Definition
Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP)
The Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) is a CMS program in which Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) take responsibility for the cost and quality of care for a group of attributed Medicare fee-for-service patients. If the ACO keeps spending below a benchmark and meets quality measures, it shares in the savings; some tracks also share in losses.
Definition
What the MSSP is
The Medicare Shared Savings Program is the largest Medicare accountable-care model. Provider groups form an Accountable Care Organization, are assigned a panel of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries, and are measured against a spending benchmark and a set of quality measures over a performance year.
If the ACO delivers care for less than the benchmark while meeting quality thresholds, it earns a share of the savings. In the two-sided tracks the ACO is also on the hook for a share of any losses, which pushes groups toward proactive prevention, keeping patients healthy and out of the hospital, rather than volume.
Winning under MSSP depends on reaching attributed patients before costs spike: booking wellness visits, closing screening and chronic-care gaps, and following up after discharge. Rivvi runs those programs as conversations that book and confirm at panel scale, so the outreach keeps pace with attribution.
MSSP, answered
- What does MSSP stand for?
- MSSP stands for the Medicare Shared Savings Program, a CMS accountable-care program in which Accountable Care Organizations share in the savings they generate for attributed Medicare fee-for-service patients, provided they also meet defined quality measures for that performance year.
- What is attribution in the MSSP?
- Attribution is how CMS assigns Medicare beneficiaries to an ACO, usually based on where a patient receives the plurality of their primary care. The attributed panel defines whose cost and quality the ACO is accountable for, which is why panel management and patient outreach matter so much.
- How do ACOs earn shared savings?
- An ACO earns shared savings by keeping total spending for its attributed patients below a CMS benchmark while meeting quality thresholds. That typically means investing in prevention, care-gap closure, wellness visits, and post-discharge follow-up, so patients avoid costly, preventable hospitalizations.