Development of Episode-Based Cost Measures for the US Medicare Merit-based Incentive Payment System

This Special Comunication describes the cost measures framework of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System implemented by the US Congress with the Medicare Access and Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, focusing on design features of episode-based cost measures. Importance The Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), established as part of the Quality Payment Program, is a Medicare value-based payment program that evaluates clinicians' performance across 4 categories: quality, cost, promoting interoperability, and improvement activities. The cost category includes novel episode-based measures designed for targeted evaluation of the resource use of specific conditions. This report describes the development of episode-based cost measures and their role in the shift from volume-based to value-based purchasing. Objectives Episode-based cost measures focus on resource use related to the treatment of a specific condition or procedure. The measures exclude health care costs unrelated to the condition or procedure of focus. The episode-based cost measures provide a nuanced examination of resource use that can be used alongside quality metrics to identify opportunities to improve the value by capturing costs that are clinically related to the care being delivered within a given patient-clinician relationship of care delivered to patients. These measures were developed with the input of clinical committees composed of over 320 clinicians from 127 specialty societies and stakeholder organizations. The MIPS program currently evaluates clinician cost category performance based on 2 population-based cost measures (Medicare spending per beneficiary and total per capita costs) in addition to 18 episode-based cost measures. Additional episode-based cost measures are currently under development. Conclusions and Relevance The transition to value-based payment requires an accurate assessment of clinician effect on health care quality and cost. The use of episode-based cost measures to assess clinician influence on health care costs for high-priority conditions and procedures is an important step. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is introducing MIPS Value Pathways that will align episode-based cost measures with related quality measures to further incentivize the transition from fee-for-service to value-based care.