In his June 8th blog, Chris Emper alluded to provider survey results that revealed a significant level of concern regarding downside risk in their ACO agreements. He explained CMS’s response that assured participants they would not be financially harmed by the pandemic. As providers turn their attention to commercial contracts, they would be well advised to pursue opportunities to manage risk during these particularly uncertain times. Following are some approaches to consider. Review Your Contracts If there is not already a “force majeure” clause in your contract, that might be the first thing to consider. A force majeure clause is a “contractual provision which excuses one or both parties’ performance obligations when circumstances arise which are beyond the parties’ control and make performance of the contract impractical or impossible.”1 While potentially helpful these clauses are no guarantee as the precise language is unique to each contract and they offer varying degrees of enforceability across states.2 A related issue is to ensure that there is a clear process for dispute resolution. While it’s important to have precise language in the contract regarding details of the financial terms and quality measures, it is likely that situations arise where the parties either interpret the language differently or particular circumstances are not anticipated in the contract. In that case, a sound dispute resolution process can go a long way toward helping manage risk and build trust. Narrow Your Risk Narrowing your risk corridor is a straightforward, but blunt force approach to mitigate risk. This would involve a symmetric reduction to both your upside opportunity and downside exposure within a given contract. Another option would be to lower your threshold for stop loss. While that protects you from an unexpected rise in high cost claimants, it also lowers your upside potential to the extent that there may be significant cost savings opportunities among high cost claimants.