Unless hospitals and physicians are held accountable for the cost, quality, and utilization benchmarks achieved by their best-performing peers, healthcare costs won’t be contained, states a white paper by Health CEOs for Health Reform (HC4HR), a coalition of healthcare leaders whose mission is a “willingness to transform their business models to create a more sustainable health system.”
Click title to read more…
Realigning U.S. Health Care Incentives to Better Serve Patients and Taypayers advocates that CMS pay providers outcome-driven bundled payments based on shared risk. “Providers willing to accept greater shares of the risk within a shorter time-frame should be allowed to capture a greater share of the savings,” says the report. And for providers whose costs are higher than the median and who don’t follow integrated models of care, HC4HR recommends that CMS freeze or reduce their annual update factors. Rigorous quality standards should dictate payment for high-cost and overutilized services, while only regional “Centers of Excellence” would deliver the mostly costly and resource-intensive services.
The group would also like to abandon the Sustainable Growth Rate formula for physician payments and replace it with a value-based payment system. Other reforms outlined in the white paper include changes to medical malpractice laws, regulation of insurer billing to reduce administrative costs to hospitals and physicians, and enactment of laws to give clinicians a share of cost savings from better quality and efficient care.
If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it!
