House Ways and Means subcommittee holds hearing on value-based care

The AHA submitted comments June 26 to the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health for a hearing about improving value-based care. The AHA shared principles Congress should consider when designing alternative payment models to make participation more attractive for potential participants. Those principles include providing an adequate on-ramp and glidepath to transition to risk; including adequate risk adjustment; allowing voluntary participation and flexible design; balancing risk versus reward; and establishing guardrails to ensure participants don't compete against themselves when they achieve optimal cost savings and outcomes, among others.

Additionally, the AHA was critical of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' newly proposed Transforming Episode Accountability Model - a mandatory bundled payment model - and suggested CMS make participation voluntary along with a host of other changes. The AHA also questioned design elements of CMS' proposed Increasing Organ Transplant Access model, a mandatory payment model for kidney transplants.