Tag Archives: Value Based Health Care

The New Metrics

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The business and clinical intelligence that are necessary for healthcare leaders to better manage their organizations are changing rapidly. Returns may be greatest for organizations that are able to measure outcomes and show value.

An old saying from Six Sigma and other process improvement regimes is that “what gets measured gets done.” That’s important for senior healthcare executives to remember. But that truth leaves out the critical question of what should be measured.

The options are literally endless, but determining the most important metrics to measure in an era in which healthcare is transforming is no trivial decision.

The move toward reimbursement based on the value the healthcare organization provides to the patient and the payer, which is happening at vastly different rates in some geographical areas compared to others, means that asking and answering that question at regular intervals is crucial.

If that’s the case, what are the metrics that leaders need to watch to ensure clinical, financial, and strategic success?

This special issue of HealthLeaders examines how high-performing organizations are instilling and adapting to new performance measures that healthcare leaders need to track to “get value done.”

Our editorial team talked with more than a dozen organizations in a variety of sectors, from leaders of hospital inpatient organizations to payer leaders, from leaders of postacute care organizations to information technology, nursing, and finance leaders; all have measurements they find useful to achieve value in a rapidly transforming healthcare business environment.

Some metrics may be familiar, such as admissions or readmissions per thousand patients. Other metrics may be unfamiliar, such as a “user resource metric,” part of which incorporates the speed with which patient calls are answered at a call center.

Many more important metrics are clinical in nature, but are often monitored and reported by the financial arms of the organization, as they provide a proxy for customer satisfaction, a growing component of the value equation.

Also critical is the latency of such measurements. For example, it’s less valuable to learn about line infection rates and sepsis diagnoses after the patient has been discharged, because little can be done to influence the statistics by that time.

Shift in physician workforce towards specialists fuels primary care shortage, potential spending growth

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Areas with more primary care physicians have lower spending per beneficiary, better care, patient satisfaction and lower death rates, authors say.

The composition of the healthcare workforce is shifting towards specialty physicians while primary care growth has gone flat, and according to a Health Affairs blog post, this trend could mean healthcare spending goes up not down.

Labor represents more than half of health care costs, and clinical workforce is a major driver of use and pricing, authors wrote, and there is plenty of support establishing a link between primary care-centered health systems and lower spending. Specifically, areas with more primary care physicians have lower spending per beneficiary, better care and patient satisfaction and lower death rates.

“Given this, many existing payment reform strategies prioritize primary care, and the success of these reforms will require a vibrant–and likely growing–primary care workforce,” the authors wrote.

Health Affairs delved into the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Statistics files between 2005 and 2015, focusing their analysis on limited our analysis to ambulatory health care services, hospitals, and nursing and residential care facilities. There was an overall net increase of 2.6 million jobs over this period, six percent of them being physicians. While the number of primary care jobs rose by roughly eight percent, the number of specialist jobs increased six times faster. Also, the overall share of the physician workforce constituted by primary care fell from 44 to 37 percent, the blog said.

These trends raise concerns for access to care and spending. While in theory, the presence of more specialists in a given market could give way to more competition, lower prices and spending and better outcomes, public payer fees are set administratively and not necessarily susceptible to competition. Hospital/physician integration, patient preference could also hinder competition.

The trend of more specialists working in health systems that charge facility fees on top of already expensive prices for care, and the notoriously large salaries specialists make will also likely drive spending upward, authors said.

In light of the aforementioned belief that the strong presence of primary care providers reduces healthcare spending, the workforce trends may be cause for concern. Moreover, they add urgency to previous recommendations from various agencies aimed at bolstering primary care, like MedPac‘s suggestion that the Medicare fee schedule be altered to reflect the value of primary care and close disparities in the fee schedule that overcompensate certain specialists. HRSAhas recommended in the past the medical school funding be funneled toward students who will work in family medicine and other categories.

“If we are to bend the cost curve, we likely need to move more aggressively on fee schedule changes, payment reform, and workforce policies,” the authors said.

Building a ‘nimble’ multi-state health system: 5 questions with Ascension CEO Dr. Anthony Tersigni

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With 2,500 sites of care — including 141 hospitals and 30 senior living facilities that sprawl across 23 states and Washington, D.C. — St. Louis-based Ascension may not seem well-suited to make sudden business changes. But Ascension President and CEO Anthony Tersigni, EdD, aims to make the nation’s largest nonprofit health system into one of America’s most agile hospital networks.

