Fourth Report to Congress on the Evaluation of the Medicare Coordinated Care Demonstration

This report evaluated Mercy Medical Center North Iowa and Health Quality Partners, two providers in the Medicare Coordinated Care Demonstration, a rigorous multiyear evaluation sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to determine if care coordination improves quality of care and reduces Medicare expenditures. Neither program met CMS' objectives of cost savings or neutrality. However, the findings were more positive for the subgroup of enrollees at greater risk of hospitalization and high costs, and each program reduced hospitalizations for this subgroup. The report identifies intervention features that appear to contribute to the programs' ability to reduce hospitalizations for high-risk patients.