Medicare's Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative - A Two Year Report

After all the buzz (for example) around the coming launch of CMS' Comprehensive Primary Care "Plus" program,  the New England Journal of Medicine (or NEJM) just published a "special article" on the original Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative.

This is important if you think CMS' approach to supporting primary care is the fix for what ails the U.S. health care system.

Population Health Blog readers may recall that two years ago, CMS launched CPC. This is a still ongoing four-year multi-payer study to determine whether primary care that is "turbocharged" with medical home-style capabilities (see here, here and here - see page 8) would increase quality and lower health care costs. 

The term "multi-payer" is important, because CMS recognized that clinics struggled with providing medical home care to some, but not all, patients on the basis of their insurance.  Better to have one standard of care to all patients.

The NEJM article is an analysis of CPC's results after two years. 

To summarize how CPC was set up, 502 clinics (from 978 applicants) across 8 states participated along with a total of 39 other insurers.  In addition to the usual fee schedules, the Medicare and the other insurers paid a per patient severity-based "care management fee" that, on average, ranged from $8 to $40 per beneficiary per month (PBPM). Practices were also promised an additional bonus if, after two years, they reduced health care costs (i.e., shared savings) and improved various quality measures and performed well in surveys about the patients' experience of care.

These CPC practices' outcomes were compared to a propensity matched group of non-participating practices with a similar electronic health record (EHR) infrastructure that cared for a set of patients with similar levels of disease and baseline costs. 30% of these practices had applied but were not accepted in the initiative. The total number of comparison practices was 908.

Results?  Not good.

Aft the end of two years, there was no statistically (p > .05) significant difference in the growth of health care costs between the CPC and control sites.  This was true whether just claims costs were examined (a negligible difference of $11 per patient per month favoring the CPC sites), or whether claims costs plus the additional fees were examined (a difference of $7 favoring the comparison sites).

When patient costs were examined by the burden of disease, there was no indication that more costly patients achieved any savings. 

CPC sites had a statistically significant reduction in outpatient office visits, but not in hospitalizations.

While the difference in claims expense failed to be statistically significant, the total additional fees collected by the participating sites amounted to a financially significant $389,000. This represented a 15% increase in their income. 

Was quality of care improved?

Patients with diabetes and a high burden of illness were more 3% more (p<.05) likely to receive the recommended follow-up measures to manage their disease. Otherwise, "the initiative did not have significant effects on the processes used as measures of the quality of care for the full sample."

Patient experience of care?

While surveys showed small increases in patient support, "there were no significant effects on other composite measures: ability of patients to obtain timely appointments, care, and information; how well providers communicate with patients; provider’s knowledge of care patient received from other providers; and overall rating of providers by patients."

Yikes. Ouch. Egads.

The authors correctly point out that CPC is a four year program and that it still may be too early to see the impact of the medical home turbocharging.  That was pointed out in the negative one year evaluation.  Maybe something will turn up at three or four years.

In addition, CMS has a lot of other value-based initiatives underway, which may have biased the results.  There may be a "ceiling effect" among the participating sites as well as the control sites, which were already working to reduce (for example) rehospitalizations or pursue the fee schedule modifiers.

It's also important to note that the impact on the other insurers' costs and patient quality was not reported.  It's possible that they saw a benefit.

The PHB's take?

1.  Many care management programs achieve claims reduction with savings (for example) within one to two years.  If CPC hasn't succeeded by now, it probably won't.  And if the just-announced CPC Plus is modelled after this, it's hard to see how that program will turn out any differently.

2. It is possible that, within all the statistical noise, there were some primary care sites with particularly robust approaches to care that did bend the cost curve.  CMS should seek these sites out and find out more about their secret sauce.  More on that in a future post.

2.  If CPC's approach to care is ultimately shown to not bend the curve, what's the problem? 

The PHB continues to believe that one size doesn't fit all and not all patients benefit from care management. Many patients, even those with chronic conditions are quite stable and need minimum attention; some patients are so sick that no intervention will keep them out of emergency rooms and hospitals. As pointed out here, as more and more patients are enrolled in care management, the return on investment can paradoxically go down. Better to focus on patients who are not only at risk, but have "impactable" condition profiles.

In addition, CPC is based on a 5 year-old model of care. Things have changed since then: modern population health brings many more resources to the table.  That not only includes in-depth analytics support (for example, to define those patients who are at greatest risk) but mHealth. For example, there is one innovative company (the PHB's Shameless Commerce Dept. over on the right side of your screen) that provides recently discharged patients with an app-enabled handheld configured to provide close follow-up.  And so on.

3. It may be that care management works best in a managed care setting.  CPC is a study of classic fee-fore-service Medicare beneficiaries with access to any participating Medicare provider. In Medicare managed care, the insurers and their providers have an even larger incentive to maximize quality and lower cost.  If that's the case, CMS - despite their commitment to innovation - may want to get out of the care management business, because they just don't know how to do it.

Underwriting vs. Care Management

Rock on, care management

In the course of learning about care management, the Population Health Blog has benefitted from sitting at the feet of high-functioning finance experts, actuaries and underwriters. Reconciling health care revenue/expense, trend, monetized risk and pricing of insurance with the savings, quality and patient experience that comes from optimized care has been a fascinating - if sometimes frustrating - intellectual exercise.

However, this report on the rise of machines and the continuing displacement of knowledge workers reminded the PHB of the divide between the science and the art in this corner of health care. 

