Bundled Payments for Care Improvement
Overview | FAQs | Learning Series | Contact
Overview
The Affordable Care Act provides a number of new tools and resources to help improve health care and lower costs for all Americans. Bundling payment for services that patients receive across a single episode of care, such as heart bypass surgery or a hip replacement, is one way to encourage doctors, hospitals and other health care providers to work together to better coordinate care for patients both when they are in the hospital and after they are discharged. Such initiatives can help improve health, improve the quality of care, and lower costs.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is working in partnership with providers to develop models of bundling payments through the Bundled Payments initiative. On August 23, 2011, CMS invited providers to apply to help test and develop four different models of bundling payments. Through the Bundled Payments initiative, providers have great flexibility in selecting conditions to bundle, developing the health care delivery structure, and determining how payments will be allocated among participating providers.
Further information about the Payment Bundling initiative can be found on the CMS website.
FAQs
The link below is a compilation of frequently asked questions to describe the Limited Data Sets (LDS) files and comment on its applicability to the bundled payment initiative. The FAQ document will be updated periodically as CMS and ResDAC receive questions.
FAQs (Last updated 2/13/12)
Learning Series on Data for BPCI
These webinars provide information about understanding and working with the Limited Data Sets being provided for the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiative. They are targeted at data analysts, data custodians, or other parties interested in learning about the structure and contents of these files.
Monday, February 13: Technical Aspects of Data Delivery and File Processing
Slides (PDF) | Transcript (PDF) | Audio (MP3)
Wednesday, February 15: Understanding the Medicare LDS Denominator File
Thursday, February 16th: Understanding the Limited Data Set Utilization Files
Friday, February 17th: Payment Variables Useful for Costing Bundled Payment Initiative Services
To join in the webinar series, please see the CMS website.
Contact
With questions about the data files provided, e-mail resdac@umn.edu. Please reference Bundled Payments in the Subject line. Please include the DUA number and request ID.
Last Modified February 17, 2012