Acute Unscheduled Care Model

As Medicare and other payors move away from fee-for-service toward more value-based care, ACEP has taken a leading role in putting emergency physicians in the driver’s seat to help manage this transition by developing the first, and only, emergency medicine-specific alternative payment model (APM), the Acute Unscheduled Care Model (AUCM).

In September 2019, former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar stated that he believes the core concepts of the AUCM should be incorporated into the APMs that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)’ Innovation Center (CMMI) is developing. While this was exciting news, CMMI has yet to conduct the work to carry out the Secretary’s request.

The AUCM was originally constructed as a Medicare APM. However, other payors besides Medicare, including private insurers and state Medicaid agencies, can use the AUCM framework to build an APM. ACEP has developed information and resources on the AUCM including background materials and toolkits for emergency physicians who are interested in participating in APMs.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to ACEP's Regulatory Affairs Director Jeffrey Davis.