Category Archives: Risk-Based Contracting

The Value-based Care Agenda in Trump 2.0 Healthcare

Posted on by • Posted in 2026 Mid Term Election Issues, 2028 Election Issues, ACA, Accountable Care Organization (ACO), Alternative Payment Model, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), Pay for Performance, Physician Compensation, Physician Employment, Physician Leadership, Physician Practice Management, Risk-Based Compensation, Risk-Based Contracting, Shared Savings Rate, Value Based Care Model, Value Creation, Value-Based Care Functions, Value-Based Contracting, Value-Based Healthcare • Leave a comment
The Value-based Care Agenda in Trump 2.0 Healthcare

This week, the House Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means Committees begins work on the reconciliation bill they hope to complete by Memorial Day. Healthcare cuts are expected to figure prominently in the committee’s work.

And in San Diego, America’s Physician Groups (APG) will host its spring meeting “Kickstarting Accountable Care: Innovations for an Urgent Future” featuring Presidential historian Dorris Kearns Goodwin and new CMS Innovation Center Director Abe Sutton. Its focus will be the immediate future of value-based programs in Trump Healthcare 2.0, especially accountable care organizations (ACOs) and alternative payment models (APMs).

Central to both efforts is the administration’s mandate to reduce federal spending which it deems achievable, in part, by replacing fee for services with value-based payments to providers from the government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs. 

The CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) is the government’s primary vehicle to test and implement alternative payment programs that reduce federal spending and improve the quality and effectiveness of services simultaneously.

Pledges to replace fee-for-service payments with value-based incentives are not new to Medicare.  Twenty-five years ago, they were called “pay for performance” programs and, in 2010, included in the Affordable Care as alternative payment models overseen by CMMI.

But the effectiveness of APMs has been modest at best: of 50+ models attempted, only 6 proved effective in reducing Medicare spending while spending $5.4 billion on the programs. Few were adopted in Medicaid and only a handful by commercial payers and large self-insured employers. Critics argue the APMs were poorly structured, more costly to implement than potential shared savings payments and sometimes more focused on equity and DEI aims than actual savings.

The question is how the Mehmet Oz-Abe Sutten version of CMMI will approach its version of value-based care, given modest APM results historically and the administration’s focus on cost-cutting.

Context is key:

Recent efforts by the Trump Healthcare 2.0 team and its leadership appointments in CMS and CMMI point to a value-agenda will change significantly. Alternative payment models will be fewer and participation by provider groups will be mandated for several. Measures of quality and savings will be fewer, more easily measured and and standardized across more episodes of care. Financial risks and shared savings will be higher and regulatory compliance will be simplified in tandem with restructuring in HHS, CMS and CMMI to improve responsiveness and consistency across federal agencies and programs.

Sutton’s experience as the point for CMMI is significant. Like Adam Boehler, Brad Smith and other top Trump Healthcare 2.0 leaders, he brings prior experience in federal health agencies and operating insight from private equity-backed ventures (Honest Health, Privia, Evergreen Nephrology funded through Nashville-based Rubicon Founders). Sutton’s deals have focused on physician-driven risk-bearing arrangements with Medicare with funding from private investors.

The Trump Healthcare 2.0 team share a view that the healthcare system is unnecessarily expensive and wasteful, overly-regulated and under-performing. They see big hospitals and drug companies as complicit—more concerned about self-protection than consumer engagement and affordability.

They see flawed incentives as a root cause, and believe previous efforts by CMS and CMMI veered inappropriately toward DEI and equity rather than reducing health costs.

And they think physicians organized into risk bearing structures with shared incentives, point of care technologies and dependable data will reduce unnecessary utilization (spending) and improve care for patients (including access and affordability).

There’s will be a more aggressive approach to spending reduction and value-creation with Medicare as the focus: stronger alternative payment models and expansion of Medicare Advantage will book-end their collective efforts as Trump Healthcare 2.0 seeks cost-reduction in Medicare.

What’s ahead?

Trump Healthcare 2.0 value-based care is a take-no prisoners strategy in which private insurers in Medicare Advantage have a seat at their table alongside hospitals that sponsor ACOs and distribute the majority of shared savings to the practicing physicians. But the agenda will be set, and re-set by the administration and link-minded physician organizations like America’s Physician Groups and others that welcome financial risk-sharing with Medicare and beyond.

The results of the Trump Healthcare 2.0 value agenda will be unknown to voters in the November 2026 mid-term but apparent by the Presidential campaign in 2028. In the interim, surrogate measures for performance—like physician participation and projected savings–will be used to show progress and the administration will claim success. It will also spark criticism especially from providers who believe access to needed specialty care will be restricted, public and rural health advocates whose funding is threatened, teaching and clinical research organizations who facing DOGE cuts and regulatory uncertainty, patient’s right advocacy groups fearing lack of attention and private payers lacking scalable experience in Medicare Advantage and risk-based relationships with physicians.

Last week, the American Medical Association named Dr. John Whyte its next President replacing widely-respected 12-year CEO/EVP Jim Madara. When he assumes this office in July, he’ll inherit an association that has historically steered clear of major policy issues but the administration’s value-based care agenda will quickly require his attention.

Physicians including AMA members are restless:

At last fall’s House of Delegates (HOD), members passed a resolution calling for constraints on not-for-profit hospital’ tax exemptions due to misleading community benefits reporting and more consistency in charity care reporting by all hospitals.

The majority of practicing physicians are burned-out due to loss of clinical autonomy and income pressures—especially the 75% who are employees of hospitals and private-equity backed groups. And last week, the American College of Physicians went on record favoring “collective action” to remedy physician grievances. All impact the execution of the administration’s value-based agenda.

Arguably, the most important key to success for the Trump Healthcare 2.0 is its value agenda and physician support—especially the primary care physicians on whom the consumer engagement and appropriate utilization is based. It’s a tall order.

The Trump Healthcare 2.0 value agenda is focused on near-term spending reductions in Medicare. Savings in federal spending for Medicaid will come thru reconciliation efforts in Congress that will likely include work-requirements for enrollees, elimination of subsidies for low-income adults and drug formulary restrictions among others. And, at least for the time being, attention to those with private insurance will be on the back burner, though the administration favors insurance reforms adding flexible options for individuals and small groups.

The Trump Healthcare 2.0 value-agenda is disruptive, aggressive and opportunistic for physician organizations and their partners who embrace performance risk as a permanent replacement for fee for service healthcare. It’s a threat to those that don’t.

The Value-based Care Agenda in Trump 2.0 Healthcare

Posted on by • Posted in 2028 Election Issues, Accountable Care Organization (ACO), Alternative Payment Model, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), Fee for Service Reimbursement, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Pay for Performance, Physician Burnout, Physician Incentives, Physician Leadership, Physician Practice Management, Risk-Based Compensation, Risk-Based Contracting, Value Based Care Model, Value-Based Care Functions, Value-Based Contracting, Value-Based Healthcare • Leave a comment
The Value-based Care Agenda in Trump 2.0 Healthcare

This week, the House Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means Committees begins work on the reconciliation bill they hope to complete by Memorial Day. Healthcare cuts are expected to figure prominently in the committee’s work.

And in San Diego, America’s Physician Groups (APG) will host its spring meeting “Kickstarting Accountable Care: Innovations for an Urgent Future” featuring Presidential historian Dorris Kearns Goodwin and new CMS Innovation Center Director Abe Sutton. Its focus will be the immediate future of value-based programs in Trump Healthcare 2.0, especially accountable care organizations (ACOs) and alternative payment models (APMs).

Central to both efforts is the administration’s mandate to reduce federal spending which it deems achievable, in part, by replacing fee for services with value-based payments to providers from the government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs. The CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) is the government’s primary vehicle to test and implement alternative payment programs that reduce federal spending and improve the quality and effectiveness of services simultaneously.

