MA VBID Model Participants Face New Era of Increased Accountability

CMS’s Medicare Advantage Value-Based Insurance Design (MA VBID) model — which offers MA organizations enhanced flexibility to tailor a variety of interventions to address health-related social needs — has gone through multiple iterations since its inception. In what CMS officials consider the third phase of its evolution, MA VBID participants will soon face new accountability for driving savings, addressing health equity and delivering meaningful supplemental benefits.   

The MA VBID model, which was launched by the CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) in 2017, has seen participation grow from nine MA organizations in three states to 69 MAOs serving an estimated 8.7 million VBID beneficiaries across the U.S. Having been extended through 2030, it is currently CMMI’s longest-running model and the only model specifically testing innovations in MA. Those innovations initially included offering supplemental benefits or reduced cost sharing to enrollees with certain chronic conditions or who participated in care management and/or disease management activities.