Teams of health care providers called Accountable Care Organizations participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program have saved Medicare between $4.1 billion and $8.1 billion from 2012 through 2019, according to a new study from Weill Cornell Medicine investigators.
Launched in 2012, the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) was established through the Affordable Care Act. Instead of making payments based on the volume of services—what’s called fee-for-service reimbursement—MSSP incentivizes clinicians and health care organizations by setting certain quality targets and allowing providers to share in part of any savings that result from more efficiently managing patient care.
In a comprehensive longitudinal study, Weill Cornell Medicine researchers compared medical spending for more than 8 million Medicare patients who were treated either by Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) or other health care organizations.
“We found a significant reduction in spending per patient with providers working together as ACOs compared with organizations that were not in ACOs, and that reduction in spending increased over time,” said senior author Dr. Dhruv Khullar, associate professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine and a hospitalist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
The study, published April 28 in JAMA, is thought to be the first to investigate the long-term impact of the program.
This article originally appeared in the WCM Newsroom.