CMMI Adds New Flexibilities & Adjustments to Oncology Care Model

On Wednesday, June 3, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) announced that, in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), CMMI is providing new flexibilities and adjustments to current and future Innovation Center models. The announcement included the following changes specifically for Oncology Care Model (OCM). 

Payment Methodology:

• Option for OCM practices to elect to forgo upside and downside risk for performance periods affected by the PHE.
  

• For OCM practices that remain in one- or two-sided risk for the performance periods affected by the PHE, remove COVID-19 episodes from reconciliation for those performance periods.

Quality Reporting:
-Make the following optional for the affected performance  periods:

• Aggregate-level reporting of quality measures
• Beneficiary-level reporting of clinical and staging data

-Remove the requirement for cost and resource utilization  reporting and practice transformation plan reporting in  July/August 2020.

Timeline: Extend model for 1 year through June 2022.                         
The CMS Innovation Center will host a call on Friday, June 5, 2020, from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET to provide an overview of the Oncology Care Model adjustments and flexibilities and answer your questions.

When: Friday, 06/05/2020 from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET
Register Here.

View information on the CMMI website here.
Read a Health Affairs blog post by CMS Administrator Seema Verma.

Posted 6/3/2020