A Promising Medicare Plan, if Only Health Organizations Would Stick Around

-Two recent studies of Medicare’s new way to pay for health care show that it’s reducing spending and improving quality. The problem is, health care organizations don’t always stick with the program.

Both studies examined Medicare’s 32 Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations. This program, and a related, similar one with a larger number of participants, offers health care organizations the opportunity to earn bonuses in exchange for accepting some financial risk, provided they meet a set of quality targets.

One study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that in their first year, Pioneer A.C.O.s reduced spending 1.2 percent, relative to comparable patients who received care elsewhere. The other study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found a 3.6 percent spending reduction in the first year and considerably less in the second year. (Though the studies reach broadly similar conclusions, their different savings estimates stem from methodological differences.)

 
                          //youngertime//