Do does episode bundling improve quality and reduce cost?
This is the question put forth in a paper by Chen et al. (2017). The authors examine Medicare’s Acute Care Episode (ACE) Demonstration Program, which was a small, voluntary episode-based bundled payment program. According to the CMS website, There were 28 cardiac and 9 orthopedic inpatient surgical services and procedures included in the bundled payment demonstration. These…