According to David Autor, it's only a matter of time until machines begin to displace the high-end brainiacs who oversee the health insurance industry's premium, reserves, claims payments and surpluses.  Human judgment will never go away, but logarithmic jumps in processing power combined with the big data that comes from industry consolidation means the "answer" on how much to charge for coverage of a person with diabetes will be less flexible and more preordained.

The PHB, however, is of good cheer. 

While underwriting risk will be all about the numbers, managing conditions within those numbers will remain a very individual enterprise. Human needs, preferences, tolerances and culture will continue to shape highly variable decision-making within the care system for years to come. The need for highly skilled knowledge workers who can help patients co-manage their care will grow, not diminish. 

Factory farms may be churning out ingredients on an massive scale, but someone has to plate the finished meal. 

The music industry may be selling Beyonce at $0.99 a pop, but nothing will replace seeing her live in concert.

Payers and buyers may commoditize cataract care, but someone has to make sure patients take their eye drops.

Underwriting on one side.  Care management on the other.  The PHB likes where it's at.  

Image from Wikipedia

17 Reasons Why Care Management Is Probably Not Going To Be in a Clinic Near You Anytime Soon

Here's a good review of all the reasons why care management has not become a routine part of patient care. 

As policymakers, reformists, consultants and architects plan for a population and outcomes-based future, they'd be wise to think about the review's 17-point reality check.

1) Start-up costs are considerable;

2) Costly to maintain;

3) Multi-year time horizon for any return on investment;

4) Any success undercuts future traditional fee-for-service revenue;

5) Can't be broken down into discreet 'reimbursible" units for fee-for-service payments;

6) It's paid for with still-novel-experimental capitated payments and/or shared savings;

7) The link between increased quality today and downstream savings tomorrow is still tenuous;

8) Complicates primary care by introducing more uncertainty;

9) Non-physician manager training is time-consuming and costly;

10) It's a resource that is best reserved for high risk patients, not all patients;

11) Doesn't fit into long-standing clinical workflows in established clinics;

12) Primary care already has enough challenges and implementing care management is not a priority;

13) Most EHRs are not configured to document or support non-physician care;

14) Decision-makers need additional information on expected net savings;

15) It relies on a lot of outside-the-doc-comfort zone behavioral, vs. "medical" health interventions;

16) It requires considerable data support;

17) It's often balkanized by multiple payers.

But be of good cheer. Jimmy Cliff reminds us that half the battle is knowing what you're up against.

The Just Right "Sweet Middle" of Care Management

Finding the "just right" middle

If you're interested in care management (definition here), there's a supportive case report in the August 7 edition of the New England Journal.

But it also makes a important point that appears to have been missed by the Editors.

The Population Health Blog explains.

The case revolves around a fragile cancer patient with abnormal blood chemistries and distributed locations of care. The author describes how care management successfully improved the patient's safety, required a lot of physician-to-physician communication and relied on care management's "reach" outside the four walls of the primary care clinic.

All good points.

However, what's also true is that prior to the cancer diagnosis, this was an otherwise well patient with post-discharge needs that were amenable to care management intervention.  In other words, this patient was "high risk, high impact." These individuals make up the narrow middle in the span of patients who range from otherwise well (destined to do OK) to disastrously complicated (destined to do poorly no matter what). 

The Population Health Blog doubts the case would have been so meaningful or successful with a routine surgery patient (stable and OK) or someone with metastatic spread of the cancer (a disaster).

The Population Health Blog is all for patient safety, doc-to-doc communication and distributed care management.  However, they're not going to be of equal benefit for every patient.  If the intent is to "save money" by reducing avoidable health care utilization, it's best aimed at the patients in the middle.

Like this one.

Care Management: What a Bargain

They did it again!

Sound familiar?

Patients' intake into the program was initiated with a face-to face meeting with a nurse care manager.  After a physician-approved care plan was in place, the patients were telephoned and engaged in the protocol.  The patients could then use a voice-activated system or a website to report disease status.  Outbound nurse calls were prompted if the patients requested it, reported a problem, didn't have adequate disease control, if the medications were not being taken as prescribed or if there were side effects.  After 12 months, patients in the care management program, compared to a control group, had clinically and statistically significant improvements in the control of their condition .

To the Population Health Blog, this narrative has been repeated dozens of times involving numerous chronic health conditions.  In this latest example, Dr. Kroeknke and colleagues randomly allocated 250 patients with three months or more of chronic musculoskeletal pain to either a) state-of-the-art pain care or b) state-of-the-art pain care plus nurse led care management. 

Twelve months later (and after only one drop-out), patients in the first group rated their pain as having dropped from a baseline of 5.1 to 4.6 out of ten (zero is no pain, 10 is awful), while the second care management group rated their pain as having dropped from 5.3 to 3.6.  Total time spent by the care manager averaged 3-4 hours per patient.

While patients in the care management group were taking more medications, there was no difference between the two groups in narcotic use.  There was also no difference in health care utilization.

The PHB's take:

While the authors credited the care plans that triggered increases in medications that were tailored to patient preferences, the PHB wonders if a greater sense of control combined with the perceived support of a sympathetic listener also contributed to the greater improvement in pain.

Once again, there wasn't hard "savings" or a "return on investment."  However, the expense of only three to four hours of nurse care manager time to achieve a one-point improvement on a 0-10 scale of pain not only seems like a wise investment, it's a comparative bargain.