The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) announced it will be featuring new flexibilities and adjustments to its current as well as future alternative payment models.
This update comes as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
CMMI made changes to the Oncology Care Model (OCM) in regard to payment methodology, quality reporting, and timeline.
OCM practices now have the option to forgo upside and downside risk for performance periods affected by the public health emergency. Additionally, OCM practices that remain in one- or two-sided risk for the performance periods affected by the pandemic may remove COVID-19 episodes from reconciliation for those performance periods.
As for quality reporting, aggregate-level reporting of quality measures as well as beneficiary-level reporting of clinical and staging data are now optional for the affected performance periods. Additionally, the requirement for cost and resource utilization reporting and practice transformation plan reporting in July/August 2020 has been removed.
CMMI also announced that the OCM will be extended 1 year through June 2022.
Practices looking for more information on these adjustments and ask any questions are invited to attend a call hosted by CMMI on June 5, 2020, from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm ET.—Zachary Bessette