Pledges to replace fee-for-service payments with value-based incentives are not new to Medicare.  Twenty-five years ago, they were called “pay for performance” programs and, in 2010, included in the Affordable Care as alternative payment models overseen by CMMI. But the effectiveness of APMs has been modest at best: of 50+ models attempted, only 6 proved effective in reducing Medicare spending while spending $5.4 billion on the programs. Few were adopted in Medicaid and only a handful by commercial payers and large self-insured employers. Critics argue the APMs were poorly structured, more costly to implement than potential shared savings payments and sometimes more focused on equity and DEI aims than actual savings.

The question is how the Mehmet Oz-Abe Sutten version of CMMI will approach its version of value-based care, given modest APM results historically and the administration’s focus on cost-cutting.

Context is key:

Recent efforts by the Trump Healthcare 2.0 team and its leadership appointments in CMS and CMMI point to a value-agenda will change significantly. Alternative payment models will be fewer and participation by provider groups will be mandated for several. Measures of quality and savings will be fewer, more easily measured and and standardized across more episodes of care. Financial risks and shared savings will be higher and regulatory compliance will be simplified in tandem with restructuring in HHS, CMS and CMMI to improve responsiveness and consistency across federal agencies and programs.

Sutton’s experience as the point for CMMI is significant. Like Adam Boehler, Brad Smith and other top Trump Healthcare 2.0 leaders, he brings prior experience in federal health agencies and operating insight from private equity-backed ventures (Honest Health, Privia, Evergreen Nephrology funded through Nashville-based Rubicon Founders). Sutton’s deals have focused on physician-driven risk-bearing arrangements with Medicare with funding from private investors.

The Trump Healthcare 2.0 team share a view that the healthcare system is unnecessarily expensive and wasteful, overly-regulated and under-performing. They see big hospitals and drug companies as complicit—more concerned about self-protection than consumer engagement and affordability. They see flawed incentives as a root cause, and believe previous efforts by CMS and CMMI veered inappropriately toward DEI and equity rather than reducing health costs. And they think physicians organized into risk bearing structures with shared incentives, point of care technologies and dependable data will reduce unnecessary utilization (spending) and improve care for patients (including access and affordability).

There’s will be a more aggressive approach to spending reduction and value-creation with Medicare as the focus: stronger alternative payment models and expansion of Medicare Advantage will book-end their collective efforts as Trump Healthcare 2.0 seeks cost-reduction in Medicare.

What’s ahead?

Trump Healthcare 2.0 value-based care is a take-no prisoners strategy in which private insurers in Medicare Advantage have a seat at their table alongside hospitals that sponsor ACOs and distribute the majority of shared savings to the practicing physicians. But the agenda will be set, and re-set by the administration and link-minded physician organizations like America’s Physician Groups and others that welcome financial risk-sharing with Medicare and beyond.

The results of the Trump Healthcare 2.0 value agenda will be unknown to voters in the November 2026 mid-term but apparent by the Presidential campaign in 2028. In the interim, surrogate measures for performance—like physician participation and projected savings–will be used to show progress and the administration will claim success. It will also spark criticism especially from providers who believe access to needed specialty care will be restricted, public and rural health advocates whose funding is threatened, teaching and clinical research organizations who facing DOGE cuts and regulatory uncertainty, patient’s right advocacy groups fearing lack of attention and private payers lacking scalable experience in Medicare Advantage and risk-based relationships with physicians.

Last week, the American Medical Association named Dr. John Whyte its next President replacing widely-respected 12-year CEO/EVP Jim Madara. When he assumes this office in July, he’ll inherit an association that has historically steered clear of major policy issues but the administration’s value-based care agenda will quickly require his attention.

Physicians including AMA members are restless: at last fall’s House of Delegates (HOD), members passed a resolution calling for constraints on not-for-profit hospital’ tax exemptions due to misleading community benefits reporting and more consistency in charity care reporting by all hospitals. The majority of practicing physicians are burned-out due to loss of clinical autonomy and income pressures—especially the 75% who are employees of hospitals and private-equity backed groups. And last week, the American College of Physicians went on record favoring “collective action” to remedy physician grievances. All impact the execution of the administration’s value-based agenda.

Arguably, the most important key to success for the Trump Healthcare 2.0 is its value agenda and physician support—especially the primary care physicians on whom the consumer engagement and appropriate utilization is based. It’s a tall order.

The Trump Healthcare 2.0 value agenda is focused on near-term spending reductions in Medicare. Savings in federal spending for Medicaid will come thru reconciliation efforts in Congress that will likely include work-requirements for enrollees, elimination of subsidies for low-income adults and drug formulary restrictions among others. And, at least for the time being, attention to those with private insurance will be on the back burner, though the administration favors insurance reforms adding flexible options for individuals and small groups.

The Trump Healthcare 2.0 value-agenda is disruptive, aggressive and opportunistic for physician organizations and their partners who embrace performance risk as a permanent replacement for fee for service healthcare. It’s a threat to those that don’t.

6 priorities for health system strategists in 2024

Posted on by • Posted in Academic Medical Center, Board, Board Purpose, Capital Budget, Capital Deployment, Clinical Operating Efficiency, Contract Labor, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Inpatient Care, Labor Spend Management, Leadership Transformation, Leadership Vision, Operating Expense Reduction, Operating Expenses, Operating Income, Operating Margin, Operating Metrics, Operating Performance, Operating Revenue, Outpatient Care, Outpatient Migration, Patient Centered Care, Rebuilding, Recruiting, Risk Tolerance, Risk-Based Compensation, Risk-Based Contracting, Strategic Advantage, Strategic Alignment, Strategic Leadership, Strategic Plan, Talent Acquisition Strategy, Talent Management, Workforce Strategy • Leave a comment
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Health systems are recovering from the worst financial year in recent history. We surveyed strategic planners to find out their top priorities for 2024 and where they are focusing their energy to achieve growth and sustainability. Read on to explore the top six findings from this year’s survey.

Research questions

With this survey, we sought the answers to five key questions:

  1. How do health system margins, volumes, capital spending, and FTEs compare to 2022 levels?
  2. How will rebounding demand impact financial performance? 
  3. How will strategic priorities change in 2024?
  4. How will capital spending priorities change next year?

Bigger is Better for Financial Recovery

What did we find?

Hospitals are beginning to recover from the lowest financial points of 2022, where they experienced persistently negative operating margins. In 2023, the majority of respondents to our survey expected positive changes in operating margins, total margins, and capital spending. However, less than half of the sample expected increases in full-time employee (FTE) count. Even as many organizations reported progress in 2023, challenges to workforce recovery persisted.

40%

Of respondents are experiencing margins below 2022 levels

Importantly, the sample was relatively split between those who are improving financial performance and those who aren’t. While 53% of respondents projected a positive change to operating margins in 2023, 40% expected negative changes to margin.

One exception to this split is large health systems. Large health systems projected above-average recovery of FTE counts, volume, and operating margins. This will give them a higher-than-average capital spending budget.

Why does this matter?

These findings echo an industry-wide consensus on improved financial performance in 2023. However, zooming in on the data revealed that the rising tide isn’t lifting all boats. Unequal financial recovery, especially between large and small health systems, can impact the balance of independent, community, and smaller providers in a market in a few ways. Big organizations can get bigger by leveraging their financial position to acquire less resourced health systems, hospitals, or provider groups. This can be a lifeline for some providers if the larger organization has the resources to keep services running. But it can be a critical threat to other providers that cannot keep up with the increasing scale of competitors.

Variation in financial performance can also exacerbate existing inequities by widening gaps in access. A key stakeholder here is rural providers. Rural providers are particularly vulnerable to financial pressures and have faced higher rates of closure than urban hospitals. Closures and consolidation among these providers will widen healthcare deserts. Closures also have the potential to alter payer and case mix (and pressure capacity) at nearby hospitals.

Volumes are decoupled from margins

What did we find?

