Improving preventive and chronic care helped the University of Michigan (U-M) to save Medicare more than $22 million during a five-year demonstration project.
The project, Medicare’s Physician Group Practice Demonstration (PGPD), was designed to show the potential benefits of ACOs. During its involvement with the program, U-M launched a number of new programs aimed to improve care coordination and care transitions for comorbid patients. These programs included a new transitional care program assisting patients with hospital discharge information and follow-up activity, complex care coordination programs designed to reduce unnecessary treatments, readmissions, handoffs and wait times, and medical home programs.
In the fifth year, U-M saved more than $5.4 million by reducing costs to Medicare through quality improvement strategies and redesigning care. U-M also scored a 98 percent grade on quality measures that were part of the project. U-M was one of only two groups to create savings every year of the program.
Many of the programs and innovations that U-M put in place for this project involved not only physicians but also pharmacists, nurses, social workers, care managers and others who are involved in the care of Medicare patients at all U-M facilities.
Ten different groups participated in the project. Of those only two — the University of Michigan and the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin — earned savings during all five years of the demonstration project. U-M, along with the other nine groups in this demonstration, began participating in another similar project in January. Known as the PGP Transitions Demonstration, this project will continue to inform Medicare leadership about important components of ACO policy.
Source: University of Michigan Health System, August 8, 2011
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