Created by the Affordable Care Act, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) shared information about the 14-month-old agency’s agenda and achievements to date at a “Care Innovations Summit” in Washington.
The agency is charged with responsibility for pursuing innovation in the delivery of care and payment for care to the Medicare and Medicaid populations as part of the broader health care reform effort.  It pursues its mission by identifying areas in which change is needed and then funding programs designed to test possible improvements.  Because urban safety-net hospitals serve so many Medicare and Medicaid patients, the implications of CMMI’s

As states continue to struggle with budget woes, they are getting more aggressive, and more ambitious, about finding ways to cut their health care costs – and they aren’t waiting for health care reform to kick in to get started.
Oregon, for example, hopes to introduce a new series of community health centers that would provide more integrated care to their patients.  At first the centers would serve only Medicaid and dually eligible (Medicare and Medicaid) patients, but eventually, state officials hope the clinics will serve public employees and teachers and possibly small businesses as well.  Read about Oregon’s plans in

Urban safety-net hospitals are major providers of care to low-income elderly patients, many of whom are dually eligible – that is, eligible both for Medicare and for Medicaid.  These hospitals care for so many of these patients that they typically are eligible for both Medicare disproportionate share (Medicare DSH) and Medicaid disproportionate share (Medicaid DSH) payments.
As part of the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to pursue better ways to integrate and pay for care for the nearly nine million Americans who are dually eligible, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) awarded contracts to 15 states to develop new service

Created under the Affordable Care Act, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) will be the centerpiece of federal efforts to develop new and innovative ways to deliver health care more effectively while lowering costs.
One of the lesser-known components of the Affordable Care Act, CMMI has billions of dollars at its disposal to invest in testing innovative service delivery and payment models for serving the Medicare and Medicaid populations.  The Commonwealth Fund and the Alliance for Health Reform recently hosted a briefing on CMMI, and a recap of the event on the Commonwealth Fund’s web site offers an excellent