Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma recently said that the Trump administration plans to roll out more mandatory alternative payment models, a noted shift in tone from that established by former HS Secretary Tom Price who expressed a preference for voluntary payment models.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who has been on the job 15 months, has repeatedly voiced support for mandatory models, and Verma mentioned the forthcoming mandatory models in remarks made to the National Association of Accountable Care Organizations (NAACOS) conference in Baltimore on April 25. “Looking forward, you can expect that some of the models we have under development will be mandatory,” Verma said. These remarks come on the heels of CMS’s recent overhaul of its ACO program (Pathways to Success) and announcement of its Primary Cares First reform initiative. (See here and here for more details.)