By skyforbes 
Today’s featured CRS article, “Recent Developments Regarding New and Existing Payment Models at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation,” highlights newly introduced and expanded payment models that improve care quality while controlling costs. These include bundled payments, accountable care organizations (ACOs), and value-based purchasing initiatives. The article also examines legislative and regulatory changes affected these models and looks into how the shifts may encourage provider participation, increase cost-efficiency, and shape future healthcare payment strategies. This article falls under the issue area of Health. From the CRS:
On March 12, 2025, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), announced it would terminate several alternative payment models (APMs) and modify others. In May 2025, CMMI announced a new strategic plan to “Make America Healthy Again.” These changes follow several recent reports on CMMI’s operations. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) recommended in 2021 that CMMI operate fewer, more streamlined APMs with consistent methodologies for measuring quality and expenditures. The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) 2023 assessment of CMMI’s budgetary effects found that although certain individual models have generated savings, the net impact of CMMI’s activities has been to increase federal spending. In 2024, the Assistant Secretary for Policy and Evaluation (ASPE) released a report recommending that CMMI adopt more robust model evaluation frameworks. The recent changes proposed by CMMI and described in this In Focus may be a first step in implementing these recommendations to streamline and standardize CMMI’s APM portfolio.
Interested readers can find the full article here.
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