A new study shows that a government program for managing chronic care cuts costs while also improving care for the chronically ill.
A federal program for chronic care management (CCM) slows the increase in Medicare costs, helps keep people out of the hospital, and connects them with community-based resources, according to a recent report from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI).
The program results could be replicated by private health plans.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) established CMMI in 2015 to help provide support for patients with multiple chronic conditions in-between their provider visits and episodes of care, creating a new Medicare benefit. The program helps beneficiaries with two or more chronic conditions by providing new “in-between visit” payments to participating providers.
That revenue encourages healthcare providers to focus more on goal-directed, person-centered care planning, and to provide "aging-in-place" resources such as proactive care management, the report explains.
Over 684,000 beneficiaries received CCM services during the first two years of the new payment policy, the report says. They were generally concentrated in the South and had poorer health status than the general Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) population.