Austin, Texas – July 26, 2016 – Caravan Health and National Rural Accountable Care Consortium announced today that they were successful in signing up more than 10% of all Million Hearts practices, including the majority of rural practices accepted into the program. Million Hearts is a national initiative with an ambitious goal to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes by 2017. According to Lynn Barr, CEO of Caravan Health, “This is another major milestone for our providers. Million Hearts is a terrific program that will reduce the number of heart attacks in at-risk patients, while paying providers well to implement the program.”
At first Caravan Health was not able to recruit providers for the program because patients that were in Million Hearts were not eligible for Chronic Care Management fees, a net loss of $400 per patient per year. After notifying the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) of the dilemma, CMMI modified the rule to avoid exclusion of Care Management Payment, but only three days before the application deadline.
Caravan Health’s customer service team dropped what they were doing and called and emailed hundreds of practices right up to the deadline, providing them with a sample application and encouraging them to apply. “Our providers will receive an extra $16 million for participation, and thousands of heart attacks will be avoided. Everybody wins.” says Tristan Del Canto, who manages the customer service team.
The Consortium and Caravan Health have a highly successful track record in helping providers apply for value-based payments. “More than 90% of our AIM ACO applications were successful and make up more than 50% of all AIM ACO’s in the nation,” says Monica Bourgeau, Executive Director of the Consortium. “In addition, the Consortium was awarded a $31 million Transformation of Clinical Practice Initiative grant to assist providers to move into value-based payments, and we have already enabled hundreds of independent, rural and safety net primary care practices join value-based payment models.”
The number of practices that have signed up for the National Rural Accountable Care Consortium’s Practice Transformation Network is more than four times what was anticipated in the grant application. Almost half of those practices are small practices in urban settings who benefit from setting up the same simple, sustainable programs of care coordination and wellness and prevention. Practices preparing for MACRA and other advanced payment models are provided software, training and 24/7 advice nurse hotlines at no cost under the Consortium’s program. The Consortium is a 501c3 organization which contracts its transformation services to Caravan Health.
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CONTACT:
Bryan Hagar
Communications Director
Caravan Health
916 542 4583
bhagar@caravanhealth.com