Earlier this month, CMS launched the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced program, a new voluntary payment model that will go into effect October 1, 2018. BCPI Advanced, the successor to the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement program of 2013, is the most significant proposal for payment reform from CMS since the beginning of the Trump administration, and indicates the government’s commitment to transitioning toward paying for value rather than volume in healthcare.

BPCI Advanced represents a great opportunity for providers to earn more in Medicare savings reimbursements. Participating in the new program can seem daunting to small specialist groups whose resources are limited, but Remedy Partners can facilitate that process. The CMS application is extensive and requires a series of lengthy explanations on how participants plan to increase practitioner engagement, an overview of organizational readiness and the development of methodologies for sharing savings and regulatory compliance, among many other specifics. We have helped over 700 partners participate in the original BPCI program.

For starters, working with a convener reduces the barriers to entering the program. Completing the application alone would require a substantial lift for a small practice. CMS asks for extensive details ranging from quality improvement strategies to beneficiary protection strategies to ways the practice will ensure regulatory compliance. Instead of having to painstakingly complete these sections, Remedy Partners will handle the application process for our prospective partners, eliminating that burden.

Most importantly, we will handle all of the costs associated with getting a bundled payment program up and running. Rather than having to spend significant out-of-pocket startup and program analysis costs, small practices get the benefit of participating in BPCI Advanced one year before they even receive any revenue from CMS. We essentially finance their participation, and because we only get paid when its partners are paid, it creates a true partnership model. Your success is our success.

In addition to the capital outlays, Remedy Partners also provides a buffer to partners who may have small program sizes. In small programs, there is higher risk of having a poor performance quarter due to one or two outlier episodes. Because we share downside with our partners, we offset the natural volatility of small programs, thus reducing risk.

Beyond cost, there are many operational benefits to Remedy Partners’ scale. For example, our analytics department can take advantage of huge amounts of data from all of its partners in order to create the most accurate regional benchmarks and performance metrics. More data leads to better insights. Our scale also enables us to maintain an analytics staff specialized in dealing with reconciliation and claims data.

The same is true for clinical best practices. Because Remedy Partners works with so many providers across specialties and geographies, our tools for care redesign and improvement have been tested in many different situations. Further, we also host major events for our partners to learn from each other—a way for our partners to collaborate not just with us but also with each other—as well as continuing education through our Transitional Care Institute. These opportunities will be especially valuable for BPCI Advanced given the heightened emphasis on quality improvement and care redesign.

Overall, working with a convener like Remedy Partners makes it easier for small practices to enter the program by removing the costs of exploring participation and entering the program and by easing the application burden. Our experience and scale lead to operational efficiencies, better analytics and clinical tools validated against more data and situations, facilitating the transition to value-based care.

Ready to explore BPCI Advanced with Remedy Partners? Contact us at [email protected] to start a free evaluation of your opportunity in this exciting program!

This question was raised during our webinar Remedy Makes the Application Process Easy. Follow this link to view it now and check out the other webinars in our Success in BPCI Advanced series.