Here, Dr. Tersigni discusses the system’s recent national rebrand, how he instills a spirit of risk-taking and innovation and the issues he is focusing on over the next five years, despite uncertainty on Capitol Hill.

Question: What prompted the decision to rebrand Ascension’s healthcare facilities? What effect has the rebranding had within the organization and outside in the communities it serves since being implemented in 2016?

Dr. Anthony Tersigni: In 1999 we decided not to brand Ascension because the brand equity was in the local entities. But since then, we believe we’ve made enough inroads in safety, quality and high-reliability that we felt Ascension has developed a reputation of its own. How do we combine the national reputation with the local reputation? Since co-branding the Ascension name with the names of our hospitals in our communities in advertising and on the web, the results have been outstanding. It’s about making it easier for the people we serve to navigate our system within a particular community because they now understand we’re all connected. We’re going to roll this out throughout the country, but we’re doing it in a sequential way because it’s very costly. But we believe now is the time to position ourselves as the national system that we are.

Q: What are your primary goals for the organization for the next five years?

AT: We want to continue to grow our primary care, expand access and continue to move toward value-based care. We want to be able to take on risk in a way where we can move into first-dollar coverage so we can move the patient through the continuum of care. We promise healthcare that works, that is safe and that leaves no one behind — for life. For us to do that, we need to be able to put patients in the right setting for the right care at the right time. If we can take on risk and walk with our patients and their families through our clinically integrated systems of care, we believe we can keep them well.

When it comes to population health management, the mindset is we need to change the way we look at our current business. We are moving from fee-for-service, where we get paid for doing things, to fee-for-value, or how to keep people well. We’ve been so successful as a hospital company under fee-for-service, and now we have to change the mindset and culture of all of these stakeholders. We have to go in a different direction. It’s like changing a flat tire on a car while it’s moving. No one has figured out yet how to do it, but you’re going to have to figure it out.

Another priority is mental and behavioral health. That’s very important to us. It’s a core part of our mission, and we want to be partners with whoever else sees that as a key component.

Q: What are the most important management practices when leading such a vast system with thousands of employees?

AT: In the 18 years since we created Ascension, we’ve been trying to have a culture that’s transparent, candid and nonpunitive. That’s a dramatic departure from the healthcare industry of old. I like to think I surround myself with really bright individuals and subject matter experts, and I try to empower everyone to do what’s in the best interest of those we serve. That’s what this is really all about. I like to think I hire people who are brighter than I am and give them the resources to do their jobs. Then I get out of the way.

That’s one of the principles we try to instill in our Leadership Academy — a program where we take high-potential employees for two to three years and help them develop. They focus on spiritual health to better understand their inner self. The second thing is leadership development. Everyone comes to us with certain gifts. We want them to hone those gifts and develop other skills. And the other piece, which people don’t talk about often, is personal health and vitality management. We expect our executives to work eight, 10 or 12 hours per day at optimal performance level. That’s virtually impossible unless you understand the physiology of your body.

Q: How would people describe you personally as a boss?

AT: My job is to allow leaders across the country to do what they are capable of doing. I like to think I am the supporting cast to what they do, and therefore I want to give them as much leeway and support as possible, and I want them to take risks. I am a risk-taker. As long as you don’t hurt people, that’s how we learn — through making mistakes. So take that risk.

Q: How do you plan for the future amid the current uncertainty surrounding healthcare policy?

AT: We need to be the highest-quality, lowest-cost, best-outcome provider in every market that we’re in. Then regardless of what happens in Washington D.C., we are going to be there for our patients and they’re going to want to seek us out.

We are working to do our part to reduce costs and cut waste in healthcare. But at the other end of what we do are human beings whose lives can either be helped or ruined by our actions or inactions. We are constantly advocating as a voice for the voiceless because many of those folks don’t get a chance to have this kind of conversation. I feel compelled to represent them because we are at ground zero in terms of healthcare. We see the pain and suffering that’s happening in society. They are in our clinics; they’re in our emergency rooms; they’re in our hospitals; they’re in our nursing homes.

