AHA shares global budget payment model recommendations with CMS

The AHA supports the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ efforts to explore the feasibility of global budget payment programs in geographically defined communities, the association told the agency today, but called it “a challenging undertaking” and urged the agency “to proceed in a thoughtful and deliberate manner.” In response to CMS’s request for information on concepts for regional multi-payer prospective budgets, AHA offers several overarching recommendations, wrote Ashley Thompson, AHA senior vice president for public policy analysis and development. Specifically, AHA said it supports including in any new care delivery system, including the global budget payment model being explored by CMS, seven key principles identified by the AHA’s 2015 Committees on Research and Performance Improvement. Among other recommendations, AHA said the model should be voluntary; recognize that hospitals of different sizes and types are at very different points in the transformation process; promote predictability and stability; ensure open access to information from public and private payers; waive fraud and abuse laws and Medicare payment rules that hinder care coordination or care in the right place at the right time; and build on the work that hospitals and health systems have already taken to improve care delivery.