Bundled healthcare payments likely to reduce costs
I am very impressed that the federal government is willing to experiment with a variety of types of bundled payment models to determine what will work best and what makes sense for different parts of the country. This is something new for the federal government and they have not been open to this before. They are reaching out to those in healthcare to essentially tell them what will work and to collect ideas about how exactly to do this.
I have always felt the main reason healthcare costs are out of control in this country is because of how Medicare is set up and its fee-for-service system. Since Medicare is the largest payor in the country, other insurance companies in the private market tend to duplicate the way Medicare bills, even though pricing can be different. The incentive is if you do more to the patient, you get paid more. I would like to see us start to practice “frugal medicine” where we don’t over treat patients, but we treat them the right way. Fee-for-service discourages doctors, nurses, hospitals and others from working together. Bundled healthcare payments would offer incentives for care providers to work together in what is best for the patient.
This is where those out in the field can provide guidance when it comes to where we want this to go. This is an opportunity for those working in healthcare to set the stage and provide the guidance that the federal government is seeking. Now is not the time to sit back and let someone else determine the future.
Bundled payments will allow hospitals to begin to coordinate care, even if they are not fully ready to form an accountable care organization. This will be good for hospitals.
Who will be the bundler? Will it be the physician group? Will it be the hospital? What role will insurance companies have? Ultimately we need all sides to come together to make the payment model simpler. If we can begin to standardize healthcare costs even to a small degree, then perhaps we will finally begin to bend the cost curve in this country.
Ed Howe blogs regularly at Action for Better Healthcare.
