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American Board of Family Medicine

Policy design workshops reveal the impact of social risk factors in CMS payments.

Client

American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM)

Our Expertise

UX Research

Timeframe

2021 - 2022

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Context

Aligning healthcare resources with population needs based on social risk.

As a whole, social determinants exert a more significant influence on health than health care itself. However, Medicare and Medicaid, and most other payers, have not yet adjusted payments to better support healthcare providers.

Social-needs payment adjustment aims to increase resources for clinics according to the social risk of their patient population through a reliable, defensible, and transparent mechanism and align this mechanism with processes to identify at-risk patients who can benefit from these resources.

A group photo of workshop participants working.
A photo of pink and green stickie notes from the workshop service design session.

Challenge

Designing the Future State to Account for CMS Payment Risks.

In partnership with Agile Six and Social Innovation Ventures, Friends From The City designed and facilitated two policy design workshops to develop a future-state CMS payment system that incorporates social risk in a sustainable, equitable way.

During these workshops, CMS, ASPE, safety net health plan providers, clinicians, and state representatives, collaborated to design new potential approaches to risk adjustment for Medicare and Medicaid programs.

A collage with an abstract image as the background and an iPad mockup of the ABFM website depicting the workshop findings.