"You can't predict exactly what will happen in value-based care, so clinicians need to prepare," says Pascha E. Schafer, MD, FACC.

As chief quality officer at Augusta University Health System, Schafer has served as the physician lead for Quality Payment Program and value-based care efforts, leading her system through the application process for participation in Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) Advanced.

BPCI Advanced, launched by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, is a voluntary episode payment model that bundles 32 episodes of care in an effort to align incentives among participating health care providers to reduce expenditures and improve quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries.

BPCI Advanced holds participants responsible for quality and total cost of care and encourages clinicians to redesign care delivery by adopting best practices, reducing variation from standards of care, and providing a clinically-appropriate level of services for patients throughout a clinical episode.

"The application process was difficult, but I was able to use ACC's Alternative Payment Model (APM) Framework to inform our efforts," said Schafer. ACC's APM Framework is a modular tool developed by the College to assist members in evaluating APM participation options and considerations for achieving successful participation.

Through the APM Framework, Schafer identified aspects of APM participation that were especially important for her system to consider when evaluating BPCI Advanced – specifically, data analytics for quality of care and ensuring a process for addressing inadequate or incorrect data.

She also used the framework to perform a gap analysis of her system's care delivery model.

"The APM Framework really served as a common language to get everyone – clinicians and administrators – on the same page," Schafer explains. "It paired very well with clinical knowledge and is a helpful curriculum to educate the next generation of clinicians."

Attend today's session, "Succeeding in Alternative Payment Models," co-chaired by Linda D. Gillam, MD, FACC, and Paul N. Casale, MD, MPH, FACC, to learn more about the tools and practices needed to thrive in alternative payment models.

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The “Succeeding in Alternative Payment Models” session will take place today from 12:30 – 1:45 p.m. in Room 352. Access the College’s APM Framework at ACC.org/APM.

Keywords: ACC Publications, ACC Scientific Session Newspaper, ACC Annual Scientific Session, ACC19

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