Project Title: Identifying Actionable, Sustainable, and Evidence-Based Strategies for Transitioning Clinicians and Beneficiaries in Traditional Medicare to Accountable Care by 2030.

Project Summary: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) aims to transition clinicians and beneficiaries in the traditional Medicare program from fee-for-service payment to accountable care organizations (ACOs) or similar arrangements by 2030. The goal of this project is to identify actionable and evidence-based strategies for accomplishing this objective in a sustainable manner that does not penalize safety-net practices or create incentives for specialists in short supply, such as psychiatrists, to exit traditional Medicare. To do this, we will use Medicare data to: 1) describe clinician transitions into and out of Medicare’s value-based payment models, including ACOs; 2) identify clinician-, patient-, and market-level predictors of desired versus undesired transitions toward versus away from ACO participation; 3) compare differences in transition patterns among safety-net versus non-safety-net clinicians and among high priority clinical specialties such as psychiatry and geriatrics.

Funding Organization: The Laura and John Arnold Foundation

Project Start Date: January 1, 2023

Project End Date: Ongoing

Principal Investigator: Kenton J. Johnston

Co-investigators: Jason Hockenberry, Peter Lyu

Publications: Coming soon!