Medicare program aimed at lowering costs, improving care may not be working as well as thought

Michigan News 6/18/19

As the Medicare system seeks to improve the care of older adults while also keeping costs from growing too fast, a new University of Michigan study suggests that one major effort may not be having as much of an impact as hoped.

A new analysis of data from the Medicare Shared Savings Program finds that high-cost physicians and high-cost patients dropping out of the program accounted for much of the savings reported from 2008 to 2014.

After the effects of those departures were taken into account, the Accountable Care Organizations taking part in the MSSP had the same costs as physicians in their area who weren’t taking part in ACOs but also took care of other patients with traditional Medicare coverage.

The study also compares ACO and non-ACO providers on measures of health care quality, finding that patients in an MSSP ACO were not more likely to get four proven tests for common health problems than similar patients with the same kind of Medicare coverage who weren’t part of an ACO.

The study is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The authors note that the results have greater implications for providers who voluntarily join an ACO, rather than physicians employed by large group practices that have engaged in Medicare cost and quality efforts for many years—such as those at Michigan Medicine, U-M’s academic medical center.

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