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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC—The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) awarded a contract to RTI International to continue its work to enhance the design, implementation, and operation of Medicare Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), known as the Medicare Shared Savings Program. Medicare ACOs aim to increase the quality of care provided to beneficiaries while simultaneously decreasing healthcare costs.
Medicare ACOs are physicians and other healthcare providers who voluntarily collaborate to ensure patients, especially those with chronic illness, receive appropriate care and services. Providing the right care at the right time, ACOs promote high-quality care and wise spending of healthcare dollars.
RTI’s work on this $49.1 million contract has already begun and will continue until 2021. Under CMS' direction, RTI is responsible for a number of tasks, including managing the provider participant lists of ACOs; calculating ACO quality and financial benchmarks and performance; and creating and disseminating feedback reports to ACOs on their quality, financial, and utilization performance.
“Our large team of financial analysts, quality analysts, and computer programmers will continue to assist CMS in implementing, refining, and analyzing this important and innovative program in Medicare,” said Gregory Pope, a senior researcher at RTI and co-project lead.
RTI began its work on the Medicare Shared Savings Program in 2011, which has already made a big impact on the traditional Medicare program. The number of Medicare ACOs continues to grow—from 392 in 2015 to 432 in 2016. Medicare ACOs currently serve more than 7 million Medicare beneficiaries. The total savings generated by Medicare ACOs also increased from more than $411 million in 2014 to more than $466 million in 2015.
To learn more about Medicare ACOs, visit the CMS website.
To learn more about RTI’s work in health, visit our Health page.
