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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last month announced a new program designed to prevent unnecessary hospital stays for beneficiaries with chronic illnesses.

Responding to studies that say conditions such as diabetes, advanced-stage congestive heart failure and coronary heart disease account for a disproportionate share of Medicare spending, CMS is calling on health care professionals from all medical sectors — including home health — to submit proposals for disease management projects.

The primary goal of the demonstration is to coordinate health care for chronically ill patients who often receive conflicting advice from multiple doctors at multiple sites.

“If you're getting fragmented care, you're more likely to go back to the hospital, and that is bad for everyone,” said a CMS spokesman. “So, if we can make a program like this work, it will make a lot of people a lot healthier for a lot longer — and it will save us money.”

In a Feb. 22 Federal Register notice, CMS said the agency will choose up to three disease-management organizations to conduct three-year demonstration projects designed to serve as many as 30,000 beneficiaries each. “An organization may propose one or multiple sites for any of its targeted diseases or for multiple diseases,” the notice said.

Under the demonstration, CMS will pay the disease-management organizations a monthly premium not only for coordinating care for chronically ill patients but also for providing prescription drugs that Medicare currently does not cover.

In some ways, the demonstrations will operate like managed care plans, providing an organized approach to a wide range of care options. However, unlike most health maintenance organizations, these programs will not require patients to visit only certain doctors.

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