I spent a couple weeks on Capitol Hill meeting with every senator I could meet and say, “Look, we want to be a resource. If you have a policy idea, let us know what that is and we will tell you the practical implications of that policy on the people we serve.”

We will continue to advocate for the poor and vulnerable. Last year we provided $1.8 billion of community care, community benefit and charity care. Given where this is going, I believe that number is going to go up next year. Because we are a faith-based, Catholic organization, we are going to continue to serve those people. If it ends up being over $2 billion, we’re going to figure out a way to serve them. We have to do so until we find a national solution here.

GOP promises lower health premiums but ignores all that’s driving them

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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/06/health-care-premiums-republicans-obamacare-240242

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Republicans promise to bring down the cost of health insurance for millions of Americans by repealing Obamacare.

But in the race to make insurance premiums cheaper, they ignore a more ominous number — the $3.2 trillion-plus the U.S. spends annually on health care overall.

Republicans are betting it’s smart politics to zoom in on the pocketbook issues affecting individual consumers and families. But by ignoring the mounting expenses of prescription drugs, doctor visits and hospital stays, they allow the health care system to continue on its dangerous upward trajectory.

That means that even if they fulfill their seven-year vow to repeal Obamacare and rein in premiums for some people,the nation’s mounting costs are almost sure to pop out in other places — includingfresh efforts by insurers and employers to push more expenses onto consumers through bigger out-of-pocket costs and narrower benefits.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump didn’t talk much about health care in 2016 — not compared to the border wall, jobs, or Hillary Clinton’s emails. But the final days of the campaign coincided with the start of the Obamacare sign-up season — and Trump leapt to attack what he called “60, 70, 80, 90 percent” premium increases. Big spikes did occur in some places, but they weren’t the rule, and most Obamacare customers got subsidies to defray the cost.

But the skyrocketing premium made a good closing message for Trump — and Republicans have stuck with it.

“The Republicans decoded: What is the single, 10-second thing that says why you are running against the Affordable Care Act?” said Bob Blendon, an expert on health politics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Premiums became the face of what’s wrong.”

The GOP approach differs from the tack Democrats took when they pushed for the Affordable Care Act back in 2009-10. That debate was about covering more Americans — and about “bending the curve” of national health care spending, which eats up an unhealthy portion of the economy.

Conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas argue that Obamacare failed to achieve its promise to bring down costs.

“The biggest reason that millions of people are unhappy with Obamacare is it’s made premiums skyrocket,” said Cruz, who is leading a small band of conservatives trying to pull the Senate repeal bill to the right as leaders seek to cobble together 50 votes. “We’ve got to fix that problem that was created by the failing policies of Obamacare.”

The answer, he says, is getting government out of the way. Conservatives want to free insurers from many of the coverage requirements and consumer protections in Obamacare. That means they could sell plans that wouldn’t cover as comprehensive a set of benefits — but they’d be cheaper.

Even some prominent critics of the Affordable Care Act think that’s not getting at the heart of the U.S. health care problem, even if it sounds good to voters.

“Too many in the GOP confuse adjustments in how insurance premiums are regulated with bringing competitive pressures to bear on the costs of medical services,” the American Enterprise Institute’s James Capretta wrote in a recent commentary for Real Clear Health. “They say they want lower premiums for consumers, but their supposed solution would simply shift premium payments from one set of consumers to another.”

The Congressional Budget Office has not yet evaluated how the House repeal bill, which narrowly passed, or the Senate companion legislation, which is still being negotiated, would affect overall health spending in coming years. It is already a sixth of the U.S. economy — more than 17 cents out of every dollar — and spending is still growing, partly because of an aging population.

The nonpartisan budget office projected the federal government would spend about $800 billion less on Medicaid over a decade, as the GOP legislation upends how Washington traditionally paid its share. But CBO hasn’t yet reported on how that would affect the health sector overall.

Many Republicans predict that limiting federal payments to states would force Medicaid to be more efficient. Democrats says the GOP bill would basically thrust those costs onto the states and onto Medicaid beneficiaries themselves, who are too poor, by definition, to get their care — often including nursing homes — without government assistance.

