MediCaring.org

Despite widespread interest in the $500 million budget allotted for Community-Based Care Transitions Program (CCTP) under the Affordable Care Act, many stakeholders are confused about the exact nature of the program. What does it aim to do? Who is eligible to apply for the funds?

Aim: CCTP aims to improve the reliability and effectiveness of care transitions as evidenced by reducing hospital readmissions. CCTP participants are paid to improve services targeted fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries, the population requiring the most frequent care transitions. The backbone of the program in most places will be cooperation of service providers in a geographic community, since the participation and engagement of many stakeholders who share in the care of the area’s patients appears to be essential for sustained excellence.

Eligibility: To be eligible for funding, every applicant must have a minimum of one Community-Based Organization (CBO) and one hospital. While a hospital on CMS’s list of high readmission hospitals by state can lead a proposal, the payment will still go to the CBO, making lead authorship rather trivial. Priority will be given to eligible entities participating in programs run by the Administration on Aging (AoA), or that serve the medically underserved, small communities, or rural areas.

Financing: Foremost, this is not a grant! Payment is based on a blended rate proposed in the response to the solicitation, paid “per eligible discharge” and heavily based on the type of intervention. The blended rate can reflect different costs for different categories of patients and can include such elements as ongoing supervision, monitoring, administrative costs, and so on. Most important, however, it does not include initial training: Sites must have some previous experience with care transitions, so they must have paid for initial training. CMS payment also cannot directly support travel expenses for attending the required meetings in Baltimore (the cost of this must come from some other source).

Applicants are required to use the worksheet provided by CMS. No payments will be made more than once in 6 months for each beneficiary. In other words, CMS will not pay for re-treatment of patients for whom first efforts to prevent rehospitalization failed. Keep in mind that, although the program will run for 5 years, the initial award is only for 2 years, with possibility of renewal annually thereafter.

Intervention: CCTP interventions must target Medicare beneficiaries who are at high-risk for readmissions, based on criteria provided by HHS, or for substandard care post-hospitalization. Interventions cannot duplicate already required services. You must be willing to participate in collaborative learning and redesign (including data collection). Finally, and not surprisingly, your intervention must save money overall, and show savings within two years.

CMS’s measures so far include:

Outcome measures

1. 30-d Risk-adjusted all-cause readmission rate (currently under development)
2. 30-d unadjusted all cause readmission rate
3. 30-d risk-adjusted AMI, HF, and Pneu readmissions

Process measures

1. PCP follow-up within 7 days of hospital discharge
2. PCP follow-up within 30 days of hospital discharge

“HCAHP items” – (note – includes more than HCAHPS)

1. HCAHPS on medication info
2. HCAHPS on discharge info
3. Care Transitions Measure (3 – item)
4. Patient Activation Measure (13-item, see:    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361231/table/tbl1/)

Note: There are some areas where the solicitation is unclear or internally inconsistent.

Key words: hospital readmission, care transitions, 3026 funding, evidence-based intervenitons, patient activation measure, budget worksheet, financing, medicare beneficiaries, payment rate, CMS