Positive changes to FTE counts, reduced contract labor costs, and returning demand led the majority of respondents in our survey to project organizational-wide volume growth in 2023. However, a significant portion of the sample is not successfully translating volume growth to margin recovery.

44%

Of respondents who project volume increases also predict declining margins

On one hand, 84% of our sample expected to achieve volume growth in 2023. And 38% of respondents expected 2023 volume to exceed 2022 volume by over 5%. But only 53% of respondents expected their 2023 operating margins to grow — and most of those expected that the growth would be under 5%. Over 40% of respondents that reported increases in volume simultaneously projected declining margins.

Why does this matter?

Health systems struggled to generate sufficient revenue during the pandemic because of reduced demand for profitable elective procedures. It is troubling that despite significant projected returns to inpatient and outpatient volumes, these volumes are failing to pull their weight in margin contribution. This is happening in the backdrop of continued outpatient migration that is placing downward pressure on profitable inpatient volumes.

There are a variety of factors contributing to this phenomenon. Significant inflationary pressures on supplies and drugs have driven up the cost of providing care. Delays in patient discharge to post-acute settings further exacerbate this issue, despite shrinking contract labor costs. Reimbursements have not yet caught up to these costs, and several systems report facing increased denials and delays in reimbursement for care. However, there are also internal factors to consider. Strategists from our study believe there are outsized opportunities to make improvements in clinical operational efficiency — especially in care variation reduction, operating room scheduling, and inpatient management for complex patients.

Strategists look to technology to stretch capital budgets

What did we find?

Capital budgets will improve in 2024, albeit modestly. Sixty-three percent of respondents expect to increase expenditures, but only a quarter anticipate an increase of 6% or more. With smaller budget increases, only some priorities will get funded, and strategists will have to pick and choose.

Respondents were consistent on their top priority. Investments in IT and digital health remained the number one priority in both 2022 and 2023. Other priorities shifted. Spending on areas core to operations, like facility maintenance and medical equipment, increased in importance. Interest in funding for new ambulatory facilities saw the biggest change, falling down two places.

Why does this matter?

Capital budgets for health systems may be increasing, but not enough. With the high cost of borrowing and continued uncertainty, health systems still face a constrained environment. Strategists are looking to get the biggest bang for their buck. Technology investments are a way to do that. Digital solutions promise high impact without the expense or risk of other moves, like building new facilities, which is why strategists continue to prioritize spending on technology.

The value proposition of investing in technology has changed with recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and our respondents expressed a high level of interest in AI solutions. New applications of AI in healthcare offer greater efficiencies across workforce, clinical and administrative operations, and patient engagement — all areas of key concern for any health system today.

Building is reserved for those with the largest budgets

What did we find?

Another way to stretch capital budgets is investing in facility improvements rather than new buildings. This allows health systems to minimize investment size and risk. Our survey found that, in general, strategists are prioritizing capital spending on repairs and renovation while deprioritizing building new ambulatory facilities.

When the responses to our survey are broken out by organization type, a different story emerges. The largest health systems are spending in ways other systems are not. Systems with six or more hospitals are increasing their overall capital expenditures and are planning to invest in new facilities. In contrast, other systems are not increasing their overall budgets and decreasing investments in new facilities.

AMCs are the only exception. While they are decreasing their overall budget, they are increasing their spending on new inpatient facilities.

Why does this matter?

Health systems seek to attract patients with new facilities — but only the biggest systems can invest in building outpatient and inpatient facilities. The high ranking of repairs in overall capital expenditure priorities suggests that all systems are trying to compete by maintaining or improving their current facilities. Will renovations be enough in the face of expanded building from better financed systems? The urgency to respond to the pandemic-accelerated outpatient shift means that building decisions made today, especially in outpatient facilities, could affect competition for years to come. And our survey responses suggest that only the largest health system will get the important first-mover advantage in this space.

AMCs are taking a different tack in the face of tight budgets and increased competition. Instead of trying to compete across the board, AMCs are marshaling resources for redeployment toward inpatient facilities. This aligns with their core identity as a higher acuity and specialty care providers.

Partnerships and affiliations offer potential solutions for health systems that lack the resources for building new facilities. Health systems use partnerships to trade volumes based on complexity. Partnerships can help some health systems to protect local volumes while still offering appropriate acute care at their partner organization. In addition, partnerships help health systems capture more of the patient journey through shared referrals. In both of these cases, partnerships or affiliations mitigate the need to build new inpatient or outpatient facilities to keep patients.

Revenue diversification tactics decline despite disruption

What did we find?

Eighty percent of respondents to our survey continued to lose patient volumes in 2023. Despite this threat to traditional revenue, health systems are turning from revenue diversification practices. Respondents were less likely to operate an innovation center or invest in early-stage companies in 2023. Strategists also reported notably less participation in downside risk arrangements, with a 27% decline from 2022 to 2023.

Why does this matter?

The retreat from revenue diversification and risk arrangements suggests that health systems have little appetite for financial uncertainty. Health systems are focusing on financial stabilization in the short term and forgoing practices that could benefit them, and their patients, in the long term.

Strategists should be cautious of this approach. Retrenchment on innovation and value-based care will hold health systems back as they confront ongoing disruption. New models of care, patient engagement, and payment will be necessary to stabilize operations and finances. Turning from these programs to save money now risks costing health systems in the future.

Market intelligence and strategic planning are essential for health systems as they navigate these decisions. Holding back on initiatives or pursuing them in resource-constrained environments is easier when you have a clear course for the future and can limit reactionary cuts.

Advisory Board’s long-standing research on developing strategy suggests five principles for focused strategy development:
 

  1. Strategic plans should confront complexity. Sift through potential future market disruptions and opportunities to establish a handful of governing market assumptions to guide strategy.
  2. Ground strategy development in answers to a handful of questions regarding future competitive advantage. Ask yourself: What will it take to become the provider of choice?
  3. Communicate overarching strategy with a clear, coherent statement that communicates your overall health system identity.
  4. A strategic vision should be supported by a limited number of directly relevant priorities. Resist the temptation to fill out “pro forma” strategic plan.
  5. Pair strategic priorities with detailed execution plans, including initiative roadmaps and clear lines of accountability.

Strategists align on a strategic vision to go back to basics

What did we find?

Despite uneven recovery, health systems widely agree on which strategic initiatives they will focus more on, and which they will focus less on. Health system leaders are focusing their attention on core operations — margins, quality, and workforce — the basics of system success. They aim to achieve this mandate in three ways. First, through improving efficiency in care delivery and supply chain. Second, by transforming key elements of the care delivery system. And lastly, through leveraging technology and the virtual environment to expand job flexibility and reduce administrative burden.

Health systems in our survey are least likely to take drastic steps like cutting pay or expensive steps like making acquisitions. But they’re also not looking to downsize; divesting and merging is off the table for most organizations going into 2024.

Why does this matter?

The strategic priorities healthcare leaders are working toward are necessary but certainly not easy. These priorities reflect the key challenges for a health system — margins, quality, and workforce. Luckily, most of strategists’ top priorities hold promise for addressing all three areas.

This triple mandate of improving margins, quality, and workforce seems simple in theory but is hard to get right in practice. Integrating all three core dimensions into the rollout of a strategic initiative will amplify that initiative’s success. But, neglecting one dimension can diminish returns. For example, focusing on operational efficiency to increase margins is important, but it’ll be even more effective if efforts also seek to improve quality. It may be less effective if you fail to consider clinicians’ workflow.

Health systems that can return to the basics, and master them, are setting a strong foundation for future growth. This growth will be much more difficult to attain without getting your house in order first.

Vendors and other health system partners should understand that systems are looking to ace the basics, not reinvent the wheel. Vendors should ensure their products have a clear and provable return on investment and can map to health systems’ strategic priorities. Some key solutions health systems will be looking for to meet these priorities are enhanced, easy-to-follow data tools for clinical operations, supply chain and logistics, and quality. Health systems will also be interested in tools that easily integrate into provider workflow, like SDOH screening and resources or ambient listening scribes.

