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The health care industry is again grappling with how aggressively to push providers into payment arrangements that hold them financially accountable for delivering better and more efficient care after the debate was largely put on hold during the pandemic.
The big picture: A central question surrounding the long-running movement toward value-based care has been how quickly and broadly to require providers to participate in fixed-payment arrangements and other alternative models.
- Soon after taking office, the Biden administration offered hints about its interest in mandatory payment models, but it’s only recently begun taking concrete steps toward testing them out.
- A new mandatory model is still at least two years away, and the Medicare official overseeing the effort said she’s confident the industry is ready. The industry itself, however, still sounds ambivalent about the idea.
- “We think the health system is ready for this type of model and expecting us to go in that direction,” Liz Fowler, director of Medicare’s innovation lab, told Axios.