MetroHealth Achieved Medicare Shared Savings for Four Consecutive Years

Cleveland - For four consecutive years, The MetroHealth System has earned Medicare shared savings, totaling $17 million by saving the federal government $28.5 million.

MetroHealth Care Partners, an Accountable Care Organization (ACO), achieved cost control at an average of 7.3 percent per year below the benchmarks set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for 2016 through 2019. The most recent results announced this month by CMS report that MetroHealth’s ACO generated 4 percent savings below CMS’ 2019 benchmark and earned $2.9 million as its share of CMS’ $4.2 million savings.

MetroHealth achieved the highest share rate for performance year 2019 of all the legacy Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACOs in the Greater Cleveland market and is also the only MSSP ACO in the market to achieve shared savings for 2017 and 2018. Only one other health care provider organization in Ohio, an ACO based in Columbus, attained four consecutive years of MSSP shared savings along with MetroHealth Care Partners.

Caring for 9,500 Medicare beneficiaries, MetroHealth’s ACO excelled in CMS’ most advanced value based risk-bearing MSSP model, called Track 3, compared to its own service area as well as to the other ACOs across the U.S. MetroHealth Care Partners’ latest savings rate ranks it in the top third of the nation’s 32 Track 3 ACOs. In addition, MetroHealth earned the most in shared savings among all Essential Hospitals’ ACOs, those with similar risk profiles.

Medicare ACOs are groups of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who come together to provide coordinated care to their Medicare patients. The goal is to ensure that patients get the right care at the right time while avoiding unnecessary care, averting duplication of services and preventing medical errors. CMS requires 23 quality measures, along with financial benchmarks, from MSSP ACOs. When an ACO achieves savings through improved care coordination and care that is appropriate, safe, and timely while performing to quality targets, the ACO earns a share of the Medicare savings generated for CMS.

The ACO’s results depended on integrated efforts across The MetroHealth System to deliver outstanding care to patients and accomplish population health management success.

“We are proud of our clinical team’s continued excellence in patient care, our Population Health Innovation Institute’s significant collaborations and achieving multi-year Medicare ACO shared savings,” said Dr. Nabil Chehade, MetroHealth Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Transformation Officer.