Payment and Delivery Reform: Can Implementation Keep Up with Policy?
In December 2012, AcademyHealth’s Research Insights project convened an expert meeting of leading academic researchers together with policy audiences to discuss how well physicians, organizations, and payers respond to and implement strategies to improve value in the U.S. health care system. Key questions addressed at the meeting included:
- What is known about how payers, clinical organizations, and physicians are responding to external incentives to improve value?
- What are the challenges or barriers to implementing promising strategies?
- Is there evidence from existing research or current experience on the effectiveness of particular strategies employed by payers, clinical organizations, and physicians?
Based on this discussion, a
Research Insights report was released in April 2013. The report summarizes the meeting’s discussions from the different participant perspectives: payers, patients, and providers (including both clinical organizations and individual physicians). The report underscores the need for more precise performance measurement and better data as key issues for successful payment reform efforts. Physicians are concerned about being held accountable for outcomes outside of their control, and so can be hesitant to participate in payment and delivery system reforms such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Both physicians and payers are interested in receiving information about the effectiveness of consumer engagement and self-management strategies before deciding whether and how to participate in reform efforts.
The report concludes by noting that there are many varieties of payment and delivery system reform being implemented across the country, resulting in many important research opportunities on these topics.
More information about the Research Insights project can be found on AcademyHealth’s
website.
