The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is trumpeting major progress with its Comprehensive Primary Care initiative in 2015, saying its second round of shared savings results shows 95 percent of participating practices met quality of care requirements in 2015.
The agency also noted four out of the seven participating regions shared in savings with CMS.
In 2015, which was its second year of shared savings performance, CPC generated a total of $57.7 million gross savings in Part A and Part B expenditures, a total that is basically equivalent to the $58 million paid in care management fees to the practices, CMS said.
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Also, Arkansas, Colorado, and Oregon, and the Greater Tulsa region in Oklahoma, saw net savings, and will share that savings with CMS. The savings generated in the other four regions covered losses suffered in the other three regions, New Jersey, New York's Hudson Valley Region, and Ohio/Kentucky-Cincinnati Dayton Region. This means care management fees across CPC were offset by reduced spending on Medicare Part A and Part B services.
Finally, more than half of participating CPC practices will receive a share of over $13 million in earned shared savings, CMS said.
Beyond Medicare savings, CPC practices made strides in quality, showing "lower than expected" hospital admission and readmission rates, as well as positive performance on patient experience measures.
Also, the CPC practices exceeded national benchmarks on electronic clinical quality measures, particularly on preventive health measures, CMS said.
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"As the largest test of advanced primary care in U.S. history, CPC demonstrates the potential of primary care clinicians redesigning their practices to deliver better care to their patients, and provides clinicians support to innovate and deliver care in ways that better meet their patients' needs and preferences," said Patrick Conway, MD, CMS principal deputy administrator and chief medical officer.
Among the highlights from the 2015 shared savings performance results, 97 percent of CPC practices successfully reported 9 eCQMs. The majority of reporting CPC practices surpassed the median national performance for ten out of the 11 eCQMs in the CPC measure set.
Most regions maintained or improved on their 2014 scores for hospital readmissions and admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and congestive heart failure.
Patients rated the care they receive from their CPC practitioners highly, particularly on how well practitioners supported them in taking care of their own health and the attention they paid to care from other providers, CMS said.
"A robust primary care system is essential to achieve better care, smarter spending, and healthier people. For this reason, CMS is committed to supporting primary care clinicians to deliver the best, most comprehensive primary care possible for their patients," Conway said.
Twitter: @BethJSanborn