Virginia Care Partners
September 17, 2020

Virginia Care Partners ACO, LLC, announces $1.1M in shared savings with a quality score of 100 for the 2019 measurement period. The July - December performance period was the organization’s first six-month agreement as an Accountable Care Organization under the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) new ‘Pathways to Success’ Model. The ACO improved care for 23,000 Medicare beneficiaries and saved CMS nearly $5.5M.

“Being a new ACO, we weren’t sure what our impact would be in such a short amount of time,” said Dr. John Siedlecki, ACO Board Chair and family physician with Family Practice Specialists of Richmond. “Our providers and practice staff’s persistent focus on strategies to improve patient care while reducing unnecessary costs has been the force behind our success.”

Virginia Care Partners ACO, LLC was granted ACO status on July 1, 2019. The organization has a multi-year agreement and began its first year in CMS’ BASIC Track Level A. The ACO’s sister organization, the Virginia Care Partners clinically integrated network, is comprised of over 900 area physicians and has paved the way in value-based care since 2013. The commercial network has contracts with six major payers and a Medicare Advantage plan, demonstrating substantial financial and clinical success in the past four years.

VCP identifies opportunities through claims data to manage cost and improve outcomes for beneficiaries including outreach to patients about appropriate preventive care and managing chronic conditions. The organization’s clinical consulting team, comprised of nurses, coders and a pharmacist, works one on one with each practice to review progress and provide resources to assist the groups in achieving the goals established by the network’s physician-led governing Board and Committees.

“This is an impressive accomplishment for a first year ACO,” said Danielle Sistrunk, Director of Quality for Virginia Care Partners. “Because of our existing infrastructure and a record of success in managing value-based arrangements with our commercial patients, we were immediately able to provide support for our ACO physician partners to help keep health care costs down while providing a high level of quality care on behalf of our Medicare patients.”

CMS released 2019 performance year results for the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), which can be viewed at the links below:

In 2019, 541 ACOs in the Medicare Shared Savings Program generated $1.19 billion in total net savings to Medicare, the largest annual savings for the program to date. This is also the third year in a row that the program has achieved net program savings.