The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the participants in the Frontier Community Health Integration Project (FCHIP) Demonstration, an effort to increase access to care for Medicare beneficiaries in areas of the country where access to health services can be limited because of distance from providers. Ten critical access hospitals (CAHs) in Montana, Nevada, and North Dakota will participate in the Demonstration, which begins this August. The FCHIP Demonstration, a statutory mandate launched by the CMS Innovation Center in collaboration with the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, located in the Health Resources and Services Administration, will test new models of integrated, coordinated health care in the most sparsely populated rural counties in the nation over three years. This demonstration program will encourage the ten CAHs to provide essential services that are often not financially viable in rural communities with the goals of improving quality of care, increasing patient satisfaction in rural communities, and spending health care dollars more wisely. The demonstration will provide financial incentives for care coordination activities for local CAHs to reduce unnecessary admissions and readmissions across their networks of care.
Read more: https://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/Frontier-Community-Health-Integration-Project-Demonstration/