Health Affairs January 16, 2025
Editor’s Note
This article is the latest in the Health Affairs Forefront series, Accountable Care for Population Health, featuring analysis and discussion of how to understand, design, support, and measure patient-centered, cost-efficient care under the umbrella of accountable care. Additional articles will be published throughout 2025. Readers are encouraged to review the Call for Submissions for this series. We are grateful to Arnold Ventures for their support of this work.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center (CMS Innovation Center) uses financial benchmarks as one of several mechanisms to incentivize model participants to reduce health care spending and establish performance thresholds. Financial benchmarks for model participants estimate the expected cost of included health care items and services for...