CMS develops innovation center
BALTIMORE — The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Tuesday formally established the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.
Established by the Affordable Care Act, the Innovation Center is charged with finding new ways of delivering health care and paying healthcare providers in an effort to save money for Medicare and Medicaid while improving the quality of care. CMS also announced the launch of new demonstration projects that will support efforts to better coordinate care and improve health outcomes for patients.
“For too long, health care in the United States has been fragmented — failing to meet patients’ basic needs and leaving both patients and providers frustrated,” stated Donald Berwick, CMS administrator. “Payment systems often fail to reward providers for coordinating care and keeping their patients healthy, reinforcing this fragmentation,” he said. “The Innovation Center will help change this trend by identifying, supporting and evaluating models of care that both improve the quality of care patients receive and lower costs.”
“The Innovation Center will be a new and much needed driver of innovation aimed at improving health care for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries,” said acting Innovation Center director Richard Gilfillan. “By working together with innovative and committed providers, we can create a system that works better for everyone. We want to identify, validate and scale models that have been effective in achieving better outcomes and improving the quality of care, but may be relatively unknown.”
The Innovation Center will consult stakeholders across the healthcare sector, including hospitals, doctors, consumers, payers, states, employers, advocates, relevant federal agencies and others to obtain direct input on its operations and to build partnerships with those interested in its work. The organization also will test models that include establishing an “open innovation community” that serves as an information clearinghouse of best practices in healthcare innovation.