Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Bundled Payments

[AnnaLee]

Has this or something similar happened to other Medicare A&B primary participants? My husband, age 75, is in the hospital having developed a case of pneumonia. He has advanced Parkinson's so pneumonia can be life threatening. Yesterday I received a letter from a physician’s group I never heard of before, "Sound Physicians". The letter begins with: "We wanted to let you know that your health care provider, Sound Physicians, has volunteered to take part in our Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced Model (BPCI Advanced). " I can provide the rest of this letter if you want to see it.

How can an outfit I've never heard of before be my "health care provider". My insurance is through Medicare with GEHA as secondary. I cannot find that this organization runs the local hospital or it's ER. Neither I, nor my husband, have given this organization or anyone claiming to be a part of this organization permission to bypass CMS and manage our healthcare. So, CMS must have let this happen without our knowledge. Can they discriminate against a selected few that are getting old and sick by dumping them into private, for-profit, cost centers run, presumably, by high paid hospitalists? I checked this is a CMS innovation program in its experimental phase.

Good grief, he is a sick man, not a guinea pig. Has anyone else received an announcement that they were placed by Medicare into an experimental management program for "better care at lower cost". When your loved one is in the middle of a medical crisis, it feels like CMS decided to see if they can kill the old man.
https://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/bpci-advanced/