Michigan MSSP Accountable Care Org Saves $8M for Medicare
A Michigan Medicare Shared Savings Program ACO lowered unnecessary utilization, improve, preventive care, saved the state’s Medicare program millions of dollars.
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By - The Physician Organization of Michigan Accountable Care Organization (POM ACO), a Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACO, helped the state save $8 million dollars on Medicare expenses by reducing unnecessary ED utilization, preventing unneeded hospitalizations, and improving the delivery of preventive care.
The ACO also performed highly on quality measures, meeting 94.4 percent of its benchmarks, the University of Michigan announced in a press release.
Providers also increased the number of beneficiaries that actively use their Medicare benefits including Welcome to Medicare clinic visits for newly enrolled patients, and Annual Wellness Visits.
POM ACO is one of the 480 Shared Savings ACOs in the country, and contains roughly 6000 physicians that treat a Medicare beneficiary population of 95,000.
Leaders within the ACO praised physician efforts for reviewing detailed information on their performance measures and sharing best practices that improve the Medicare cost-effectiveness and Medicare care quality.
“POM ACO is one of very few ACOs to achieve both savings and high quality for four years running,” said Timothy Peterson, MD, POM ACO executive and a physician at Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan academic medical center.
“Given that we are also one of the largest and most established ACOs, we are especially proud of all that our member providers and their colleagues have achieved on behalf of Michiganders who rely on Medicare.”
Performance data from 2015 suggests that POM ACO was able to outperform other ACOs in the state on goals such as chronic disease management and preventive care.
Even though POM ACO was able to achieve high performance marks and cost savings in general, the organization noted that improvements are needed in cost and quality opportunities when transitioning beneficiaries between hospitals and nursing homes, or other skilled nursing facilities.
POM ACO also added that improvements are needed in cost and quality performance based on number of days spent in both types of facilities.
Savings achieved by POM ACO in 2016 were short of the amount needed to share part of the savings with member physician groups, but Peterson said that provider groups are working to make adjustments that create member group savings.
“This includes ancillary staff that all help to improve the experience for our patients including care managers, behavioral health social workers, and pharmacists,” added POM ACO executive medical director Martha M. Walsh, MD. “This improves patient access to these services improving both the quality of care and decreasing the total cost of care for our patients.
The successes of the POM ACO highlight the mutual benefits that payers could communicate to providers when attempting to enter into an ACO agreement.
“The ability to collaborate across the State of Michigan on clinical integration and data analytics has been invaluable. This partnership has given our practices access to best practice sharing across the best-quality health systems across Michigan,” said Kim Speese, the executive director of the Wexford/Crawford physician hospital organization, which has participated in POM ACO since 2013.
“Sharing of ideas and hearing about other health system’s experiences with specific activities has allowed us to streamline some of our approaches to improving care in Northern Michigan,” Speese added.
