On September 29th, Secretary Burwell announced that our non-profit organization, the National Rural Accountable Care Consortium, was awarded up to $31 million to support 525 rural health systems across the country to prepare for Advanced Payment Models.
Our program is designed to assist rural providers in redesigning their ambulatory practices to maximize their success under the new value-based payment models. We will provide them the tools to set up a Medicare-billable care coordination program. These tools include the necessary IT infrastructure and a 24-hour Nurse Advice hotline. We use data from electronic health records to help providers facilitate and optimize their ambulatory quality scores. They can also use this data to redesign their practice workflow to improve care and lower costs. The Consortium also sets up ambulatory patient satisfaction surveys, engages with physicians and leadership, and provides guidance on how to participate in and increase revenue through Advanced Payment Models.
We are very grateful for the support that CMS and CMMI is giving rural providers. Working together, we can provide better care for our community, reduce unnecessary costs, and improve the financial performance of our rural health systems. For more information about this program, please see the CMS website.
Click here to apply for the program.
The project described was supported by Funding Opportunity Number CMS-1L1-15-003 from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of HHS or its agencies.