News

Deepened commitment signals shift towards episodes of care to drive value-based payment
programs

DALLAS – December 18, 2020 – Signify Health, a leading value-based healthcare platform enabled by advanced analytics, technology and nationwide healthcare networks, today announced that its provider partners in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) Bundled Payment for Care Improvement Advanced (BPCI-A) program have selected a larger set of bundles to participate in for the remainder of the program (2021-2023) than they did in 2020. Signify Health’s experience and feedback from providers indicate that commitment to the program remains strong.

“The world has changed a lot since 2013 when a group of providers accepted CMMI’s invitation to try a radically different approach to better coordinate care and reduce expenditures while improving the quality of that care,” said Kyle Armbrester, Signify Health CEO. “Fast forward to today and these early pioneers are leaning in and fueling the next phase of growth with new entrants, including commercial plans and employers. Thanks to CMMI’s work to lay the foundation, we have a proven model that both government and commercial payors can use to accelerate the transformation from fee-for-service to value-based care.”

As a risk-sharing convener in the BPCI-A program, Signify Health partners with Acute Care Hospitals (ACHs) and Physician Group Practices (PGPs) to facilitate collaboration among providers sharing accountability for improving outcomes. As episodes of care continue to take hold in public and private value-based health programs, Signify anticipates the total volume of medical care managed through bundles will accelerate.

In a significant change from prior years for the remainder of the BPCI-A program, CMMI required participants to select from eight categories of care, referred to as clinical service line groupings, that each include multiple bundles. Overall, Signify’s provider partners selected more clinical bundles under the new requirement, assuming a greater amount of financial risk while ensuring that patients continue to receive high-quality care.

Once bundles are selected, Signify Health’s team works with providers to prevent adverse events, improve care quality, eliminate excess cost, and propel patient recovery homeward by applying a model that addresses patients’ holistic clinical, social, and behavioral needs. And, by providing sophisticated analytics, modeling and deep local market insights, Signify supports BPCI-A participants’ care redesign efforts to improve a patient’s care journey from hospital discharge to home.

To further inform the future of episode of care payment programs in Medicare, Signify Health recently engaged Leavitt Partners to convene an independent panel of health policy experts to offer policy recommendations that strengthen and expand these models. The recommendations emanating from this advisory process will be made publicly available in the first quarter of 2021.

“For voluntary alternative payment programs to be successful, they must attract as many participants as possible,” added Armbrester. “We believe that policies that minimize uncertainty and offer pricing stability for providers accepting financial risk are critical to the program’s continued and long-term success.”

Signify is building on its experience in the BPCI-A program to design episodes of care programs that meet the needs of commercial health plans, such as Regence, and employers, such as the State of Connecticut. Signify is able to offer a variety of episode reconciliation and payment options to accommodate the varying needs and capabilities of payors and providers. For example, the company’s recent acquisition of PatientBlox will accelerate the Company’s prospective provider payment capabilities by leveraging blockchain technology.

To learn more about Signify Health’s Episodes of Care offering, please visit signifyhealth.com/solutions-episodes-of-care.

About Signify Health
Signify Health is a leading healthcare platform that leverages advanced analytics, technology, and nationwide healthcare provider networks to create and power value-based payment programs. Our mission is to transform how care is paid for and delivered so that people can enjoy more healthy, happy days at home. Our solutions support value-based payment programs by aligning financial incentives around outcomes, providing tools to health plans and healthcare organizations designed to assess and manage risk and identify actionable opportunities for improved patient outcomes, coordination and cost-savings. Through our platform, we coordinate what we believe is a holistic suite of clinical, social, and behavioral services to address an individual’s healthcare needs and prevent adverse events that drive excess cost, all while shifting services towards the home. For more information on how we are taking health homeward, visit us at signifyhealth.com.