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Over the past several years, providers and technology-focused physician enablement organizations across the country have been working together to initiate the transition from traditional fee-for-service models to value-based care (VBC) arrangements. They have been adopting analytics tools and service solutions to help improve health outcomes, provide more cost-effective care and close gaps in care, all of which drive efficiency for doctors, their patients and payers.
Primary care specialties have benefited significantly in VBC, improving clinical outcomes dramatically and receiving healthy financial rewards for thorough execution. However, despite the immense benefits VBC has demonstrated in other specialties, the transition from fee-for-service has largely been nonexistent in women’s health to this point. Obstetrician-gynecologist (OB-GYN) practices face a lack of standardized women’s health measures across the health care system and in Medicare. The absence of uniform measures has created varying levels of reimbursement and costs, ultimately presenting challenges to implementing VBC in a comprehensive way. Commercial payers likewise have been slow to develop thoughtful VBC contracts specific to women’s health. It is an area of medicine mired in partisan semantics designed by policy makers on both sides to ensure forward progress is all but impossible.