Signify Health is winding down its episodes of care business and will exit a major bundled payment program, the company announced on Friday.
Signify, a platform that leverages analytics and nationwide networks to build and back value-based care programs, will exit the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Bundled Payments for Care Improvement-Advanced (BPCI-A) model. The main hurdle, the company said, is CMS' newly-released retrospective trend calculations, which reduced the opportunity for savings.
The new data, Signify said, lowered the target prices for episodes, which limited the chance for savings.
Signify will continue to focus on its growing Home and Community Services segment, including its recent acquisition of Caravan Health. Leaving BPCI-A allows the company to continue making investments in growing and diversifying that business, Signify said.
“Our HCS segment is experiencing tremendous growth as our health plan clients have prioritized access to the home as part of their focus on closing clinical, behavioral, and social care gaps,” said Kyle Armbrester, Signify Health CEO, in a statement. “Clients are seeing the value in our unique position: our ability to see patients in the home and refer them to care for the urgent needs we identify."
"This is particularly so with the social and behavioral needs that are crucial to improving care but are often very hard to assess in traditional care settings," Armbrester said. We are making investments to create operational improvements that will increase efficiency, expand use of connected devices, and allow us to diversify into new services to drive better health outcomes in the lives of people we touch.”
A Signify official told Fierce Healthcare that the decision to pull out of BPCI-A was made in consultation with its clients and that the new trend calculations were hard to accurately forecast.
Signify expects that the move will have a positive impact on its earnings, and will provide additional guidance on its Q2 call next month.