The CBO gave a mixed assessment of what would happen to premiums under the GOP proposals. They’d rise before they’d fall — and they wouldn’t fall for everyone. Older and sicker people could well end up paying more, and government subsidies would be smaller, meaning that even if the sticker price of insurance comes down, many people at the lower end of the income scale wouldn’t be able to afford it.

“Despite being eligible for premium tax credits, few low-income people would purchase any plan,” the CBO said.

Shrinking insurance benefits may work out fine for someone who never gets injured or sick. But there are no guarantees of perpetual good health; that’s why insurance exists. If someone needs medical treatment not covered in their slimmed-down health plan, the costs could be astronomical and the treatment unobtainable.

Couple that with skimpier benefits, bigger deductibles, smaller subsidies and weaker patient protections, and “Trumpcare” — or whatever an Obamacare successor ends up being called — could spell voter backlash in the not-too-distant future, particularly as poll after poll shows the legislation is already deeply unpopular.

“Premiums are one of the important ways in which consumers experience cost. But it’s not the only way,” said David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a liberal-leaning think tank, and a former Obama administration official. But deductibles running into the thousands of dollars and steep out-of-pocket costs, he added, “are a source of discontent for Trump and non-Trump voters alike.”

Even the 2009 health debate early in the Obama presidency, which looked at staggering national health spending and what it meant for the U.S. economy, didn’t translate into a bottom line for many American families, said Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has extensively polled public attitudes on health care.

And the bottom line — the cost of care — is what ordinary people focus on, Kaiser has found. Not just on premiums, but on what it costs to see a doctor, to fill a prescription, or to get treated for a serious disease.

“That’s what all of our polling shows,” Altman said. “The big concern is health care costs.”

Democrats have a long list of things they detest about the Republican repeal-and-replace legislation — and the lack of attention to overall health spending for the country and for individuals and families is right up there.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, would like a bill that tackles cost — starting with rising drug prices. But this bill, he said, does nothing about health care costs.

“This really isn’t a health bill. This is a tax-cut bill,” he said. The repeal bills would kill hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes — many on the health care industry or wealthy people — that were included in Obamacare to finance coverage expansion, though the Senate is now considering keeping some of them to provide more generous subsidies.

Conservative policy experts acknowledge that premiums aren’t the whole story.

The overall cost and spending trajectory “is something we have to get to,” said Stanford University’s Lanhee Chen, who has advised Mitt Romney and other top Republicans. But for now, he said, premiums are a good first step.

Healthcare CEOs: Senate healthcare bill would have dire consequences

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Cleveland Clinic, Kaiser, NewYork-Presbyterian executives are all concerned over the Senate’s bill.

Healthcare CEOs made the rounds of news shows in this week to air their grievances with the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the Senate GOP bill intended to replace Obamacare.

The American Hospital Association, American Medical Association, AARP, and several other organizations have registered their opposition to the proposed bill.

But, it’s healthcare CEOs who are working to mitigate the anticipated changes who are anticipating how the proposed legislation would affect their organizations.

Among healthcare chief executives weighing in on the topic in recent days are Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove, MD, New York Presbyterian CEO Steven J. Corwin, MD, and Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard Tyson.

Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove

With the anticipated greater numbers of uninsured patients coming into hospitals, “you’re going to have hospitals that are in very deep financial trouble,” Cosgrove told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. “And this is particularly true of rural hospitals and safety net hospitals, which are very dependent on Medicare and Medicaid for their returns.”

As he sees it, legislators are not looking at the “root cause of the problem.” It’s not how you divide the money,” he said. “The problem really is the rising cost of healthcare.”

“I think if we came together and dealt with the root cause there’d be plenty of money to go around to look after people,” Cosgrove said. “But if we don’t deal with it now, we’re going to have the same problem going 10 years from now.”

“We’re really headed in the wrong direction,” Cosgrove said. We’re talking about payment reform; we’re not talking healthcare reform.”

Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard J. Tyson

Bernard J. Tyson, chairman and CEO of Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente, wrote in a LinkedIn post that although the ACA – also known as Obamacare – is an imperfect legislation, future healthcare reform must build on its progress, rather than undo it.

“We need to pause and ask policymakers to answer the most fundamental question: What does progress on healthcare look like for the people in America?”

In his view, it should cover more people, not fewer people; be affordable.

