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Is value-based care having a moment?
Health care policy experts and institutions have long agreed that fee-for-service (FFS) medicine is wasteful, outmoded and at least partially responsible for the U.S. spending far more than peer nations on health care, but with outcomes that are no better and often worse.
Now, after years of experimenting, cajoling, and incentives, value-based payment models — those tied to patient outcomes and spending targets — seem to be gaining traction. According to the Health Care Payment Learning & Action Network’s (LAN) annual measurement of participation in alternative payment models, slightly more than 60% of health care payments in 2020 included some form of quality and value component. That is up from 53% in 2017 and 11% in 2012.
Similarly, 49% of practices responding to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) 2022 value-based care survey said they are participating in some form of value-based payment, and 18% are developing the capabilities to do so.
That is welcome news to AAFP President Sterling N. Ransone, Jr., M.D., FAAFP. “Our system is set up to prioritize and reimburse based on volume of patient visits versus outcomes,” Ransone says. “Value-based care prioritizes outcomes. And however we can get our population healthier is where the health care expenditure should go instead of the transactional fee-for-service environment we’ve been in for so long.”