Physician Group Practices Accrued Large Bonuses Under Medicare's Bundled Payment Model, 2018-20.

ABSTRACT: The Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced Model (BPCI-A), a voluntary Alternative Payment Model for Medicare, incentivizes hospitals and physician group practices to reduce spending for patient care episodes below preset target prices. The experience of physician groups in BPCI-A is not well understood. We found that physician groups earned $421 million in incentive payments during BPCI-A's first four performance periods (2018-20). Target prices were positively associated with bonuses, with a mean reconciliation payment of $139 per episode in the lowest decile of target prices and $2,775 in the highest decile. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, mean bonuses increased from $815 per episode to $2,736 per episode. These findings suggest that further policy changes, such as i

SUBMITTER: Shashikumar SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12668274 | biostudies-literature | 2024 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature