This article describes the results of a simulation analysis of a payment model for specialty oncology services that is being developed for possible testing by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS asked MITRE and RAND to conduct simulation analyses to preview some of the possible impacts of the payment model and to inform desi...

The soaring cost of healthcare service demands alternative payment schemes to control expenditures while maintaining quality of service. The capitation payment scheme is a tentative substitute for the Fee-For-Service (FFS) scheme. A pilot capitation program study was conducted by the Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI) to evaluate the feasibility of a national rollout. Estimating the pot...

BACKGROUND Pediatric rehabilitation considers Family-centered service (FCS) as a way to increase participation of children with a physical disability in daily life. An important principal is that parents greatly contribute to their child's participation at school, at home, and in the community. However, it is unclear what kind of information is available from literature about what parents actua...

Patients and payers (government and private) are frustrated with the fee-for-service system (FFS) of payment for outpatient health services. FFS rewards volume and highly valued services, including expensive diagnostics and therapeutics, over lesser valued cognitive services. Proposed payment schemes would incent collaboration and coordination of care among providers and reward quality. In onco...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are responsible for costs and quality across a defined population. To succeed, the ACO must improve value by reducing costs while either maintaining or improving the quality of care. We examined changes from 2008 through 2013 in the cost and quality of care for Partners for Kids (PFK), a pediatric ACO serving an Ohio Medicaid popul...

IMPORTANCE The Pioneer Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Model aims to drive health care organizations to reduce expenditures while improving quality for fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare beneficiaries. OBJECTIVE To determine whether FFS beneficiaries aligned with Pioneer ACOs had smaller increases in spending and utilization than other FFS beneficiaries while retaining similar levels of care ...

Cloud communication service (CCS) with its simplicity and lower investment cost is becoming increasingly popular. In contrast to its growing popularity, very little is known about the internals of CCS with respect to its architecture and protocols. To gain insights into CCS, we study a popular cloud communication service ”Twilio” using gray box techniques. In our study, we provide insights into...