September 7, 2018 – A national multi-sector alliance of health care industry leaders, including Leavitt Partners, Facing Addiction with NCADD (The National Council on Alcoholism on Drug Dependence), and Remedy Partners, along with other leading healthcare companies, today announced the Addiction Recovery Medical Home (ARMH) model, an Alternative Payment Model (APM) engineered to provide patients with a long-term, comprehensive and integrated pathway to treatment and recovery. The Alliance for Recovery-Centered Addiction Health Services (Alliance) released a year-long consensus report at today’s Summit for Addiction Recovery Payment Reform.
“As addiction to alcohol and other drugs now impacts 1 in 3 households in America, we must urgently work to turn the tide on this health crisis,” said Greg Williams, a person in long-term recovery and Facing Addiction with NCADD’s Executive Vice President. “In late 2016, the U.S. Surgeon General issued the seminal report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health: Facing Addiction In America. In this report, an urgent call to action for mainstream health systems to begin integration of substance use health services was afforded an entire chapter, and the industry leaders in this Alliance have responded in unprecedented fashion to that call.”
The ARMH framework establishes a broad continuum of care ranging from emergent and stabilizing acute-care settings to community-based services and support that are essential to managing patient needs in a chronic disease model. The proposed payment model – which incorporates aspects of fee-for-service, episodes-of-care, quality-adjustments and shared-savings – promotes improved integration of treatment and recovery resources with corresponding financial incentives that benefit all stakeholders when the patient is well managed by a multi-disciplinary care team.
“The current payment models have failed to encourage the lasting recovery of the millions of people who are dealing with addiction,” said Chris Garcia, Chief Executive Officer at Remedy Partners. “The ARMH model offers the potential to refocus the energies of physicians and other care givers on what matters, helping the patient on the pathway to lasting recovery.”
“We see the most progress in healthcare when the clinical and the economic incentives are aligned. Treating substance use is tough enough, but without a thoughtful economic system in place, it is going to be very slow going,” said David Shulkin, MD, Former Secretary, U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs and Chairman, Remedy Partners National Advisory Board. “The addiction recovery medical home model of care aligns the interests of patients, providers and payers through a new risk-based payment methodology. Combined with the right therapeutic approaches to care, this payment system is the type of innovation that we need to accelerate our progress in dealing with the opioid crisis.”
“One of the greatest impediments to sustained recovery for patients is that various programs and treatment settings operate in isolation from one another with limitations in requisite information-sharing with other key parties,” said Anne Marie Polak, Senior Director at Leavitt Partners. “We are proud to say that the ARMH model is designed with the flexibility to meet providers and patients where they are, while honoring chronic disease management principles that will improve the coordination and application of care and recovery support.”
“Having lost a father, brother, and sister to the scourge of addiction, I have come to a deep appreciation for the difficult road to recovery millions of Americans face,” said David Smith, an economist and value-based payment expert. “The profound human cost borne by families and those struggling with alcohol and other drugs is incalculable. This work is perfectly timed with the unique coalescence of the worst drug epidemic in our nation’s history, a shifting payment landscape towards value and outcomes, and the irrefutable evidence regarding the chronic nature of addiction.”
The Alliance intends to pilot the ARMH model in at least two markets beginning in 2019. A rigorous research methodology will be developed and leveraged to study the effects of the model when compared to non-ARMH models of care and to study correlations between specific model tenets and the corresponding outputs. For more information about phase one of this work please visit: www.incentivizerecovery.org.
About The Alliance for Recovery-Centered Addiction Health Services
Members of the Alliance include major commercial insurance plans, health care associations, health systems, and stakeholder groups. Since August 2017, the Alliance convened clinical, addiction, information technology, primary care, social, regulatory, and policy expertise logging hundreds of hours of work group meetings, ratifying principles and outputs. Alliance Members Include: Anthem, AmeriHealth Caritas, American Hospital Association, Beacon Health Options, CaseSource, Facing Addiction with NCADD, FAVOR Greenville, Healthcare Financial Management Association, Intermountain Healthcare, Leavitt Partners, Remedy Partners, and Third Horizon Strategies. For more information about the work of the Alliance please visit: www.incentivizerecovery.org.
About Leavitt Partners
Leavitt Partners is a health care intelligence business. The firm helps clients successfully navigate the evolving role of value in health care by informing, advising, and convening industry leaders on value market analytics, alternative payment models, federal strategies, insurance market insights, and alliances. Through its family of businesses, the firm provides investment support, data and analytics, member-based alliances, and direct services to clients to support decision-making strategies in the value economy. For more information please visit www.LeavittPartners.com.
About Facing Addiction with NCADD
Facing Addiction with NCADD is a national non-profit organization dedicated to unifying the voices of the more than 45 million Americans and their families directly impacted by addiction. Facing Addiction is bringing together the best resources in the field in order to reduce the human and social costs of addiction, every year, until this public health crisis is eliminated. To learn more, visit www.facingaddiction.org or find us on Facebook/Twitter @FacingAddiction.
About Remedy Partners
Remedy Partners delivers software and services that enable payers, employers and at-risk providers to organize and finance healthcare delivery around a patient’s episode of care. For healthcare providers, Remedy Partners’ software, analytics and administrative services support bundled payment contracts with Medicare and commercial insurers, often through shared-risk partnerships. For payers, Remedy Partners empowers the development of bundled payment contracting programs and guides the development of bundled payment networks. Remedy Partners presently delivers its services to partners at more than 1,000 healthcare locations nationwide. To learn more, visit www.remedypartners.com or find us on Twitter @RemedyPartners or on LinkedIn.