Orthopedists Asked CMS To Stop Mandatory Bundled-Pay Models

25 Apr 2018

• By Sue Darcey

Orthopedic surgeons never favored mandatory bundled-payment programs such as the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement model. In fact, in comments to CMS, surgeons requested that the US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation make the programs voluntary and scale them back.

While voicing support for the general concept of value-based experiments in health-care delivery that might improve patient health outcomes, orthopedic surgeons urged the Medicare innovation center to end all mandatory bundled-payment models, including a joint-replacement program, and to make it voluntary. Orthopedic surgeons’ opinions on the bundled-pay models were captured in a large volume of comments from last November and December finally released to the public by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma on April 23.

“We continue to urge CMS to end all mandatory bundled-payment models and revise the mandatory MSAs (metropolitan statistical areas) in...