Policy Directional Areas

Accountable for Health will educate policy stakeholders about the benefits of accountable care and differentiating accountable care reforms from a variety of value-based and managed care concepts. This includes, for example, differentiating any service that may be of value (e.g., telehealth) from putting together the right services that matter the most for each person (accountable care). Our policy development and recommendations in this area will empower people in their communities to select accountable care delivery options that improve outcomes and care experiences, across payers and programs.

A4H will focus on areas where adoption can be accelerated, such as traditional Medicare and Medicaid, including dual eligibles, as well as employers. This work improves access to whole-person care for complex populations, including behavioral health and social support services. Our work in this area will define effective accountable care, identify current prevalence of accountable care, and develop policies to accelerate its adoption and spread.

We will also identify opportunities to match people to the right programs and providers for their health care needs. Accountable for Health’s work will build on accountable care models with an established track record that have demonstrated success and will identify consensus and priority areas for scaling effective models. This work also includes reviewing fee-for-service restrictions on providers and eliminating requirements that may be unnecessary in an accountable care environment.

We will also demonstrate how accountable care rewards innovation in care delivery, as compared to traditional FFS which does not reward clinicians for investing in the data infrastructure and team-based care model necessary for proactive care management and population health.”

Encourage transparency through robust stakeholder engagement related to accountable care financial contract design, analytic tools, fair target setting methodologies and performance results to increase operational predictability. Accountable for Health strongly supports the work of the CMS Innovation Center in creating collaborative approaches to accountable care and intends to build on lessons learned while charting a path forward for the next generation of health care delivery model participants. We further believe that lessons for successful contracting can be shared across payers and programs, and would look to extend and scale successful programs.

This includes efforts to standardize and make physical, behavioral, and social data more consistent and usable to improve care while protecting data privacy and security, as well as federal development of tools and template that allow interested parties to conduct modeling and other analyses for evaluating and improving accountable care policies.