Rural Issues Related to Bundled Payments for Acute Care Episodes

Date
06/2009
Description

Bundling Medicare payments, i.e., providing a fixed payment for a set of acute and post-acute services, has been proposed as a way of encouraging providers to find innovative, cost reducing strategies to provide better coordinated care. This brief describes challenges to implementing bundled payments in rural settings and discusses potential contracting and reimbursement strategies to address these challenges.

Center
Upper Midwest Rural Health Research Center
Authors
Robert Town, Walter Gregg, Ira Moscovice, Shailendra Prasad, Jill Klingner, Christopher Dickerson