This week, CMS announced several important developments relating to provider participation in alternative payment models (APMs).  On October 25, 2016, CMS released a fact sheet summarizing key developments relating to APMs and touting CMS’s progress to date.  CMS also announced that it will  re-open two APMs for Medicare providers in 2018, the Next Generation Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model and the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus model.  Further, CMS announced that in 2017 the Oncology Care Model with two-sided risk will qualify as an Advanced APM model.  

CMS’s fact sheet also emphasizes its progress toward the specific delivery system reform goals it announced in January 2015.  One of those goals was to tie 30 percent of Medicare payments to APMs by the end of 2016.  According to CMS, it met this goal at the beginning of 2016, eleven months earlier than targeted. 

CMS’s announcement comes in conjunction with a conference held by the Health Care Payment Learning & Action Network (LAN), a public-private partnership sponsored by CMS.  According to an October 25, 2016 report released by LAN, nearly 25 percent of Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and commercial payments are now made through APMs.  HHS Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell spoke at the conference, reiterating CMS’s progress toward transitioning to APMs and also lauding State and commercial payors’ efforts to similarly move toward APMs.