Going back to basics

Craft your strategy

1. Rebuild your workforce.

One important link to recovery of volume is FTE count. Systems that expect positive changes in FTEs overwhelmingly project positive changes in volume. But, on average, less than half of systems expected FTE growth in 2023. Meanwhile, high turnover, churn, and early retirement has contributed to poor care team communication and a growing experience-complexity gap. Prioritize rebuilding your workforce with these steps:

  • Recover: Ensure staff recover from pandemic-era experiences by investing in workforce well-being. Audit existing wellness initiatives to maximize programs that work well, and rethink those that aren’t heavily utilized.
  • Recruit: Compete by addressing what the next generation of clinicians want from employment: autonomy, flexibility, benefits, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Keep up to date with workforce trends for key roles such as advance practice providers, nurses, and physicians in your market to avoid blind spots.
  • Retain: Support young and entry-level staff early and often while ensuring tenured staff feel valued and are given priority access to new workforce arrangements like hybrid and gig work. Utilize virtual inpatient nurses and virtual hubs to maintain experienced staff who may otherwise retire. Prioritize technologies that reduce the burden on staff, rather than creating another box to check, like ambient listening or asynchronous questionnaires.

2. Become the provider of choice with patient-centric care.

Becoming the provider of choice is crucial not only for returning to financial stability, but also for sustained growth. To become the provider of choice in 2024, systems must address faltering consumer perspectives with a patient-centric approach. Keep in mind that our first set of recommendations around workforce recovery are precursors to improving patient-centered care. Here are two key areas to focus on:

  • Front door: Ensure a multimodal front door strategy. This could be accomplished through partnership or ownership but should include assets like urgent care/extended hour appointments, community education and engagement, and a good digital experience.
  • Social determinants of health: A key aspect of patient-centered care is addressing the social needs of patients. Our survey found that addressing SDOH was the second highest strategic priority in 2023. Set up a plan to integrate SDOH screenings early on in patient contact. Then, work with local organizations and/or build out key services within your system to address social needs that appear most frequently in your population. Finally, your workforce DEI strategy should focus on diversity in clinical and leadership staff, as well as teaching clinicians how to practice with cultural humility.

3. Recouple volume and margins.

The increasingly decoupled relationship between volume and margins should be a concern for all strategists. There are three parts to improving volume related margins: increasing volume for high-revenue procedures, managing costs, and improving clinical operational efficiency.

  • Revenue growth: Craft a response to out-of-market travel for surgery. In many markets, the pool of lucrative inpatient surgical volumes is shrinking. Health systems are looking to new markets to attract patients who are willing to travel for greater access and quality. Read our findings to learn more about what you need to attract and/or defend patient volumes from out-of-market travel. 
  • Cost reduction: Although there are many paths health systems can take to manage costs, focusing on tactics which are the most likely to result in fast returns and higher, more sustainable savings, will be key. Some tactics health systems can deploy include preventing unnecessary surgical supply waste, making employees accountable for their health costs, and reinforcing nurse-led sepsis protocols.
  • Clinical operational efficiency: The number one strategic priority in 2023, according to our survey, was clinical operational efficiency, no doubt in response to faltering margins. Within this area, the top place for improvement was care variation reduction (CVR). Ensure you’re making the most out of CVR efforts by effectively prioritizing where to spend your time. Improve operational efficiency outside of CVR by improving OR efficiency and developing protocols for complex inpatient management. 

Taking stock of a decade of Medicare ACOs 

Posted on by • Posted in Accountable Care Organization (ACO), Medicare ACO, Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), Risk-Based Contracting • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/169732fa4667/the-weekly-gist-november-17-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

In this week’s graphic, we showcase recent data from Health Affairs highlighting the progress made by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) flagship value-based payment initiative, the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP).

Ten years into the program, a majority of MSSP accountable care organizations (ACOs) have now adopted downside risk, after a slow start that was accelerated by CMS’s 2018 Pathways to Success program update. With more ACOs in downside risk, over 60 percent of program participants received shared savings bonuses in 2022, as MSSP ACOs with two-sided risk are twice as likely as ones with upside-only risk to receive a bonus. 

Beyond taking downside risk, the highest-performing ACOs in the program have been smaller, physician-only ACOs with relatively more primary care doctors and fewer specialists. 

While the MSSP program has seen improved growth and savings coming out of the pandemic, the $1.8B in Medicare savings that it generated in 2022 represents only 0.2 percent of total Medicare spending last year. 

15 innovative ideas for fixing healthcare from 15 brilliant minds

Posted on by • Posted in Capitation, Change Agent, Change Mindset, Competition, Disruption, Disruptive Technology, Empowering Patients, Empowerment, Fixing Healthcare, Health Equity, Healthcare Reform, Innovation, Innovative Care Models, Integrated Delivery System, Leadership, Life Expectancy, Medical Education, Mortality, Payment Models, Payment Reform, Physician Burnout, Prior Authorization, Quality of Care, Risk Management, Risk-Based Compensation, Risk-Based Contracting, Social Determinants of Health, Thought Leaders • Leave a comment

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/15-innovative-ideas-fixing-healthcare-from-brilliant-pearl-m-d-/

After 18 years as CEO in Kaiser Permanente, I set my sights on improving the heatlh of the nation, hoping to find a way to achieve the same quality, technology and affordability our medical group delivered to 5 million patients on both coasts.

That quest launched the Fixing Healthcare podcast in 2018, and it inspired interviews with dozens of leaders, thinkers and doers, both in and around medicine. These experts shared innovative ideas and proven solutions for achieving (a) superior quality, (b) improved patient access, (c) lower overall costs, and (d) greater patient and clinician satisfaction.

This month, after 150 combined episodes, three questions emerged:

  • Which of the hundreds of ideas presented remain most promising?
  • Why, after five years and so many excellent solutions, has our nation experienced such limited improvements in healthcare?
  • And finally, how will these great ideas become reality?

To answer the first question, I offer 15 of the best Fixing Healthcare recommendations so far. Some quotes have been modified for clarity with links to all original episodes (and transcripts) included.

Fixing the business of medicine

1. Malcolm Gladwell, journalist and five-time bestselling author: “In other professions, when people break rules and bring greater economic efficiency or value, we reward them. In medicine, we need to demonstrate a consistent pattern of rewarding the person who does things better.”

2. Richard Pollack, CEO of the American Hospital Association (AHA): “I hope in 10 years we have more integrated delivery systems providing care, not bouncing people around from one unconnected facility to the next. I would hope that we’re in a position where there’s a real focus on ensuring that people get care in a very convenient way.”

Eliminating burnout

3. Zubin Damania, aka ZDoggMD, hospitalist and healthcare satirist: “In the culture of medicine, specialists view primary care as the weak medical students, the people who couldn’t get the board scores or rotation honors to become a specialist. Because why would you do primary care? It’s miserable. You don’t get paid enough. It’s drudgery. We must change these perceptions.”

4. Devi Shetty, India’s leading heart surgeon and founder of Narayana Health: “When you strive to work for a purpose, which is not about profiting yourself, the purpose of our action is to help society, mankind on a large scale. When that happens, cosmic forces ensure that all the required components come in place and your dream becomes a reality.”

5. Jonathan Fisher, cardiologist and clinician advocate: “The problem we’re facing in healthcare is that clinicians are all siloed. We may be siloed in our own institution thinking that we’re doing it best. We may be siloed in our own specialty thinking that we’re better than others. All of these divides need to be bridged. We need to begin the bridging.” 

Making medicine equitable

6. Jen Gunter, women’s health advocate and “the internet’s OB-GYN”: “Women are not listened to by doctors in the way that men are. They have a harder time navigating the system because of that. Many times, they’re told their pain isn’t that serious or their bleeding isn’t that heavy. We must do better at teaching women’s health in medicine.”

