NASHVILLE, Tennessee—HarmonyCares, a provider of value-based in-home care, announced that its Medicare care coordination company, HarmonyCares ACO LLC, achieved a net savings rate of 23% in its first performance year (2023) as an accountable care organization realizing equity, access and community health (ACO REACH) participant. As part of the ACO REACH high needs track, HarmonyCares said its savings rates made it the second-best performing participant in the country.
“Our strong performance in the high needs track of ACO REACH is a testament to HarmonyCares' ability to deliver high-quality care for people with Medicare who are polychronic and homebound, while also driving cost savings for the health care system,” said Matt Chance, CEO of HarmonyCares. “The high needs track of ACO REACH is uniquely designed for organizations like HarmonyCares that deploy care models dedicated to patients with complex needs. By eliminating socioeconomic barriers to care and focusing on proactive, in-home primary care, we've been able to significantly reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and improve patient outcomes, which translates directly into savings.”
HarmonyCares ACO’s performance highlights for 2023 include:
- Achieving 100% total quality score, driven by 99th percentile performance on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) days at home measure, as well as 90th percentile performance on the CMS all-cause readmission measure. HarmonyCares ACO earned back the full quality performance withhold amount.
- Delivering $9.1 million in annual total medical cost savings on roughly 700 aligned Medicare beneficiaries with complex illnesses.
- Achieving a gross savings rate of 26% and a net savings rate of 23% in its first year of participating in the high needs track of the ACO REACH model.
The company said its ACO performance is consistent with the preliminary findings of the CMS’ latest evaluation of the direct contracting model—the immediate predecessor to ACO REACH—which showed that participants in the high needs track produced gross savings to the Medicare program and reduced unnecessary utilization of inpatient hospital services, emergency department services and skilled nursing facilities.
"Patients with complex needs are a smaller subset of the overall Medicare population, but they drive a disproportionate amount of spending,” said Michael Millie, chief medical officer for HarmonyCares. “Our clinical quality and shared savings results demonstrate the effectiveness of our in-home primary care model under a value-based framework in helping patients stay healthy and at home. The high needs track of ACO REACH presents a unique opportunity to better manage care for patients with complex, polychronic care needs—who are also often the most socially and economically disadvantaged patients.”
