The study, which looked at CPC+ practices as well as a comparison group of similar practices, found that more than 40 percent of beneficiaries in CPC+ and compared practices had highly fragmented care at baseline.
Three key takeaways from the report:
- Medicare beneficiaries with highly fragmented care had an average of 13 ambulatory visits across seven providers annually. The most frequent provider accounted for only 28 percent of visits.
- There were no differences in the change in continuity or fragmentation of care for CPC+ versus comparison beneficiaries over the first three years of CPC+.
- Future interventions that target fragmentation more directly may be more successful in changing that outcome.
The study also found no evidence that CPC+ affected the number of annual ambulatory visits by Medicare beneficiaries.
CMS first launched CPC+ in 2017 alongside 79 private and public payers to improve primary care quality and reduce costs.
The AJMC study was conducted from January 2016 to December 2019 and included 1,085,707 beneficiaries under 2,883 CPC+ practices and 2,274,068 beneficiaries attributed to 6,912 comparison practices.
