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To meet its goals of controlling costs and improving patient care, Value-Based Care requires a near-universal, multi-payer strategy. Only when payment incentives induce cost-effective health care for all patients, as well as provider accountability and patient engagement, will we get that result. Incremental adoption of value-based payments is instructive, but this approach lacks impact when adopted payer-by-payer. At the same time, providers cannot yet adopt risk across all their payers without financial damage. For some providers, embarking on risk-based payments with just a single payer is too dangerous.
In fact, we are at a stalemate between payers and providers—and someone needs to blink, or health care spending will continue to gobble up GDP. That’s already a real risk based on aging demographics and unrelenting cost escalation. Everyone seems to agree that Value-Based Care has the right mechanisms to make health care more affordable and better value, but it’s not happening at scale, and not fast enough.
In this and future articles, we’ll address how payers can facilitate adoption of Value-Based Care initiatives by providers, and which payer-directed strategies they should implement.