Without question, we must make healthcare more affordable; provide the best quality of care and best health outcomes.

Tyson points out that the U.S. has among the poorest health outcomes compared to the other developed nations. The healthcare industry can improve quality if “we commit to moving from a predominantly ‘sick care,’ episodic, fee-for-service model to a predominantly preventive model with incentives for value, integrated care and, most important, keeping people healthy.”

“The draft bill does not expand coverage; it does not do enough to protect people in need of care, nor does it provide enough assistance to those who need help in paying for health care and coverage,” he writes.

NewYork-Presbyterian CEO Steven J. Corwin

Speaking to Bloomberg on Tuesday, Steven J. Corwin, CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian said, “Just remember this: One in three children in this country is insured by Medicaid. One in three.”

Corbin noted that two-thirds of the expense of Medicaid are for people who are in nursing homes.

“So, you can work all your life, be a grandma, or ma, and then go through your assets, and then you have to be on Medicaid to go into a nursing home,” he said. “This is going to be devastating to so many people.”

Asked whether he would prefer having something concrete done in Congress or just see the proposed bill go away, Corbin said: “I’d like to see it go away. And, I’d like to see the Medicaid expansion remain, and I’d like to see the insurance market stabilized.”

 

What a Trump Presidency Means for Value-Based Care and the ACA

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https://revcycleintelligence.com/features/what-a-trump-presidency-means-for-value-based-care-and-the-aca?elqTrackId=b434f9c1bb9342b9a07ae438e60e0219&elq=235b6caa09e94e4eb4db871c5d4f6292&elqaid=2897&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2683

 

The future of the Affordable Care Act is up for debate after Donald Trump’s surprise victory, but value-based care is likely to remain a guiding force in the healthcare industry.

Love it or loathe it, the United States is headed for four years of drastic policy changes under a Donald Trump administration, giving lawmakers another good chance to repeal, replace, or revise the Affordable Care Act.

The landmark healthcare legislation was the centerpiece of one of the most contentious campaigns in American history.  Staring down anticipated premium hikes of up to 25 percent on the public health insurance exchanges, millions of concerned citizens voted for the candidate they felt was most likely to make positive changes to a system that has never quite managed to address their needs.

The impact of a Republican Congressional majority, a Republican President, and a vacant seat on a Supreme Court that already struck down one of the ACA’s major provisions is as of yet unknown, but a conservative twist to our national drama will certainly bring the future of the healthcare coverage framework into question.

For healthcare provider organizations, the plot will thicken even further.  Thanks to provisions that require payers to cover patients with preexisting conditions and adhere to premium caps that have reduced their profitability, the ACA has incentivized a quick shift towards value-based care.

Eager to trim costs, pay for fewer services, and attract as many patients as possible in a competitive and confusing marketplace, payers have incentivized providers to abandon the traditional fee-for-service reimbursement structure and look to population health management strategies as a way to stem the financial bleeding.

Will significant changes to the Affordable Care Act free up payers to return to more lucrative business practices, or will commercial insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid stay the course?

How can healthcare providers position themselves for success in what will undoubtedly be another turbulent episode in the healthcare saga, and what are the nation’s options for developing a new path forward while still delivering the best possible care to its patients?

Why Geisinger’s health plan stays on the ACA exchange

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http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/payer-issues/why-geisinger-s-health-plan-stays-on-the-aca-exchange.html

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Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health Plan has maintained a steady presence in Pennsylvania’s individual ACA exchange, despite other insurers leaving the state’s marketplace.

Over the last two years, a number of U.S. insurers decided to exit states’ ACA exchanges, citing financial losses as well as concerns regarding future stability of the individual market. Pennsylvania’s individual ACA exchange is no exception. Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna, for instance, pulled out of ACA exchanges for 2017 in 11 states, including Pennsylvania. Additionally, Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealthcare left ACA exchanges in Pennsylvania and nearly 30 other states for 2017.

Ultimately five insurers remained on Pennsylvania’s individual ACA exchange for 2017 and will remain in the market for 2018 — Geisinger Health Plan, Pittsburgh-based UPMC Health Plan, Harrisburg, Pa.-based Capital BlueCross, Philadelphia-based Independence Blue Cross and Pittsburgh-based Highmark.