7. Amanda Calhoun, activist, researcher and anti-racism educator: “A 2015 survey showed that white residents and medical students still thought Black people feel less pain, which is wild to me because Black is a race. It’s not biological. This is actually an historical belief that persists. One of the biggest things we can do as the medical system is work on rebuilding trust with the Black community.”

Addressing social determinants of health

8. Don Berwick, former CMS administrator and head of 100,000 Lives campaign: “We know where the money should go if we really want to be a healthy nation: early childhood development, workplaces that thrive, support to the lonely, to elders, to community infrastructures like food security and transportation security and housing security, to anti-racism and criminal-justice reform. But we starve the infrastructures that could produce health to support the massive architecture of intervention.”

9. David T. Feinberg, chairman of Oracle Health: “Twenty percent of whether we live or die, whether we have life in our years and years in our life, is based on going to good doctors and good hospitals. We should put the majority of effort on the stuff that really impacts your health: your genetic code, your zip code, your social environment, your access to clean food, your access to transportation, how much loneliness you have or don’t have.”

Empowering patients

10. Elisabeth Rosenthal, physician, author and editor-in-chief of KHN: “To patients, I say write about your surprise medical bills. Write to a journalist, write to your local newspaper. Hospitals today are very sensitive about their reputations and they do not want to be shamed by some of these charges.”

11. Gordon Chen, ChenMed CMO: “If you think about what leadership really is, it’s influence. Nothing more, nothing less. And the only way to achieve better health in patients is to get them to change their behaviors in a positive way. That behavior change takes influence. It requires primary care physicians to build relationship and earn trust with patients. That is how both doctors and patients can drive better health outcomes.”

Utilizing technology

12. Vinod Khosla, entrepreneur, investor, technologist: “The most expensive part of the U.S. healthcare system is expertise, and expertise can relatively be tamed with technology and AI. We can capture some of that expertise, so each oncologist can do 10 times more patient care than they would on their own without that help.”

13. Rod Rohrich, influential plastic surgeon and social media proponent: “Doctors, use social media to empower your audience, to educate them, and not to overwhelm them. If you approach social media by educating patients about their own health, how they can be better, how can they do things better, how they can find doctors better, that’s a good thing.”

Rethinking medical education

14. Marty Makary, surgeon and public policy researcher: “I would get rid of all the useless sh*t we teach our medical students and residents and fellows. In the 16 years of education that I went through, I learned stuff that has nothing to do with patient care, stuff that nobody needs to memorize.”

15. Eric Topol, cardiologist, scientist and AI expert: “It’s pretty embarrassing. If you go across 150 medical schools, not one has AI as a core curriculum. Patients will get well versed in AI. It’s important that physicians stay ahead, as well.”

Great ideas, but little progress

Since 2018, our nation has spent $20 trillion on medical care, navigated the largest global pandemic in a century and developed an effective mRNA vaccine, nearly from scratch. And yet, despite all this spending and scientific innovation, American medicine has lost ground.  

American life expectancy has dropped while maternal mortality rates have worsened. Clinician burnout has accelerated amid a growing shortage of primary care and emergency medicine physicians. And compared to 12 of its wealthiest global peers, the United States spends nearly twice as much per person on medical care, but ranks last in clinical outcomes.

Guests on Fixing Healthcare generally agree on the causes of stagnating national progress.

Healthcare system giants, including those in the drug, insurance and hospital industries, find it easier to drive up prices than to prevent disease or make care-delivery more efficient. Over the past decade, they’ve formed a conglomerate of monopolies that prosper from the existing rules, leaving them little incentive to innovate on behalf of patients. And in this era of deep partisan divide, meaningful healthcare reforms have not (and won’t) come from Congress.  

Then who will lead the way?

Industry change never happens because it should. It happens when demand and opportunity collide, creating space for new entrants and outsiders to push past the established incumbents. In healthcare, I see two possibilities:   

1. Providers will rally and reform healthcare

Doctors and hospitals are struggling. They’re struggling with declining morale and decreasing revenue. Clinicians are exiting the profession and hospitals are shuttering their doors. As the pain intensifies, medical group leaders may be the ones who decide to begin the process of change.

The first step would be to demand payment reform.

Today’s reimbursement model, fee-for-service, pays doctors and hospitals based on the quantity of care they provide—not the quality of care. This methodology pushes physicians to see more patients, spend less time with them, and perform ever-more administrative (billing) tasks. Physicians liken it to being in a hamster wheel: running faster and faster just to stay in place.

Instead, providers of care could be paid by insurers, the government and self-funded businesses directly, through a model called “capitation.” With capitation, groups of providers receive a fixed amount of money per year. That sum depends on the number of enrollees they care for and the amount of care those individuals are expected to need based on their age and underlying diseases.

This model puts most of the financial risk on providers, encouraging them to deliver high-quality, effective medical care. With capitation, doctors and hospitals have strong financial incentives to prevent illnesses through timely and recommended preventive screenings and a focus on lifestyle-medicine (which includes diet, exercise and stress reduction). They’re rewarded for managing patients’ health and helping them avoid costly complications from chronic diseases, such as heart attacks, strokes and cancer.

Capitation encourages doctors from all specialties to collaborate and work together on behalf of patients, thus reducing the isolation physicians experience while ensuring fewer patients fall through the cracks of our dysfunctional healthcare system. The payment methodology aligns the needs of patients with the interests of providers, which has the power to restore the sense of mission and purpose medicine has lost.

Capitation at the delivery-system level eliminates the need for prior authorization from insurers (a key cause of clinician burnout) and elevates the esteem accorded to primary care doctors (who focus on disease prevention and care coordination). And because the financial benefits are tied to better health outcomes, the capitated model rewards clinicians who eliminate racial and gender disparities in medical care and organizations that take steps to address the social determinants of health.

2. Major retailers will take over

If clinicians don’t lead the way, corporate behemoths like Amazon, CVS and Walmart will disrupt the healthcare system as we know it. These retailers are acquiring the insurance, pharmacy and direct-patient-care pieces needed to squeeze out the incumbents and take over American healthcare.

Each is investing in new ways to empower patients, provide in-home care and radically improve access to both in-person and virtual medicine. Once generative AI solutions like ChatGPT gain enough computing power and users, tech-savvy retailers will apply this tool to monitor patients, enable healthier lifestyles and improve the quality of medical care compared to today.

When Fixing Healthcare debuted five years ago, none of the show’s guests could have foreseen a pandemic that left more than a million dead. But, had our nation embraced their ideas from the outset, many of those lives would have been saved. The pandemic rocked an already unstable and underperforming healthcare system. Our nation’s failure to prevent and control chronic disease resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths from Covid-19. Outdated information technology systems, medical errors and disparities in care caused hundreds of thousands more. As a nation, we could have done much better.

With the cracks in the system widening and the foundation eroding, disruption in healthcare is inevitable. What remains to be seen is whether it will come from inside or outside the U.S. healthcare system.

Still a long way away from real “value” 

Posted on by • Posted in ACA, Accountable Care Organization (ACO), Health Insurance Industry, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), Population Health, Risk, Risk Tolerance, Risk-Based Compensation, Risk-Based Contracting, Strategy, Value Based Care Model, Value-Based Healthcare • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/cd392de550e2/the-weekly-gist-october-21-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

The belief that healthcare should, and would, transition from “volume to value” was a key pillar of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). However, with more than a decade of experience and data to consider, there is little indication that either Medicare or the healthcare industry at large has meaningfully shifted away from fee-for-service payment. Using data from the National Association of Accountable Care Organizations, the graphic below shows that the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP)—the largest of the ACA’s payment innovations, with over 500 accountable care organizations (ACOs) reaching 11M assigned beneficiaries—has led to minimal savings for Medicare. In its first eight years, MSSP saved Medicare only $3.4B, or a paltry 0.06 percent, of the $5.6T that it spent over that time.  
 
