Eight Colorado Beacon Consortium practices at nine sites will participate in the Comprehensive Primary Care initiative, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center recently announced. The Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative is an Innovation Center demonstration project aimed at creating collaboration between private health plans, Medicare and Medicaid to support and strengthen primary care.

The participating practices will receive enhanced funding from several participating payers, which will aim to allow them to integrate and strengthen their capacity to implement practice-wide quality improvement. CMS' Medicare payment model includes fee-for-service, a monthly care management fee and shared savings; private payers have developed their own payment arrangements. Colorado was one of only seven markets selected from around the country to participate.

"I want to commend the Western Colorado practices selected to participate," Patrick Gordon, CBC program director, said in a statement. "Each has the vision and the capability to succeed and, in doing so, will provide a roadmap for their peers in other practices and payers alike."

Similar to the Beacon initiative, CPC is a multi-stakeholder, public/private approach. "The advances we made through the Beacon program helped us build the infrastructure to support the CPC initiative," Gordon said.

Beacon practices were not the only Western Colorado sites selected. Rocky Mountain Health Plans also participates in the Colorado Medicaid Accountable Care Collaborative as one of seven Regional Care Collaborative Organizations (RCCOs).