Medicare’s Bundled Payments For Care Improvement Initiative Maintained Quality Of Care For Vulnerable Patients

The Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) initiative established four models to test whether linking payments for an episode of care could reduce Medicare payments while maintaining or improving quality. Evaluations concluded that model 2, the largest, generally lowered payments without reducing quality for the average beneficiary, but these global results could mask adverse findings among vulnerable subpopulations. We analyzed changes in...