Over 60 Organizations Join Letter Suggesting Steps to Strengthen Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation

WASHINGTON – The Healthcare Leadership Council (HLC) is one of over 60 healthcare organizations signing a letter to the leadership of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) recommending that greater transparency and communication with healthcare stakeholders can enable CMMI to achieve its “full potential as an agent of patient-centered health transformation.”

In the letter to CMMI director Elizabeth Fowler, the organizations wrote, “There are healthcare providers, plans, patient groups, and organizations throughout the country that are intent on improving payment and delivery systems to achieve better patient outcomes while controlling cost….healthcare entities should have regular open, two-way communication with CMMI leadership that includes the opportunity to propose new payment and delivery models, based on their hands-on experience.”

The letter also emphasizes the importance of data sharing as demonstration models are implemented.

The groups wrote, “Models have a greater opportunity for success if participants can consistently receive real-time data on a project’s ongoing impact. It is essential for providers to have this level of transparency and collaboration if they are to be advocates of system innovation while also being able to monitor the effects of change on their patients.”  It is essential as well, they wrote, that the designers of new payment and delivery models communicate with model evaluators to “enhance the ability to determine whether a model needs to be modified and ultimately meets the criteria for possible expansion or change.”

The letter offered strong support for priorities that CMMI director Fowler has already shared publicly including emphasizing health equity, re-evaluating what constitutes manageable risk in demonstration projects, and reducing unnecessary complexity and overlap in ongoing models being tested.

For Immediate Release
September 21, 2021
Contact: Kelly Fernandez  202-449-3452