Last week, the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary announced the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative. The initiative encourages doctors, peers and other to move from volume-driven systems to value-based, patient centered, and coordinated healthcare services.
According to Secretary Burwell, "the administration is partnering with clinicians to find better ways to deliver care, pay providers, and distribute information to improve the quality of care we receive and spend our nation's dollars more wisely."
HHS will invest $840 million over the next four years to support 150,000 clinicians.
Practice Transformation Networks
CMS will award cooperative agreements to group practices, health care systems, and others that join together to serve as trusted partners in providing clinician practices with quality improvement expertise, best practices, coaching and assistance. These practices have successfully achieved measurable improvements in care by implementing electronic health records, coordinating among patients and their families, and performing timely monitoring and interventions of high-risk patients to prevent unnecessary hospitalization and re-admissions. Practice Transformation Networks will work with a diverse range of practices, including those in rural communities and those that provide care for the medically under-served.
Support and Alignment Networks
CMS will award cooperative agreements to networks formed by medical professional associations and others who would align their memberships, communication channels, continuing medical education credits and other work to support the Practice Transformation Networks and clinician practices. These Support and Alignment Networks would create an infrastructure to help identify evidence-based practices and policies and disseminate them nationwide, in a scalable, sustainable approach to improved care delivery.
Beginning October 23, 2014, CMS will begin accepting applications. Applicants for the initiative could include group practices, health care systems, medical provider associations and others.
Potential applicants are encouraged to submit nonbinding letters of Intent to apply by November 20th, 2014. For more information on the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative, please visit:
http://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/Transforming-Clinical-Practices/
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact one of our professional consultants.