The other shoe dropped on July 25, 2016. While CMS's drive to bundled payments and greater financial accountability has been on a slow march for several years, they finally got to the meat of the matter, announcing the first phase of a move to mandatory bundled payments for a variety of cardiovascular procedures.
Previously the mandatory bundled payment program was limited to hip and knee replacements, themselves a huge category. These are among the most frequent orthopedic procedures experienced by Medicare members and are subject to wide differences in pricing for no apparent reason. But targeting cardiovascular procedures for cost-reduction strategies is getting to the heart of the matter, pardon the pun.
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