This year will be a pivotal one in the brave new world of healthcare reform. While fee-for-service and volume-based reimbursement will not disappear, most would concede that those programs’ days are numbered, as public and private payors inexorably migrate to value-based payment mechanisms that hold physicians and hospitals increasingly accountable for more coordinated, safer, higher-quality, and more efficient care.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is busy putting more provider skin in the game as its shifts from volume to value. It has ramped up its Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Plan (VBP) by adding a third performance domain—quality outcome metrics—to the existing domains of core measure care processes and patient satisfaction scores. VBP will penalize hospitals for preventable readmissions. Armed with a new innovation center established by the Affordable Care Act, CMS is accelerating its experiments with such care and reimbursement models as bundled payments, accountable-care organizations (ACOs), and medical homes. Can it be very long before invitations for provider participation become subpoenas?
While the brunt of value-based reimbursement incentives have so far been directed at hospitals, “At what point will this shift begin putting the practicing physician at risk?” asks Sean Muldoon, MD, MPH, FCCP, FACPM, senior vice president and chief medical officer of Louisville, Ky.-based Kindred Healthcare’s hospital division.
“We’re living in a time of great uncertainty—from the economic, regulatory, and legislative standpoints—and we have to make the best decisions based on what we currently believe is coming,” says Ron Greeno, MD, FCCP, MHM, chief medical officer of Cogent HMG and chair of SHM’s Public Policy Committee.
As change un-folds, some see great opportunity. “Hospitalists are in an enviable position as drivers of change,” says David B. Nash, MD, MBA, professor of health policy and dean of Thomas Jefferson University’s School of Population Health in Philadelphia. “As frontline troops of hospital-based care, they are going to play a critical role in ensuring the most efficient patient stay possible to help hospitals survive under new reimbursement models.”
Evolving Environment
Confidence that HM is well-positioned to drive value is especially welcome as the field looks back on 15 years of its existence in a soul-searching appraisal of just how much value it has driven thus far. The evidence is mixed. The profession’s clearest documented success has been preventing delays in patient discharge. That achievement has yet to be buttressed by clear evidence of concomitant gains in quality attributable to hospitalist care.