CMS has issued its first evaluation report for Primary Care First . The report offers a window into: key attributes of advanced primary care practices; strategies for lowering costs and reducing hospitalizations; and new strategies that signal practice transformation. Future PCF program evaluations will include which practice implementations worked and how they improved quality. In the meantime, even if your medical group is not a PCF participant, you can glean insight into what CMS is looking for as it evolves its Alternative Payment Models and how practices committed to value-based care are prioritizing and evolving their practice transformation strategies. First, some background on PCF. PCF: Focus areas, risk models and payments PCF is designed to improve care quality and patient experience, increase access to advanced primary care services and reduce expenditures. PCF builds upon CMS’s Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative (CPC Classic) and Comprehensive Primary Care Plus by adding...

Patients' primary care visits outside of their attributed primary care office, also called “leaked” patient visits, can have unintended consequences for Primary Care First participants. Beginning July 2022, PCF Cohort 1 will face a reduction in population-based payments based on their leakage rate. The payment adjustment will be based on their 2021 claims data and will roll forward quarterly. To calculate your leakage rate, divide the number of qualifying visits and services your attributed beneficiaries have made to care centers outside of your practice (for example, visits to urgent care centers) by the total number of qualifying visits and services your attributed beneficiaries have made. Calculating primary care leakage with claims data alone comes with some unintended challenges. Unfortunately, some circumstances can unfairly and negatively impact a practice’s leakage rate: Nuances classifying care delivered by provider team members: It’s di...

The 2022 Primary Care First performance year is underway, does your practice have the necessary steps in place to maximize returns and avoid negative payment adjustments? Participating in the Primary Care First model offers the opportunity to enhance patient care and reimbursement, but it also comes with risk. Practices face negative payment adjustments if they fail to meet certain utilization and quality thresholds. Learn more about the three strategies you can employ for PCF success in our new infographic, and access a checklist of all the steps you can take to enhance outcomes, track requirements, and continuously measure performance.

There is renewed emphasis on advancing primary care. Primary care serves as the front door to the overall healthcare system, and early and accurate diagnosis can lead to fewer hospital admissions – a metric that has become especially important during the pandemic. With the January 2022 launch of Primary Care First Cohort 2, it is important to review how the program works and what steps healthcare organizations should take to ensure the best outcomes. To be successful, PCF participants must pay special attention to three aspects – tracking beneficiary population, obtaining physician buy-in, and ensuring timely access to performance metrics. Tracking Beneficiary Population Tracking patients participating in the PCF program is necessary to build patient navigation processes and monitor care outcomes. However, this can be challenging for many providers as internal EMR solutions do not provide complete data across the entire continuum of care for all providers that a patient may see. Th...

The Primary Care First Model , an alternative payment model offering an innovative payment structure for the delivery of advanced primary care, welcomed the involvement of Cohort 2 participants on Jan. 1 . This cohort, which was open to all primary care practices that met the eligibility criteria, will participate from 2022 to 2026. Participants in PCF Cohorts 1 and 2 can expect the following benefits: an opportunity to increase revenue with performance-based payments that reward participants for reducing acute hospital utilization; the ability to assess and improve performance through actionable, timely data; less administrative burden so providers can spend more time focusing on patient needs; and potential to become a Qualifying APM Participant , which includes eligibility for a 5% incentive payment and eliminates Merit-based Incentive Payment System reporting requirements. To ensure that new and prior participants succeed in this model, DataGen has compiled and answered some of t...