Policymakers had hoped that a Medicare-led move to value would prompt commercial payers to follow suit, but that also hasn’t happened. The proportion of payment to health systems in capitated or other risk-based arrangements barely budged from 2013 to 2020—remaining negligible for most organizations, and rarely amounting to enough to influence strategy. The proportion of risk-based payment for doctors is slightly higher, but still far below what is needed to enable wholesale change in care across a practice.

While Medicare has other options if it wants to increase value-based payment, like making ACOs mandatory, it’s harder to see how the trend in commercial payment will improve, as large payers, who are buying up scores of care delivery assets themselves, seem to have little motivation to deal providers in on risk. 

While financial upside of moving to risk hasn’t been significant enough to move the market to date, we aren’t suggesting health systems throw out their population management playbook—to meet mounting cost labor pressures, systems must deliver lower cost care, in lower cost settings, with lower cost staff, just to maintain economic viability moving forward.

The false metric of “lives under management”

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https://mailchi.mp/b0535f4b12b6/the-weekly-gist-march-12-2021?e=d1e747d2d8

Performance metrics. What's this all about? | by Artem Denysov | codeburst

“We’ve fully embraced value-based care,” we often hear from health system executives. “We don’t just measure inpatient admissions anymore—now we focus on ‘lives touched’.” Indeed, the proliferation of shared savings schemes, quality-based bonus payments, and the like has refocused traditional hospital leaders on a broader set of performance metrics.

But there’s some fuzzy math going on here. When we hear an executive boast that their system has “more than half our payments at risk”, our first question is, what kind of risk? A hypothetical, but very common, example, illustrates the point: if $100 of reimbursement has a $1 quality bonus attached to it, that’s often counted as $101 of “revenue at risk”. Nonsense!
 
As the lines blur between insurance companies and providers, and health systems aspire to move up the value chain, embracing risk for the health of the patients they serve, the real question shouldn’t be how many lives are under management, but rather how much management those lives are under.

Taking on greater responsibility for managing not just the total cost of care, but the total health of each individual patient, should be the strategic goal of systems looking to become fully “integrated”—depth matters more than breadth when it comes to managing care. That’s where the incentives really change, and decisions about what care should be delivered when, to whom, and how, become powerful drivers of a system’s economics. 

We’d encourage health systems to fully embrace accountability for the health of their patients, and not to be satisfied with merely earning performance-based bonus payments.

Notes for the 39th Annual J.P Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2021

Posted on by • Posted in Biotech, Capitation, Chronic Care Management, Chronic Conditions, Chronic Diseases, Clinical Research, Innovation, Market Consolidation, Medical Group, Medicare Advantage, Mental Health, Mergers & Acquisitions, Pandemic, Pharmaceutical Industry, Pharmacy Benefits Management, Private Equity, Real-Time Claims Adjudication, Real-Time Quality Information, Risk-Based Contracting, Telemedicine, Value-Based Contracting, Value-Based Healthcare • Leave a comment

https://www.sheppardhealthlaw.com/articles/healthcare-industry-news/

2021 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference | Zoetis

Sitting in the dark before 6 am in my Los Angeles house with my face lit up by yet another Zoom screen, wearing a stylish combination of sweatpants, dress shirt and last year’s JPM conference badge dangling around my neck for old times’ sake, I wonder at the fact that it’s J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference week again and we are where we are. Quite a year for all of us – the pandemic, the healthcare system’s response to the public health emergency, the ongoing fight for racial justice, the elections, the storming of the Capital – and the subject of healthcare winds its way through all of it – public health, our healthcare system’s stability, strengths and weaknesses, the highly noticeable healthcare inequities, the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and vaccines, healthcare politics and what the new administration will bring as healthcare initiatives.

I will miss seeing you all in person this year at the J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference and our annual Sheppard Mullin reception – previously referred to as “standing room only” events and now as “possible superspreader events.” What a difference a year makes. I admit that I will miss the feeling of excitement in the rooms and hallways of the Westin St. Francis and all of the many hotel lobbies and meeting rooms surrounding it. Somehow the virtual conference this year lacks that je ne sais quoi of being stampeded by rushing New York-style street traffic while in an antiquated San Francisco hotel hallway and watching the words spoken on stage transform immediately into sharp stock price increases and drops. There also is the excitement of sitting in the room listening to paradigm shifting ideas (teaser – read the last paragraph of this post for something truly fascinating). Perhaps next year, depending on the vaccine…

So, let’s start there. Today was vaccine day at the JPM Conference, with BioNTech, Moderna, Novovax and Johnson & Johnson all presenting. Lots of progress reported by all of the companies working on vaccines, but the best news of the day was the comment from BioNTech that the UK and South Africa coronavirus variants likely are still covered by the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. BioNTech’s CEO, Prof. Uğur Şahin, M.D., promised more data and analysis to be published shortly on that.

We also saw continued excitement for mRNA vaccines, not only for COVID-19 but also for other diseases. There is a growing focus (following COVID-19 of course) on vaccines for cancer through use of neoantigen targets, and for a long list of infectious disease targets.  For cancer, though, there continues to be a growing debate over whether the best focus is on “personalized” vaccines or “off the shelf” vaccines – personalized vaccines can take longer to make and have much, much higher costs and infrastructure requirements. We expect, however, to see very exciting news on the use of mRNA and other novel technologies in the next year or two that, when approved and put into commercialization, could radically change the game, not only as to mortality, but also by eliminating or significantly reducing the cost of care with chronic conditions (which some cancers have become, thanks to technological advancement). We are fortunate to be in that gap now between “care” and “cure,” where we have been able with modern medical advances to convert many more disease states into manageable chronic care conditions. Together with today’s longer lifespans, that, however, carries a much higher price tag for our healthcare system. Now, with some of these recent announcements, we look forward to moving from “care” to “cure” and substantially dropping the cost of care to our healthcare system.

Continuing consolidation also was a steady drumbeat underlying the multiple presentations today on the healthcare services side of the conference – health plans, health systems, physician organizations, home health. The drive to scale continues, as we have seen from the accelerated pace of mergers and acquisitions in the second half of 2020, which continues unabated in January 2021. There was today’s announcement of the acquisition by Amerisource Bergen of Walgreens Boots Alliance’s Alliance Healthcare wholesale business (making Walgreens Boots Alliance the largest single shareholder of Amerisource Bergen at nearly 30% ownership), following the announcement last week of Centene’s acquisition of Magellan Health (coming fast on the heels of Molina Healthcare’s purchase of Magellan’s Complete Care line of business).

On the mental health side – a core focus area for Magellan Health – Centene’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael Neidorff, expressed the common theme that we have been seeing in the past year that mental health care should be integrated and coordinated with primary and specialty care. He also saw value in Magellan’s strong provider network, as access to mental health providers can be a challenge in some markets and populations. The behavioral/mental health sector likely will see increased attention and consolidation in the coming year, especially given its critical role during the COVID-19 crisis and also with the growing Medicaid and Medicare populations. There are not a lot of large assets left independent in the mental health sector (aside from inpatient providers, autism/developmental disorder treatment programs, and substance abuse residential and outpatient centers), so we may see more roll-up focus (such as we have seen recently with the autism/ABA therapy sector) and technology-focused solutions (text-based or virtual therapy).

There was strong agreement among the presenting health plans and capitated providers (Humana, Centene, Oak Street and multiple health systems) today that we will continue to see movement toward value-based care (VBC) and risk-based reimbursement systems, such as Medicare Advantage, Medicare direct contracting and other CMS Innovation Center (CMMI) programs and managed Medicaid. Humana’s Chief Executive Officer, Bruce Broussard, said that the size of the MA program has grown so much since 2010 that it now represents an important voting bloc and one of the few ways in which the federal government currently is addressing healthcare inequities – e.g., through Over-the-Counter (OTC) pharmacy benefits, benefits focused on social determinants of health (SDOH), and healthcare quality improvements driven by the STARS rating program. Broussard also didn’t think Medicare Advantage would be a negative target for the Biden administration and expected more foreseeable and ordinary-course regulatory adjustments, rather than wholesale legislative change for Medicare Advantage.