Because some insurers left the state’s individual ACA exchange, Geisinger Health Plan experienced an increase in membership, says Kurt Wrobel, the plan’s CFO and chief actuary. The plan currently has 47,000 members, up from more than 30,000 in 2016. About 60 percent of the plan’s enrollment is individuals with Medicaid, Medicare or plans on the state’s individual ACA exchange.

Geisinger Health Plan also requested a rate increase for 2018 that it says is consistent with other insurers in the state. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Insurance, the five insurers that will continue selling on Pennsylvania’s individual ACA exchange for 2018 requested average statewide rate increases of 8.8 percent for individual plans.

Regarding Geisinger Health Plan’s choice to stay on the ACA exchange in Pennsylvania, Mr. Wrobel says it comes down to Geisinger’s commitment to the people of central Pennsylvania. “As a nonprofit, our primary stakeholders are the people, so with that we’re going to have a different calculation as far as our interest in staying in a program. While policy improvements are still needed, we’ve stayed in the program and we believe it’s workable as it stands now.”

One significant advantage Geisinger Health Plan has is its connection with Geisinger Health System. Geisinger Health Plan representatives said that connection allows it to develop programs such as care management programs for members, and many of the plan’s case managers work directly with physicians’ offices to provide more support and connectivity to members’ physicians.

“We think that’s a really clear differentiator. Within that, we have more robust care management systems and programs that allow us to control costs and improve outcomes, especially relative to traditional insurance companies,” Mr. Wrobel says.

As far as the future, the health plan will remain on Pennsylvania’s individual ACA exchange as long as it has a workable program.

Mr. Wrobel says Geisinger Health Plan wouldn’t rule out expanding to ACA marketplaces in other states at some point, but it’s not a high priority right now.

Overall, without the elimination of cost-sharing reductions, which help insurers subsidize the cost of coverage for low-income Americans, Mr. Wrobel believes Geisinger Health Plan could see greater stability moving forward.

“It’s our hope we can move beyond discussions, beyond all the financial issues with the program and really get to the meat of what we try to do as a health plan, which is provide cost-effective quality care,” he says. “I think we all look forward to the day when there’s sufficient stability — and that’s what we have in the Medicare and Medicaid program as well as the employer group program — where the focus is on that operational excellence of providing cost-effective quality care and we can move beyond these discussions about financial issues.”

 

The doctor is out: PCP availability beyond 2020

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The doctor is out: PCP availability beyond 2020

In 2020 and beyond, under the Senate’s BCRA, the working poor will have a very hard time finding primary care providers (PCP) who will schedule appointments with them. Providers, rightly, fear bad debt from high deductible plans. They will discriminate on the ability to pay upfront.

In the NEJM, Karin Rhodes, Genevieve Kenney, and Ari Friedman† looked at PCP appointment availability in the from the end of 2012 to Spring 2013. They found that appointments were usually quickly available if the person had insurance and unavailable if they were cash paying patients who could not afford the median price of services.**

The overall rate of new patient appointments for the uninsured was 78.8% with full cash payment at the time of the appointment (Figure 2). The median cost of a new patient primary care visit was $120, but costs varied across the states, as indicated in the figure legend. Only 15.4% of uninsured callers received an appointment that required payment of $75 or less at the time of the visit, because few offices had low-cost appointments and only one-fifth of practices allowed flexible payment arrangements for uninsured patients.

Why does this matter in the BCRA environment?

The baseline plan will be a plan with a $7,500 deductible for a single person. For people with means, paying $120 for a PCP visit is unpleasant but not onerous. If I had to do that this afternoon, I would grumble as I pull out a credit card. I would pay that credit card off tomorrow after I got the transaction points. Not everyone can do that.

Craig Garthwaite raises a good point this morning:

Primary care providers will seek to minimize their net bad debt.

Michael Chernew and Jonathan Bush looked at how bad debt accumulates as a function of out of pocket expenses at professional offices.

