Evaluating CMS' Bundled Payment Initiative: Operational, Financial and Clinical Considerations

Summary: CMS learned a few things from its first foray into bundled payments, explains Jim Reilly, managing partner with TRG Health Care Solutions. Having worked with all five participants in the Acute Care Episode (ACE) pilot a few years back, Reilly is ideally positioned to identify the three key benefits of participation in the upcoming CMS bundled payment initiative. But in order for episodic payments, bundled pricing and other alternative payment methodologies to be implemented successfully a key organizational process must take place, Reilly notes. Reilly examined the key distinctions between each of CMS' four bundled payment models and the organizational criteria that is most effective in bundled payment programs during an October 19, 2011 webinar, "Evaluating CMS' Bundled Payment Initiative: Operational, Financial and Clinical Considerations."