In January, Healthcare IT News reported on the Innovation Center launched by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), whose mandate was to oversee and coordinate pilot projects focused on increasing quality and lowering the costs of healthcare.

Created under the Affordable Care Act, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Center is focused on demonstration projects focused on medical homes and ways to coordinate dual-eligible care for Medicaid and Medicare patients.

“For too long, healthcare in the United States has been fragmented – failing to meet patients’ basic needs, and leaving both patients and providers frustrated,” said CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, MD.

“Payment systems often fail to reward providers for coordinating care and keeping their patients healthy reinforcing this fragmentation. The Innovation Center will help change this trend by identifying, supporting and evaluating models of care that both improve the quality of care patients receive and lower costs.”

Acting Innovation Center Director Richard Gilfillan, MD, added the center would be a new and much-needed driver of innovation. “By working together with innovative and committed providers we can create a system that works better for everyone,” he said. “We want to identify, validate and scale models that have been effective in achieving better outcomes and improving the quality of care but may be relatively unknown.”

Berwick said officials at center would consult stakeholders across the healthcare sector to obtain input on its operations and build partnerships with those interested in its work. The organization will also test models that include establishing an “open innovation community” that serves as an information clearinghouse of best practices in healthcare innovation.