The
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will allow participants in
the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced Model to retroactively
withdraw all or some episode initiators and clinical episodes from the model in
March 2019. The announcement came as CMS began uploading new preliminary target
prices and claims data for some applicants due to inaccurate allowed amounts
for some inpatient claims. "While we are retaining our initial Oct. 1
start date, to accommodate this update in preliminary target prices and to
recognize some applicants' requests for a later start date, we will be allowing
all participants to retroactively withdraw episode initiators and/or clinical
episodes in March 2019," the agency said. Recently CMS extended
the deadline for submitting signed participation agreements and selecting
clinical episodes for the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced model
by one week to Aug. 8 and the due date for program deliverables to Sept. 14.
The American Hospital Association has urged
CMS to offer in 2019 two additional start date options for the model, currently
set to begin Oct. 1, noting that many applicants had yet to receive data from
the agency on episode target prices and summary and raw claims data.