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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services just announced a five-year test, to begin next summer, of a new way to pay for the care of patients who have had a heart attack or need coronary artery bypass graft surgery.
As with any new payment model, unintended consequences are possible. The experimental bundled-payment program, which was announced July 25 and will begin July 1, 2017, potential could lead some physicians to sell their practices to hospitals, be financially risky and potentially harmful to the hospitals forced to participate, and could lead to an increase in heart attacks, warned Francois de Brantes, executive director of the consulting firm Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute and an expert on bundled payment models. Continue reading