On March 21, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (the Innovation Center) relaunched its website: http://innovations.cms.gov. The Innovation Center, established in March 2010 by Section 3021 of the Affordable Care Act, is charged with testing innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce costs and improve quality. Dr. Richard J. Gilfillan, MD, the Acting Director of the Innovation Center has described the Innovation Center as a much-needed driver of innovation aimed at improving healthcare for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

The Innovation Center has identified three models for payment and delivery efforts:

• Patient Care Models that focus on improving care for Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP beneficiaries in specific care settings and developing innovations that make care safer, more patient-centered, more efficient, more effective, more timely, and more equitable.
• Seamless Coordinated Care Models that focus on making it easier for doctors and clinicians in different care settings to work together to care for a Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP beneficiaries.
• Community and Population Health Models that focus on improving public health and making communities healthier and stronger.

In November 2010, the Innovation Center announced three care coordination demonstrations:

• A demonstration project in eight states to evaluate the effectiveness of doctors and other health professionals across the care system working in a more integrated fashion and receiving more coordinated payment from Medicare, Medicaid, and private health plans.
• A project to test the effectiveness of doctors and other health professionals working in teams to treat low-income Medicare patients at community health centers.
• A health home model for Medicaid enrollees with at least two chronic conditions to test care coordination for patients.

Additionally, the Innovation Center is awarding $1 million to up to 15 states to experiment with new models of care coordination for dual eligible populations.

The Arent Fox Government Relations and Health Care practice groups are actively monitoring activities of the Innovation Center. For more information about how your organization can become more engaged, please contact: