Where the Director of the Center for Medicare Wants to See Care Go
Home Health Care News / By Patrick Filbin
One of the most important Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) leaders – Dr. Meena Seshamani – is optimistic about the future of the home health care industry.
She detailed why last month at Home Health Care News’ Capital+Strategy event, pointing to more care taking place outside of traditional facilities, innovative care models and the shift to value-based care in general.
“We in Medicare are looking to increase our footprint in value-based care and in holistic care models where you’re really encouraging that team-based approach to care,” Seshamani said. “You’re enabling providers to come together to take accountability for cost and quality.”
Seshamani is the deputy administrator at CMS and the director of the Center for Medicare. In a value-based-care model, the shared goal of keeping patients healthy and out of the hospital drives smarter spending, she said. More importantly, it will ideally put providers, payers and other stakeholders in a position where they’re all “rowing in the same direction.”
“When something works in innovation, we have data, we have transparency,” she said. “As you align the various models that are out there, as you grow those models, that enables some of the flexibility to be able to address the needs of people that you are caring for.”
Once the data is there and innovative projects and alignments prove successful, Seshamani said the next step is to scale it.
An example of a successful pilot model is the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) Model. A Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) creation, the model is being expanded nationwide next year.
According to Seshamani, there are two questions that CMS has to ask before it launches any model: whether it improves quality and whether it saves Medicare money.
HHVBP is one that met both of those criteria. Seshamani said CMS is now scaling it in order to bring it to more people.
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