More Employers Shifting to Value-Based Health Plans, New Survey Finds
Employers increasingly are spurring health plans to adopt benefits designs with the goals to improve quality and efficiency of treatment without raising costs, according to a survey from Catalyst for Payment Reform, Modern Healthcare reports (Block, Modern Healthcare, 3/26).
About the Survey
The survey -- called the National Scorecard on Payment Reform -- was funded by the Commonwealth Fund and the California HealthCare Foundation (Letourneau, HealthLeaders Media, 3/27). CHCF is the publisher of California Healthline.
The scorecard is based on data voluntarily submitted from 57 health plans that represent 67% of the commercial insurance sector.
The goal of value-based insurance plans -- which range from capitated payments to shared savings on the plan side and revised copays and deductibles for beneficiaries -- is to promote lower-cost services and reduce wasteful spending, according to Modern Healthcare.
Survey Findings
The CPR survey found that just 11% of payments by commercial plans to in-network providers in 2012 were value-oriented -- meaning they were tied to performance or designed to cut waste. The group's goal is to reach 20% by 2020.
Among hospitals, 11% of payments in 2012 were value-oriented, compared with 6% each for outpatient specialists and primary care physicians, the survey found, suggesting that insurers are progressing better with hospitals than with other providers.
Meanwhile, the results showed that 57% of value-oriented payments were "at-risk," because providers could have been penalized if they failed to meet quality or outcome goals, Modern Healthcare reports. The remaining 43% of value-oriented payments included fee-for-service with shared savings and base payments with bonuses for performance.
Suzanne Delbanco, CPR's executive director, said the findings signal that insurers and providers can meet the 20% value-oriented payment goal by 2020 (Modern Healthcare, 3/26).
New Online Database
In addition to the scorecard, CPR has launched a new Web-based, searchable database designed to track various health care payment reform programs across the country.
The database -- called the National Compendium on Payment Reform -- is expected to grow over time as more health care providers and health plans contribute information about their payment reform programs (Mosquera, Healthcare Finance News, 3/26).
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