Since its founding, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) has tested more than 50 alternative payment models reaching more than 28 million patients across 528,000 health care providers and plans, yielding invaluable insights on the implementation of models to achieve better care, better health, and lower costs. On the other hand, many basic lessons learned are lessons unapplied. U.S. population health outcomes lag behind its highly economically developed peers and our health system is still firmly entrenched in the fee-for-service payment system that rewards service volume.

This Special Publication suggests six key priority actions for CMMI centered on signaling, mapping, measuring, modeling, partnering, and demonstrating. These priority actions, coupled with implementation considerations that focus on meaningful and continuous engagement, intersectionality and diversity, and expanding CMMI activities and impact, are intended to assist in aligning, supporting, and informing the implementation of CMMI’s Strategic Refresh.