Wednesday, April 30, 2014

P4P PAY FOR PERFORMANCE.......WHOSE?

P4P is a term that has been around for several years and is being adopted throughout the health care industry for providers and hospitals.  Accountable Care Organizations are meant to provide the tools for improving outcomes, and reducing cost of health care.

CMS has already discovered that performance and cost vary greatly across the United States.  The range of cost for hospitalizations varies from McAllen, Tx to Omaha Nebraska, two extremes in the analysis.

A newly recognized phenomenon will take place as the newly insured enter the risk pools and effect costs and outcomes.  Cost will surely be driven upward, and statistical figures for outcomes will decrease.

  • Those entering the market will be sicker and have more chronic disease. They are less informed about prevention and health diets.
  • Their outcomes, length of hospitalizations, and readmission rates will also reflect the lack of compliance, lack of understanding of health care process, lack of socioeconomic power to chose wisely.
  • Many ACA provisions look to boost care by linking Medicare payments to the performance of doctors, hospitals and health plans.  Doctors and hospitals that treat “poorer people” are more likely to face financial penalties, which will diminish resources providers need to administer and improve care.

Healthcare experts say the payment system must evolve and adapt to the changing market so that payments and volume based reimbursement can change to value-based benefits.

In a recent study, sixty-five percent of 170 C-levelpayer executives said they will launch pay for performance programs over the next three years (this according to Fierce Health Players in a Health Edge Survey released last fall (2013)

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