There also was agreement on the exciting possibility of direct contracting for Medicare lives at risk under the CMMI direct contracting initiative. Humana expressed possible interest in both this year’s DCE program models and in the GEO regional risk-based Medicare program model that will be rolling out in the next year. Humana sees this as both a learning experience and as a way to apply their chronic care management skills and proprietary groups and systems to a broader range of applicable populations and markets. There is, however, a need for greater clarity and transparency from CMMI on program details which can substantially affect success and profitability of these initiatives.

Humana, Centene and Oak Street all sang the praises of capitated medical groups for Medicare Advantage and, per Michael Neidorff, the possibility of utilizing traditional capitated provider models for Medicaid membership as well. The problem, as noted by the speakers, is that there is a scarcity of independent capitated medical groups and a lack of physician familiarity and training. We may see a more committed effort by health plans to move their network provider groups more effectively into VBC and risk, much like we have seen Optum do with their acquired fee for service groups. Privia Health also presented today and noted that, while the market focus and high valuations today are accorded to Medicare lives, attention needs to be paid to the “age in” pipeline, as commercial patients who enroll in original Medicare and Medicare Advantage still would like to keep their doctors who saw them under commercial insurance. Privia’s thesis in part is to align with patients early on and retain them and their physicians, so as to create a “farm system” for accelerated Medicare population growth. Privia’s Chief Executive Officer, Shawn Morris, also touted Privia’s rapid growth, in part attributable to partnering with health systems.

As written in our notes from prior JPM healthcare conferences, health systems are continuing to look outside to third parties to gain knowledge base, infrastructure and management skills for physician VBC and risk arrangements. Privia cited their recent opening of their Central Florida market in partnership with Health First and rapid growth in providers by more than 25% in their first year of operations.

That being said, the real market sizzle remains with Medicare Advantage and capitation, percent of premium arrangements and global risk. The problem for many buyers, though, is that there are very few assets of size in this line of business. The HealthCare Partners/DaVita Medical Group acquisition by Optum removed that from the market, creating a high level of strategic and private equity demand and a low level of supply for physician organizations with that expertise. That created a focus on groups growing rapidly in this risk paradigm and afforded them strong valuation, like with Oak Street Health this past year as it completed its August 2020 initial public offering. Oak Street takes on both professional and institutional (hospital) risk and receives a percent of premium from its contracting health plans. As Oak Street’s CEO Mike Pykosz noted, only about 3% of Medicare dollars are spent on primary care, while approximately two-thirds are spent on hospital services. If more intensive management occurs at the primary care level and, as a result, hospitalizations can be prevented or reduced, that’s an easy win that’s good for the patient and the entire healthcare system (other than a fee for service based hospital). Pykosz touted his model of building out new centers from scratch as allowing greater conformity, control and efficacy than buying existing groups and trying to conform them both physically and through practice approaches to the Oak Street model. He doesn’t rule out some acquisitions, but he noted as an example that Oak Street was able to swiftly role out COVID-19 protocols rapidly and effectively throughout his centers because they all have the same physical configuration, the same staffing ratio and the same staffing profiles. Think of it as a “franchise” model where each Subway store, for example, will have generally the same look, feel, size and staffing. He also noted that while telehealth was very helpful during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 and will continue as long as the doctors and patients wish, Oak Street believes that an in-person care management model is much more effective and telehealth is better for quick follow-ups or when in-person visits can’t occur.

Oak Street also spoke to the topic of Medicare Advantage member acquisition, which has been one of the more difficult areas to master for many health plans and groups, resulting in many cases with mergers and acquisitions becoming a favored growth vehicle due to the difficulties of organic membership growth. Interestingly, both Oak Street and Humana reported improvements in membership acquisition during the COVID-19 crisis. Oak Street credited digital marketing and direct response television, among other factors. Humana found that online direct-to-consumer brokers became an effective pathway during the COVID-19 crisis and focused its energy on enhancing those relationships and improving hand-offs during the membership enrollment process. Humana also noted the importance of brand in Medicare Advantage membership marketing.

Staying with Medicare Advantage, there is an expectation of a decrease in Medicare risk adjustment revenue in 2021, in large part due to the lower healthcare utilization during the COVID crisis and the lesser number of in-person visits during which HCC-RAF Medicare risk adjustment coding typically occurs. That revenue drop however likely will not significantly decrease Medicare Advantage profitability though, given the concomitant drop in healthcare expenses due to lower utilization, and per conference reports, is supposed to return to normal trend in 2022 (unless we see utilization numbers fall back below 90% again). Other interesting economic notes from several presentations, when taken together, suggest that while many health systems have lost out on elective surgery revenue in 2020, their case mix index (CMI) in many cases has been much higher due to the COVID patient cases. We also saw a number of health systems with much lower cash days on hand numbers than other larger health systems (both in gross and after adjusting for federal one-time stimulus cash payments), as a direct result of COVID. This supports the thesis we are hearing that, with the second wave of COVID being higher than expected, in the absence of further federal government financial support to hospitals, we likely will see an acceleration of partnering and acquisition transactions in the hospital sector.

Zoetis, one of the largest animal health companies, gave an interesting presentation today on its products and service lines. In addition to some exciting developments re: monoclonal antibody treatments coming on line for dogs with pain from arthritis, Zoetis also discussed its growing laboratory and diagnostics line of business. The animal health market, sometime overshadowed by the human healthcare market, is seeing some interesting developments as new revenue opportunities and chronic care management paradigms (such as for renal care) are shifting in the animal health sector. This is definitely a sector worth watching.

We also saw continuing interest, even in the face of Congressional focus this past year, on growing pharmacy benefit management (PBM) companies, which are designed to help manage the pharmacy spend. Humana listed growth of its PBM and specialty pharmacy lines of business as a focus for 2021, along with at-home care. In its presentation today,  SSM Health, a health system in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Missouri, spotlighted Navitus, its PBM, which services 7 million covered lives in 50 states.

One of the most different, interesting and unexpected presentations of the day came from Paul Markovich, Chief Executive Officer of Blue Shield of California. He put forth the thesis that we need to address the flat or negative productivity in healthcare today in order to both reduce total cost of care, improve outcomes and to help physicians, as well as to rescue the United States from the overbearing economic burden of the current healthcare spending. Likening the transformation in healthcare to that which occurred in the last two decades with financial services (remember before ATMs and banking apps, there were banker’s hours and travelers cheques – remember those?), he described exciting pilot projects that reimagine healthcare today. One project is a real-time claims adjudication and payment program that uses smart watches to record physician/patient interactions, natural language processing (NLP) to populate the electronic medical record, transform the information concurrently into a claim, adjudicate it and authorize payment. That would massively speed up cash flow to physician practices, reduce paperwork and many hours of physician EMR and billing time and reduce the billing and collection overhead and burden. It also could substantially reduce healthcare fraud.

Paul Markovich also spoke to the need for real-time quality information that can result in real-time feedback and incentivization to physicians and other providers, rather than the costly and slow HEDIS pursuits we see today. One health plan noted that it spends about $500 million a year going into physician offices looking at medical records for HEDIS pursuits, but the information is totally “in the rearview mirror” as it is too old when finally received and digested to allow for real-time treatment changes, improvement or planning. Markovich suggested four initiatives (including the above, pay for value and shared decision making through better, more open data access) that he thought could save $100 billion per year for the country. Markovich stressed that all of these four initiatives required a digital ecosystem and asked for help and partnership in creating one. He also noted that the State of California is close to creating a digital mandate and statewide health information exchange that could be the launching point for this exciting vision of data sharing and a digital ecosystem where the electronic health record is the beginning, but not the end of the healthcare data journey.

