(HHS: Washington) -- Demonstrations being conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) continue to provide strong evidence that offering financial incentives for improving or delivering high quality care increases quality and can reduce the growth in Medicare expenditures. 

On Aug. 17, the CMS, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced new results from three of these demonstrations, one for large physician practices, one for small and solo physician practices, and one for hospitals. CMS also announced the start of three additional value-based purchasing demonstrations.

“We continue to be encouraged by the progress of our ongoing programs that test value-based purchasing across a variety of health care services,” says Charlene Frizzera, acting administrator of CMS. “Building on those efforts, we are pleased to announce the start of our Nursing Home Value-Based Purchasing Demonstration and two gainsharing demonstrations.”

“What we learn from the various Medicare demonstrations will help us to achieve the administration’s goals of paying for high quality and efficient health care in America,” says Jonathan Blum, director of the CMS’ Center for Medicare Management and acting director of the Center for Health Plan Choices. “Building on these findings, we will aggressively test new demonstration concepts to continue to meet these goals.” 

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