launching additional models that will provide an off-ramp to the inefficient fee-for-service system and improve quality and reduce costs for our beneficiaries.”
Despite high hopes when it was introduced in 2012, the BPCI program has become somewhat of an afterthought for the home health industry.
Written by Alex Spanko
Companies featured in this article:
