CMMI – Reward Health

Clinical Practice Guidelines and Protocols

Trump/Musk killed AHRQ, but in a sense, the death has been playing out over 25 years. Recalling 4 eras of the agency and my dream for its eventual rebirth.

Slashing and Dissolving As reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health News site blog, last week the Trump administration “dissolved” the Agency for Healthcare Research

Dr. Ward April 8, 2025 No Comments

ACO Reimbursement and Gain Sharing

CMS Innovation Center engages in linguistic manipulation and health economics denialism in new definition of “VBC”

There are many good people at the CMS Innovation Center (CMMI). They mean well. They are our friends. But friends need to call out friends

Dr. Ward January 30, 2024 4 Comments

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs)

Oncology Care Model failure calls for rethinking our approach to real, sustainable improvement in specialty care

This month, disappointing evaluation results call for re-thinking of our approach to improving specialty care. Nancy Keating and 12 of her colleagues from multiple medical

Dr. Ward November 10, 2021 No Comments

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs)

What is missing from the CMS Innovation Center five year vision?

The Biden administration’s CMS Innovation Center 5-year vision conspicuously lacks mention of what I consider to be necessary course corrections to reverse a disappointing first decade.

Dr. Ward August 18, 2021 1 Comment

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs)

Berwick and Gilfillan offer six recommendations for reinventing CMMI. My response is yes, but they don’t address the #1 issue: failure to achieve critical mass.

In a recent health policy viewpoint article in JAMA, Drs. Don Berwick and Rick Gilfillan noted that, although the CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid

Dr. Ward April 7, 2021 3 Comments