Quality-Of-Care Outcomes Better For Medicare Advantage Beneficiaries In Plans Using Two-Sided Risk Models

Medicare Advantage programs that assigned financial risk for total cost of care to physicians via two-sided risk models had better beneficiary health outcomes and care efficiency compared with fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare. The Medicare Advantage plans that used two-sided risk models performed better on all eight quality-of-care measures used in the comparison.

The comparison included data for 316,312 beneficiaries in Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada, Texas, and Utah who were enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan that used a two-sided risk model. The analysis compared the following quality-of-care measures:

Inpatient admissions: Compared . . .