EXCLUSIVE: NAACOS President Foresees “Shrinkage in Accountable Care Movement” Pending MSSP Final Rule

When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its proposals to overhaul the federal Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), it was expected that industry associations, along with the ACOs (accountable care organizations) themselves, would push back strongly.

After all, in the August proposed rule, CMS, which has the core aim to push these organizations into two-sided risk models—so that Medicare isn’t on the hook when ACOs overspend past their financial benchmarks—suggested to redesign the program’s participation options by removing the traditional three tracks in the MSSP model and replacing them with two tracks that eligible ACOs would enter into for an agreement period of no less than five years.

One option, per CMS’ proposal, would be the BASIC track, which would allow eligible ACOs to begin under a one-sided model and incrementally phase-in higher levels of risk. The second option would be the ENHANCED track, which is based on the program’s existing Track 3, providing additional tools and flexibility for ACOs that take on the highest level of risk and potential rewards. At the highest level, BASIC ACOs would qualify as an Advanced Alternative Payment Model (APM) under the Quality Payment Program.

But where CMS, in its proposals, truly clamped down was through two core recommendations that stakeholders took issue with: shortening the glide path for new ACOs to assume financial risk, reducing time in a one-sided risk model from the current six years to two years; and cutting potential shared savings in half, from 50 percent to 25 percent for one-sided risk ACOs. These proposals, if finalized, will certainly deter new entrants to the MSSP ACO program. So far, the proposed rule has been met with varying degrees of scrutiny.

One of the trade groups that has done much of the heavy lifting when it comes to pushing back on the government’s proposals, and offering evidence as to why ACOs need more time in one-sided risk models while being able to reap more of the shared savings, is NAACOS (the National Association of ACOs,) an association comprised of more than 360 ACOs across the U.S.

In a recent interview with Healthcare Informatics, Clif Gaus, president and CEO of NAACOS, confirmed that the reduction of shared savings and the shortened time allowed in one-sided models are two of the biggest problems the group has with the proposal. Specifically, Gaus says that the reduction in potential shared savings “would be very devastating to the growth of new ACOs.”

He explains that after polling NAACOS’ members, asking them if they would hypothetically apply to be an ACO knowing that at first, they would be limited to 25 percent of shared savings at most, “the near universal response was no, they wouldn’t have joined the program.” Gaus adds, “The potential of 25 percent savings just isn’t enough to offset our investment costs of starting and operating the ACOs,” noting that ACOs have to obviously put up money to get going, and sometimes it’s very hard for medical group practice-dominant ACOs to buy IT systems, not to mention the whole clinical transformational aspect of ACOs where they are typically hiring nurse coordinators, and in some cases opening 24/7 call centers.

“There is a real start-up and operational cost that’s involved, and [getting] 25 percent of the shared savings doesn’t return enough income to offset those,” he says.

Regarding the proposal to shorten the time in a one-sided risk model from the current six years to two years, Gaus points to CMS’ own data which shows that more experience in a federal ACO model drives more savings, but typically the first few years are not profitable for the ACO.

“We have many examples where an ACO has been in the program and was able to turn the corner by the fifth or sixth year,” he says. “Medicare has to have a long-term view of this. We are investing in a totally new redesign of the healthcare system, so give us time to learn how to transform that care into more efficient and higher-quality care. We are troubled by two years,” Gaus frankly admits. He believes that capping the time in a one-sided risk model at three to four years “is reasonable,” and is what many other associations have proposed.

Indeed, while NAACOS and other industry groups have made their arguments to CMS clear, the federal agency has so far taken a firm stance that upside risk-only ACOs have not been effective. A such, CMS seems to be fine with these ACOs leaving the MSSP— by far the largest federal ACO model, with 561 participants—if they are unwilling to take on more risk.

But Gaus believes that even though CMS did come out of the box with an “aggressive negative message” about one-sided ACOs, the agency has now moderated its views. To this end, a recent study from NAACOS and Dobson Davanzo & Associates, based on a different way of measuring financial success—by comparing actual costs over time in the ACO’s market as opposed to CMS’ method of calculating an initial risk-adjusted spending benchmark for each ACO based on its historical spending, without considering underlying market factors—revealed that MSSP ACOs generated gross savings of $1.84 billion for Medicare from 2013 to 2015, nearly double the $954 million estimated by CMS.

“The whole dialogue has changed,” says Gaus. “We have met with Seema and a number of her staff over the last two months, and the driving factor to this change in dialogue is that the 2017 data, from CMS’ benchmarks, turned the corner and showed that net-net the ACO program was saving Medicare money. You don’t see CMS coming out anymore arguing that the program is losing money,” he says.

What a Final Rule Might Look Like

Gaus acknowledges that a core challenge for CMS is being in the precarious position of pushing down too lightly in its regulations, which could result in the pace of change being too slow, or pushing down too hard, which could result in provider organizations fleeing value-based care initiatives.

“We know the government is wrestling with this issue, and so are we,” Gaus says. “In the crafting of our comments to CMS, as well as the comments from the AHA [American Hospital Association], AMA [American Medical Association], and others, we felt that the balance is the issue here, and there needs to be some movement toward the direction that CMS is pushing. We do respect their concerns, to a degree, but we just thought they were too aggressive in their speed to risk, or speed to remove an ACO from the program,” he says.

Gaus is hopeful that the final rule on the future of the MSSP—which he believes could come by the end of the year, but no later than the end of January—will reflect the industry’s concerns. “History says that this administration, like many others, does listen to input from stakeholders that the rule affects. I believe that they really do understand our positions,” he adds.

At the same time, NAACOS’ position is that the reduction in potential shared savings, as currently proposed, is a “total deal breaker,” and that there is no wiggle room for a number between 25 and 50 percent, Gaus asserts. He adds, “If they don’t go back to 50 percent, we will see a long-term significant shrinkage in the ACO movement and a significant emanation of accountable care.”

Importantly, Gaus also notes that ACO programs are voluntary in nature, a key consideration that he believes CMS often forgets. “Nobody has to be an ACO. [Providers] are making a bet of their capital, that they can invest that capital in cost containment, in care transformation, and [in return], they will get back in the shared savings more than they invested. It’s almost like buying stock—you made the investment and you hope the return is worth it,” he says.

Gaus says that he has told Verma in their many conversations that in many ways “we are at a crossroads, and we have to get the balance right, or we are going to see a denigration of what still remains the largest government value-based payment program.”