WASHINGTON – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, along with Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas and White House Office of Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle, have announced an initiative that will allow Medicare to join Medicaid and private insurers in state-based efforts to improve healthcare delivery.

The project will build on a model being tested in Vermont, where private insurers are working with Medicaid to set uniform standards for “Advanced Primary Care (APC) models,” also known as medical homes. These models provide incentives for doctors to spend more time with their patients and offer better-coordinated, higher-quality medical care.

“These demonstrations will strengthen our healthcare system and allow public and private providers to better work together,” said Sebelius. “When Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies coordinate their efforts, we can improve the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries.”

In APC models, physicians are given supplemental payments for achieving nationally-recognized quality standards, coordinating care across a multidisciplinary team and monitoring patients’ care outside the physician’s office or hospital using health information technology.

“As we have seen in Vermont, improved efficiencies in the system mean doctors can spend more time with their patients, provide high quality care and better coordinate that care with other medical professionals,” said Sebelius.

The project will mark the first time Medicare will be a full partner in these experiments, and the practice model would align compensation offered by all insurers to primary care physicians.

“The Medicare pilot program ... will help states like Vermont achieve our vision of high quality, affordable healthcare for all our residents,” said Douglas. “This is something we had been pushing for in Vermont for quite some time and I’m thrilled that Secretary Sebelius and her team have made it happen.”