Using Payment Incentives to Improve Care for the Chronically Ill in Medicare: First Year Implementation of the Medicare Care Management Performance Demonstration (MCMP)

The MCMP demonstration aims to improve quality and coordination of care for chronically ill Medicare beneficiaries and to promote adoption and use of health information technology (HIT) by small-to medium-sized primary care practices. This report looks at implementation experiences, use of electronic health records, and care management activities in eight primary care practices in each of the four participating states: Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, and Utah. MCMP appears to have prompted improvements to documentation of care and, to a lesser extent, modest positive operational changes in many of the practices. Changes are typically inconsistently applied based on practitioner and staff time and interest.