Medicare actuary: HHS' safety plan savings projections 'reasonable'

Meanwhile, more Medicare bundling experiments are coming. 

Politico Pro: CMS Actuary: Patient Safety Savings Possible
CMS chief actuary Rick Foster says the Obama administration's expected savings for its patient safety program are "reasonable," but will be difficult to achieve by 2013. ... The [Partnership for Patients] goal is to reduce hospital-acquired conditions and improve transitions between care settings, which could lead to fewer readmissions. Senate Republicans have strongly pushed back on HHS estimates that the voluntary program, which encourages all aspects of the health system to work together, would save Medicare $10 billion over three years (Haberkorn, 9/6).

Related, earlier story from KHN: Medicare Prepares Rule To Penalize Hospitals With High Readmission Rates (Rau, 7/30).

CQ HealthBeat: Medicare Official Suggests Other Possibilities For Future Bundled Payment Experiments
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation will soon be experimenting with a number of new programs to test the idea of bundling payments to a team of medical providers, a top health official said in a conference call Tuesday. ... Under bundled payments, providers who would normally receive separate reimbursements for each service given to a patient instead get a payment they would share for each treatment episode. Hospitals, physician groups and other providers can apply to receive bundled payments through the project announced in August (Adams, 9/6).