Health Care Trends: Payment Bundling--The Future of Reimbursement?

A number of industry experts have long believed that any significant change in health care must be tied to reimbursement, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has begun a pilot project that will test that theory. Under a three-year plan called the Acute Care Episode (ACE) demonstration, five sites in the US have been selected to use a single, bundled-payment system for hospital and physicians services associated with 28 cardiac and nine orthopedic inpatient surgical services and procedures.