Abstract
Background
The Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) model was implemented in April-2016 to standardize cost and improve quality of care for two of the most commonly billed inpatient procedures for Medicare patients, total knee and total hip arthroplasty. The purpose of this study is to compare one institution's predicted savings and losses under the CJR model with actual savings and losses after two years of implementation and discuss new methods to maintain savings.
Methods
Using our institution's data, we calculated the mean cost per episode of care. We calculated the percent reduction in target price and percent savings or losses per case for the CJR and Bundle Payment Care Initiative (BPCI) for each Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group (MS-DRG) using mean cost per episode and CJR and BPCI target prices. We compared the target prices, annual savings, and losses per episode of care for both CJR and BPCI. All CJR savings, projected and actual, were computed by comparing CJR savings to that of 2018 BPCI savings.
Results
We found an average savings of 2.32% under CJR compared to the projected loss of −11.6% for MS-DRG 469 with fracture. There was a 7.97% savings for MS-DRG 470 without fracture compared to the projected 1.9%, a 20.94% savings for MS-DRG 470 with fracture compared to the projected 23.7%, and a loss of −3.98% for MS-DRG 469 without fracture compared to the projected 2.5% savings.
Conclusions
The CJR target prices are lower than that of BPCI and this makes maintaining an episode of care at or below the target price increasingly difficult. Discharge disposition and readmission are well established factors that increase hospital cost [7]. However, reduction of these does not seem enough to maintain savings under the CJR model. New cost savings mechanisms such as identification of patients eligible for SDD, and reduction of unnecessary home services resulted in smaller losses of positive margins, though these were still significantly less for CJR than BPCI.
