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.
In a concerning New York Times article, reporter Gina Kolata relates the findings of a recent Health Affairs study that convened focus groups of physicians to anonymously discuss the ways they provide—or too often, don’t provide—care to disabled patients. Many admitted to avoiding seeing patients in wheelchairs and complained about having to provide accommodations to speech-impaired patients, citing the high costs of adapting their clinic operations while dealing with disruptions to workflow. People with disabilities interviewed for the article, including Harvard professor of medicine Dr. Lisa Iezzoni, who ran the study, found its results confirmed impressions of widespread bias against the disabled, which is pervasive across healthcare.
The Gist: Reducing disparities in access and quality of care for disabled people often receives less attention than reducing economic, racial, and gender disparities. What’s revealing about this piece is how these disparities among disabled patients manifest, ranging from personal biases (physicians not wanting or knowing how to care for certain groups of disabled people) to structural challenges (constraints of time, money, and facilities needed for proper care). However, for disabled patients, these factors result in an often substandard and unacceptable healthcare experience, which must be addressed head-on by physician and health system leaders.
In a press release, London-based telemedicine provider Babylon Health said it intends to divest Meritage Medical Network, its 1,800-physician independent practice association located in Northern and Central California. Babylon claims the sale will allow it to better focus on its core business model of digital-first, value-based care contracts. After going public last year at $4.2B, Babylon’s valuation has fallen over 95 percent.
The Gist: Yet another highly touted healthcare startup with digital-first “solutions” has announced a massive pullback in its care footprint. As we wrote about Bright Health last week, these companies have failed to meet investor demands, and mustnowshutter services or sell assets to buy time to prove their core business model can actually turn a profit.
In Babylon’s case, integrating established physician practices into a digital-first, value-based care model was always going to be costly, challenging and time-consuming—too slow to deliver the returns demanded by an increasingly difficult investor market.
Amid new price transparency laws and growing consumer demand, more hospitals are adding cash pay options for certain health care services instead of just accepting insurance, Nora Tepper writes for Modern Healthcare—and some hospital officials say these offerings are “only going to go up” in the future.
How an ‘anomaly’ is becoming more common
Providers advertising cash pay rates for their services used to be considered an “anomaly,” Tepper writes. Now, the No Surprises Act, the federal price transparency law, and changing consumer expectations may make cash-only payments for health care services more common.
“The market is going there,” said Larry Van Horn, associate professor of management, law, and health policy and executive director of health affairs at Vanderbilt University. “You’ve got direct primary care, you’ve got physicians going and moving into cash pay. You’re gonna have to sit there at some point and say, ‘Wait a minute, they’re taking my business.'”
Although some hospitals and health systems that serve certain populations—such as Pomerene Hospital in Ohio with Amish and Anabaptist patients and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center with medical tourists—have long had cash-pay systems, it is still a relatively new concept for most providers in the United States.
According to data from Medscape, which surveyed more than 17,000 clinicians, just 17% of clinicians used cash-only, concierge, or direct-pay primary care models in 2020. Primary care providers (PCPs) made up the largest proportion of providers accepting cash pay, with 10% of practices charging patients a flat monthly fee for unlimited services.
“[S]ome providers embracing the cash pay revolution say their bottom line benefits from faster reimbursement, lower administration costs and higher patient retention,” Tepper writes.
In a 2020 report from the Society of Actuaries, almost all PCPs who operated under self-pay models reported “better or much better” personal and professional satisfaction compared to those under a traditional fee-for-service system. In addition, 34% of respondents reported “better or much better” earnings under a direct payment model.
How patients could benefit from cash-pay systems
According to Tepper, hospitals generally offer self-paying patients, who have typically been uninsured individuals or those with high-deductible health plans, lower rates for services compared to commercial insurers since they don’t have to handle administrative work or collections.
In a 2021 study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers analyzed rates for “shoppable” services at 922 hospitals and found that the proportion of hospitals that had lower cash prices than their median commercial negotiated rate ranged from 38.4% for liver tests to 68.5% for C-sections.
During the pandemic, more insured patients began to inquire about what services they could pay cash for, leading some health systems to create new payment models for certain procedures.
For example, Deaconess Health System launched an in-house bundled payment program, which includes cardiology, radiology, and urgent care services, in July 2020. The first year, the health system sold 130 bundled services, which increased to 351 in 2021, and 489 as of August 2022.
For any services not covered by the program, Deaconess offers a 50% discount on cash payments compared to its insurer rate. However, self-paying patients are required to pay the full cost of a procedure upfront.
“The patient has decided to take a bet on themselves,” said Steve Russell, VP and chief revenue cycle officer at Deaconess. “They have a high deductible, they don’t think they’re going to reach that threshold and their thought is, ‘If I don’t use my insurance, what kind of discount can you give me?'”
Separately, CommonSpirit Health‘s Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) launched its own bundled cash price program in 2018 after noticing that many patients with high-deductible plans would defer care due to affordability concerns. The health system also advertises and sells its services on MDsave, an online marketplace that allows consumers to shop for health care procedures.
“With the No Surprises Act and the price transparency regulations, this has to be something that we offer,” said Jeanette Wojtalewicz, SVP and CFO at CHI Health’s Midwest division. “You’ll see more of this coming.”
The future of cash-pay systems in hospitals
According to Aaron Miri, SVP and chief digital and information officer at Baptist Health South Florida, although few patients are currently paying directly for health care services, the industry is heading towards that direction, which means health systems need to be prepared to meet the demand.
“When you look at the directionality of demand, this is only going to go up,” Miri said. “Patients are going to start seeing their total estimated bill and say, ‘I want to spend my $500 at a health system that was really transparent with me, and made me feel comfortable, versus the health system down the road that I’ve always gone to, but that simply can’t tell me what my actual amount due is.”
To make it easier for patients to directly pay for procedures, some health systems, including Baptist Health, have updated their payment options by adding Apple Pay, Google Pay, or other online payment systems instead of just accepting payment in-person or by phone.
However, even as direct payment models become more common, some insurers are “using their leverage to slow adoption of cash pay,” Tepper writes.
Kimberly Scaccia, VP of revenue management at MercyHealth, said some of the health system’s contracts with insurers prohibit it from offering cash discounts to insured patients.
“Some of the smaller payers, they’re fine with removing [cash pay restrictions],” Scaccia said. “Some of the very, very large payers, they simply will not allow it.”
In addition, Matthew Fiedler, a senior fellow of economic studies at the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, said clinicians may also be concerned about insurers asking to pay the lower cash rate during contract renewals or jeopardizing a provider’s network position.
“An insurer could say, ‘We’re gonna put this provider out-of-network, but we’re gonna put them in a preferred out-of-network position in our benefit design, where the cost-sharing is not that onerous, because we know they have this really good cash price,'” Fiedler said.
HENRY KOTULA 