Heart attacks strike about 735,000 people in the U.S. every year. For about 210,000 of them, it's not the first time. The Obama administration, with less than six months on the clock, is betting that changing the way Medicare pays hospitals and physicians to treat them can trim those numbers and save money.
The CMS announced a proposal last week to put three new episodes of care under mandatory experiments with bundled payments, potentially compelling hundreds of additional hospitals into becoming financially accountable for what happens to Medicare patients long after they leave the hospital. It was just one in a series of steps in an effort to move Medicare and the entire industry toward models that pay for the quality of healthcare rather than the quantity of services.
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