January 19 Virtual Event: The Future of the CMS Innovation Center

In this conversation with Dr. Liz Fowler, Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), we hear first hand about the future of the CMS Innovation Center followed by audience Q&A. Hosted by USofCare CEO and Co-Founder, Natalie Davis. 

For more background information, please view the full slide deck from the CMS website.

On Wednesday, January 19, 2022, United States of Care (USofCare) held a virtual event with Liz Fowler, Deputy Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), to discuss The Innovation Center’s refreshed strategy on how our health care system can better meet the true needs of people. 

Dr. Fowler detailed five Strategic Objectives which CMMI believes are key to achieving equitable health outcomes through high-quality, affordable, person-centered care. This refreshed strategy follows the Innovation Center’s decade-long strategic effort to make health care more dependable, affordable, personalized, and understandable, directly affecting tens of millions of people. 

These objectives include: 

• Drive Accountable Care: Provide all providers with the incentives and tools to allow more people to access high-quality, affordable care. 
• Advance Health Equity: Integrate demographic data, social needs, and social determinants of health into CMMI models to increase focus on underserved populations. 
• Support Innovation: Provide payment incentives to help providers access better technology, collaborate, and improve best practices in order to deliver improved care.
• Address Affordability: Pursue strategies to decrease health care prices, and reduce unnecessary or duplicative care. 
• Partner to Achieve System Transformation: Bring together payers, purchasers, states, and beneficiaries with CMS priorities and policies to improve the affordability, quality, and equity of provided care. 

Following the discussion of The Innovation Lab’s refreshed strategy objectives, Davis and Fowler engaged in a Q&A session further touching on CMMI’s priorities to provide a more person-centered health care approach and to tackle concerns of health equity in our communities. 

A key part of this effort is to entice more provider participation in areas with underserved health care needs, particularly in rural areas. Dr. Fowler mentioned the Community Health Access and Rural Transformation model, launched last year, which pays providers based on value-based outcomes rather than volume and gives providers upfront investments. 

A major part of USofCare’s work is to bring together diverse groups from across the health care space in our mission to build a better and more equitable system in the wake of the pandemic. These connections help us keep striving for a system where people’s coverage is dependable and understandable, their care is personalized, and where we can all have certainty that our care will be affordable.

Thanks to Dr. Fowler and CMMI for joining us and sharing the policy work that can directly improve millions of people’s care!