The median PCP cash visit price is a large payment in the Chernew/Bush schema. Most of it will be paid as people with means take out their credit card, their HRA debit card, or their HSA card and swipe it through the machine. But a simple PCP visit will produce significant chasing and write-downs. The study is limited as it only looked at people who were commercially insured. It excludes most low income people who are in the Medicaid gap on an income qualification basis by design. The average income in the study group is highly likely to be higher than the income of people who would move from Medicaid to benchmark plans. Even so, there is significant chasing and write downs. I would predict that applying 100% first dollar obligations on people with even less income than the study population will lead to more provider bad debt. This is because these programs are income qualified and if a person income qualifies for these programs, they probably don’t have a spare $120 floating around or easy access to cheap, revolving credit.

If we assume that some normal PCP visits will include some extra services that increase the contracted payment rate to $200 or more (very large obligations in Chernew/Bush) significant sums will be written down and off. For provider practice viability concerns, providers will very aggressively screen against people with very high deductible insurance who can’t pay the entire amount of the contracted rate price up front at the receptionist desk. This is a very patient unfriendly system.

Most payment reform models focus on delivering more primary care. The objective is to substitute cheap primary care for expensive specialist, inpatient hospital stays and post-acute rehabilitation. This is the concept behind value based insurance design. VBID is supposed to encourage the routine, low cost, regular maintenance of chronic conditions in outpatient or community settings instead of having people end up in the hospital for preventable admissions.

Yet, under the very understandable incentives of primary care physicians wanting to stay in business, access to primary care for the working poor who would have several thousand dollar deductibles that apply to all services, will be greatly restricted because of the cost barrier. If we want all members of our shared society to have decent health and decent lives, should want people to have easy and ready access to primary care. This bill creates strong business incentives to create barriers to primary care access.

Collaboration, Big Data Help Phoenix Children’s Focus on Value-Based Care

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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/collaboration-big-data-help-phoenix-childrens-focus-on-value-based-care?elqTrackId=548d952fb9e64232b95d35d69a4fa9dd&elq=90c2d69c50ef46bd93f5e84b05759130&elqaid=2827&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2613

The exterior of Phoenix Children's Hospital in Arizona

Phoenix Children’s collaborative approach to value-based care relies on community input, big data analytics, and a physician-driven quality measurement program.

Mergers, acquisitions, and new partnerships can be a scary prospect for healthcare organizations, no matter which side of the negotiating table they are occupying.

In addition to potential cultural changes, staffing adjustments, and new workflows to adopt, organizations joining forces in the era of value-based care often have to adopt to new electronic health record systems and accept different strategies for measuring their quality, productivity, and outcomes.

While a successful union can rescue revenue cycles, and bring renewed vitality to flagging providers, healthcare organizations must carefully navigate the delicate acquisition process to ensure that new members of the team have the skills and tools required to reach their full potential.

At Phoenix Children’s, one of the largest pediatric health systems in the country, a desire to offer comprehensive care to the community has led to a firm reliance on big data analytics to gather actionable financial and clinical insights from a rapidly growing provider network.

Over the last three years, Phoenix Children’s has brought more than 100 independent practices into the fold, says Chad Johnson, Senior Vice President and Executive Director of the Phoenix Children’s Care Network – and full data transparency is a fundamental requirement for each and every new member of the team.

The ability to use big data analytics to measure productivity, quality, and financial success within a comprehensive network of care will be vital for Phoenix Children’s as it continues an ambitious move into value-based reimbursements.

“During 2017, we’re moving around 100,000 lives into fully risk-based models,” Johnson explained to HealthITAnalytics.com.  “We’re doing this because we believe that the way to truly influence outcomes is to own the medical management of our populations.  Hospitals will need to have a much larger footprint – a larger, integrated network – that includes independent primary care and specialty groups under one umbrella.”

“We want to move aggressively down this path because we feel that unless you’re willing to take that step, you’re never going to be able to really bend that cost curve,” he added. “We’re confident that we can step up to the plate and succeed in a risk-based environment with the strategies we’re cultivating.”

Number one on the list of challenges as the health network shoulders more financial risk is how to accurately and consistently measure quality across so many disparate locations and provider types.

“We’ve had to integrate data from these practices, which are all using a variety of EHRs, and then figure out how to consume that data and present it so that it can be used for optimizing care and to verify quality improvements across the network,” Johnson said.

“We use this data to target interventions, and to improve the management of our populations, our performance on quality metrics, our utilization, and total cost of care.  That data becomes the number one essential driver of many of the decisions that we’re going to make within our pediatric health enterprise.”