Full or partial capitation, with or without risk withholds. Per-episode payments or cost caps. Fee-for-service with or without pay-for-performance. Ambulatory care episodic payments. Discount below billed charges. Packaged prices. Value-based reimbursement.
The list of reimbursement types and variations is long and growing. As providers and payers struggle to find the right mix of risk and reward, they are tinkering with long-established reimbursement methodologies (think capitation) and coming up with entirely new concepts (value-based pricing).
If there’s a universal, it is fee-for-service is falling out of favor, at least for the big payers – governmental and private. It encourages overuse and over-treatment. But it does have benefits. FFS motivates providers to maximize their productivity, a goal that every health care provider organization is striving for.
Each variation has its plusses and minuses, but there are several common threads.
First, the providers affected need to buy in. If they think they are being gamed, or worse, screwed, they will instantly figure out how to return the favor. There’s a lot of skepticism among providers about these new arrangements, much of it well-founded. Problems with capitation and risk withholds almost killed the entire managed care movement back in the nineties and providers remember those days all too well.
Which leads directly to the next have-to.
Transparency is key. Price setting, risk-reward formulae, the bases on which capitation is calculated all have to be clear and readily understood. That way when questions arise, all involved have “equal access” to the methodology and discussions can focus on material issues.
Third, it’s about outcomes and results, not volumes and procedures. We are seeing a wrenching shift away from paying providers to do stuff to patients, and towards paying providers to maintain and improve health status. This is going to be ugly, difficult, and painful for all involved. There will be winners and losers, and some folks are going to be hurt.
What health care is going thru is not far from that experienced by manufacturing and heavy industry over the last forty years.
And, like manufacturing and heavy industry, the US health care “system” has to change if it is to survive. We cannot continue with fee for service, rewarding providers for doing more and more expensive stuff to fewer and fewer insureds. And allowing insurers and health plans to make money by covering only those people unlikely to have a claim.
If health care could be offshored, it would be. As it (mostly) can’t be, we have to fix it right here.
That doesn’t mean it’s going to be any less wrenching.
What does this mean for you?
Huge changes are required. Avoiding them is not an option.
Thanks for your timely post. I’ve been watching these changes in the market and wondering what this means for those of us in workers’ comp? We’ve already faced a shortage of providers who are willing to accept workers’ compensation. With reforms in reimbursement and ACOs, health systems are buying up physician practices in order to control the delivery of health care from A to Z and presumably drive better outcomes for their populations. They are snatching up the most efficient providers, and often decide they don’t want to do occ med, leaving us with limited options to treat injured workers. I’d love to see more discussion around this issue, and also whether some form of these payment reforms could make sense in workers’ comp.
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That’s what MT tries to do, somewhat unsuccessfully, though.
Yet, it will get its act together one day and will be very viable.