Dec 20 2010
Modern Healthcare: Bonus Test Is A Test For ACOs
Half of 10 physician groups testing Medicare bonus payments for quality and spending control earned payouts during the fourth year of the five-year experiment, the CMS has announced. Bonuses, which totaled $31.7 million for the fourth year, are based on how much physician groups save Medicare and how well doctors perform on measures of quality. Sound familiar? That's because it's the same basic formula behind accountable care organizations, a payment pilot for doctors and hospitals that Medicare will begin to implement in 2012 under the health reform law (Evans, 12/16).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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