HHS launches network to encourage value physician payments

Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network. HHS intends for the network to work with private payers, employers, consumers, providers, state Medicaid programs, and others to expand the use of alternative payment models.

According to HHS, the network will:

•    Facilitate the joint implementation and expansion of new payment and care delivery models,
•    Identify ways to implement and report on these new payment models,
•    Collaborate to generate evidence, share approaches, and remove barriers,
•    Develop common approaches to such core issues as beneficiary attribution, financial models, benchmarking, quality and performance measurement, and risk adjustment, and
•    Create implementation guides for payers, purchasers, providers, and consumers.

HHS believes the network is key to the agency’s initiative to move the Medicare program, and the health care system at large, toward paying providers based on the quality of care they give patients, rather than the quantity. HHS highlighted that initiative in January when HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced the goal of moving 30 percent of Medicare payments into alternative payment models by the end of 2016 and 50 percent into alternative payment models by the end of 2018. Alternative payment models include accountable care organizations, bundled payments, and advanced primary care medical homes. Overall, HHS seeks to have 85 percent of Medicare payments tied to quality or value by 2016 and 90 percent by 2018.

Anyone is welcome to join the network, and all interested individuals and organizations can register online. More information is available on the network’s web page.

– Kent Moore, Senior Strategist for Physician Payment for the American Academy of Family Physicians

Posted on Mar 31, 2015 by David Twiddy