RTI International awarded project to improve primary care delivery and payment in the U.S.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC—The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) awarded RTI International, in collaboration with Telligen and the Actuarial Research Corporation (ARC), a project to support work on CMS’s new Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+) initiative, a national program that aims to strengthen primary care.

“CPC+ will help providers move away from one-size-fits-all, fee-for-service health care to a new system that will give doctors the freedom to deliver the care that best meets the needs of their patients,” said John Kautter, Ph.D., a senior research economist at RTI and project director. “RTI and our partners Telligen and ARC are excited to have the opportunity to help CMS improve day-to-day healthcare for Americans.”

The five-year initiative begins in January 2017 and seeks to strengthen primary care by improving patients’ health and the quality of care patients receive, while reducing health care costs. CPC+ will build on the foundation of the Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative, a CMS model that started in 2012 and runs through the end of 2016.

The CPC+ initiative will be implemented in up to 20 regions and accommodate up to 5,000 practices. It will help primary care providers:

• Support patients with serious or chronic diseases to achieve their health goals
• Give patients 24-hour access to care and health information
• Deliver preventive care
• Engage patients and their families in their own care
• Work together with hospitals and other clinicians, including specialists, to provide better coordinated care

The CPC+ implementation support project for CMS began in September and will continue for two years. Under CMS’s direction, RTI’s team, which includes Telligen and ARC, is responsible for a wide variety of implementation support tasks, including centralized support for participating practices, calculating monthly care management fees, comprehensive primary care payments, and incentive payments; and analyzing and reporting clinical quality measures.

The CPC+ model is the largest-ever initiative by CMS to transform and improve both primary care delivery and payment in the United States.