By exploring the regional variations in Medicare payments for 90-day episodes of care (those beginning with a hospitalization that also includes post-acute care), this report provides key findings from an analysis on four different clinical episodes/areas of care: acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, pneumonia and major hip and knee joint replacements. Download This White Paper

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is allowing providers that are already participating in the BPCI program to evaluate expanding their participation to additional episode families. This article provides a structured approach to those providers for analyzing and evaluating new episode families for inclusion in BPCI. Download This White Paper

An overview of the Bundled Payment for Care Improvement, citing the challenges experienced by both participants and CMS, and sharing lessons learned by New York-Presbyterian Hospital and its data analytics partner, DataGen. Download This  Case Study

Contrast in decision points between two hospitals, both participating in the "Major Joint Replacement" episode family. Download This White Paper

A look at the recently released methodology for computing the target prices for the Medicare Bundled Payment for Care Improvement (BPCI) program. Download This White Paper

In this round of the Bundled Payment for Care Improvement (BPCI) project, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) introduces outlier limits on episode costs Download This White Paper

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) responses to applications for the Bundled Payment for Care Improvement (BPCI) demonstration program have raised more questions than they answered.  While we understand the government’s need to reign in the myriad bundle definitions, the degree to which CMS has gone from “define your own” to non-negotiable specifics raises some significant concerns. CMS has: defined its own episode bundles and exclusions;  created required bundle families;  calculated regional average prices; and  established an outlier methodology.