Centene’s $2.2B deal for Magellan adds focus on behavioral health

Posted on by • Posted in Behavioral Health, Data Analytics, Managed Care, Market Consolidation, Market Share, Medicaid Managed Care, Mergers & Acquisitions, Pharmacy Benefits Management, Risk-Based Contracting • Leave a comment
https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/centenes-22b-deal-for-magellan-adds-focus-on-behavioral-health/592750/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202021-01-04%20Healthcare%20Dive%20%5Bissue:31677%5D&utm_term=Healthcare%20Dive

Dive Brief:

  • Centene has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Phoenix, Arizona-based Magellan Health for $2.2 billion, or $95 per share, the payer said Monday. Magellan will operate independently under the Centene umbrella.
  • Executives said the combination will result in one of the nation’s largest behavioral health platforms as the two will provide behavioral services to about 41 million members in the U.S.
  • The deal also boosts Centene’s already established footprint in government sponsored health plans with the addition of 5.5 million lives and another 2.2 million to add to its pharmacy benefit management platform.

Dive Insight:

The deal is designed to boost Centene’s ability to market a “whole health” approach for its members. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to care for more than just a member’s physical health by also caring for their mental health, the company said Monday.

“This has become even more evident in light of the pandemic which has driven a dramatic rise in behavioral health needs,” Centene CEO Michael Neidorff said in statement. Both boards unanimously approved the deal.

Magellan Health provides managed care and pharmacy services for an array of clients that include health plans, unions and third-party administrators. Centene has been a client of Magellan’s in years past.

Magellan leans on analytics and other technologies in an attempt to improve health outcomes and lower costs. In addition to behavioral health, Magellan focuses on high-cost or complex patients for its clients. In its presentation to investors on Monday, Centene said 71% of total healthcare costs in the U.S. are spent on complex patients, illustrating the need for the deal.

For its healthcare management services, Magellan typically enters into risk-based contracts with its clients where it assumes all or a substantial portion of the risk in exchange for a per member, per month fee. Or, Magellan will enter into an administrative services only agreement in which it reviews utilization and claims administration and manages provider networks, according to its latest 10-Q filing.

The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year pending regulatory approvals. CEO Ken Fasola and other Magellan executives will continue their leadership roles.

Last year, Centene completed its blockbuster acquisition of rival WellCare, a $17 billion deal that catapulted the company to the fourth-largest insurer by membership when including Aetna, which is now part of CVS Health. The deal also doubled Centene’s Medicare Advantage footprint. Centene’s core business is Medicaid managed care and it is the largest insurer on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

Could coronavirus derail the decades-long shift to value-based care?

Posted on by • Posted in American Hospital Association (AHA), Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Medical Group, Medicare ACO, Pandemic, Physician, Risk-Based Contracting, Value-Based Contracting, Value-Based Healthcare • Leave a comment
https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/could-coronavirus-derail-the-decades-long-shift-to-value-based-care/575938/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202020-12-30%20Top%20Healthcare%20Trends%20%5Bissue:31449%5D&utm_term=Healthcare%20Daily%20%2B%20Weeklies%20%2B%20Weekender

As the coronavirus sickens tens of thousands of Americans while pressuring the bottom lines of medical providers, analysts worry the pandemic could also hit pause on the decades-long march toward value-based care, as hospitals and doctors look to recoup revenue in the short-term instead of putting more dollars at risk.

Massive health systems and independent physician offices alike are diverting funds to shore up resources like personal protective equipment, ventilators and staff to prepare for an expected influx of COVID-19 patients or to cope with those already there. Expenses are skyrocketing as providers halt non-essential visits including lucrative elective procedures like joint replacements, winnowing down a major source of revenue.​

Clinicians in value-based payment arrangements face higher levels of financial risk than their fee-for-service counterparts. Money spent preparing for the coronavirus and treating COVID-19 patients will be a sunk cost and they could be dinged financially again at the end of the year when their spending and performance is evaluated.

Already, the coronavirus is leading providers to think about exiting the models.

A survey published this week of more than 220 accountable care organizations nationwide found almost 60% are likely to drop out of their risk-based model to avoid financial losses. Some 77% are “very concerned” about the coronavirus’ impact on their 2020 performance.

“The value-based movement is at a critical juncture,” wrote National Association of ACOs CEO Clif Gaus in a letter to CMS Administrator Seema Verma last month.

Fee-for-service still dominates — roughly 40% of healthcare payments made in 2018 were under fee-for-service, according to the Health Care Payment Learning & Action Network (LAN) — but it’s been on the downswing. One in three healthcare payments currently flows through some sort of alternative payment model, and that has been projected to grow.

Among the four main types of value-based arrangements — shared risk, global capitation, bundled care and shared savings —​ most require an upfront financial commitment. And providers are unlikely to put more capital at risk given the current economic situation, analysts told Healthcare Dive, instead focusing on making up the losses they sustained during the outbreak by ramping up capacity.

Doctor’s offices and hospitals will reschedule delayed procedures and even operate on weekends to recapture as much revenue as possible before they’re likely to consider taking on more risk.

“Even if you’re not in the hotspots, you are preparing right now. This puts on hold a lot of the initiatives that have been on the value-based side of things,” Jefferies senior healthcare analyst Brian Tanquilut told Healthcare Dive. “I don’t think the value-based discussion goes away, but I think it will take a recovery of the hospital system before it can go there.”

Pleas for loss waivers

The National Association of ACOs told CMS in mid-March that ACOs in Medicare’s flagship ACO program the Shared Savings Program, along with other shared risk models like the Next Generation ACO model and the upcoming Direct Contracting initiative, could face losses beyond their control because of the pandemic.

CMS did pause some reporting requirements for value-based initiatives late last month. The agency pushed back the deadline for groups participating in the Medicare ACO program, Merit-based Incentive Payment System and the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program to report quality data, or waived reporting entirely for the fourth quarter of 2019. The relaxation was framed as a way to help value-based organizations free up time and resources amid the pandemic.

But provider groups including NAACOS and the American Hospital Association have lobbied aggressively for the Trump administration to forgive all ACO losses for 2020. CMS is reviewing their request.

But all normal rules have gone out the window, experts say, and it’s almost impossible to move the needle toward value in the future when providers are facing a tsunami of patients now.

“This is not about managing a population. This is about doing everything you can to keep these people alive,” Dean Ungar, vice president of Moody’s Investors Service, told Healthcare Dive. “Coronavirus is really a five-alarm fire. But if your building’s on fire, that doesn’t really tell you how to maintain your business in normal circumstances.”

Silver lining?

Some, however, are more optimistic that the unique financial challenges brought on by the pandemic highlight the problems with the traditional fee-for-service model and could even nudge providers toward value-based arrangements down the line.

“If all of your revenue is based on patients walking in the door, when they can’t walk in the door anymore, you’re kind of up the creek without a paddle,” Dan Bowles, SVP of growth and network operations at accountable care organization Aledade told Healthcare Dive. “You need to find a way to create non-visit-based revenue.”

Some hope the pandemic could help the value-based movement in the long term as practices look for ways to uncouple revenue from patient volume. And, as medical costs continue to rise, accounting for 19% of the country’s GDP, any pause in the shift to value-based care due to the coronavirus is likely to be a short detour, not a complete derailment.

“Maybe some providers are going to see it in a different light when their business kind of dries up — see that there’s a benefit to it,” Ungar said. “Ultimately, it’s a trend of where things are going, but it’s a big ship and it’s moving slowly.”

And value-based care arrangements were built predominantly for the populations being hit hardest by the coronavirus: those with serious underlying medical conditions like chronic lung disease or severe obesity.

If those vulnerable patients were being treated in value-based arrangements, it’s possible more COVID-19 cases could have been caught earlier before they became life-threatening, Moody’s analyst Stefan Kahandaliyanage told Healthcare Dive. That could renew industry’s focus on managing the health of those most at-risk from novel infectious diseases in the future.

“Costs are very high and there’s been a pandemic,” Kahandaliyanage said. “Let’s get more healthy before the next pandemic comes.”