Healthcare Finance News writes: A prototype Medicare program designed to improve value of care by paying more to physicians who perform better on measures of healthcare quality and spending has failed to deliver on its central promise — and in the process, it likely exacerbated disparities in healthcare delivery, according to a study published this week in Annals of Internal Medicine. The Value-Based Payment Modifier program, which ran between 2013 and 2016, inadvertently shifted money away from physicians who treated sicker, poorer patients to pay for bonuses that rewarded practices treating richer, healthier populations. The researchers say that these findings bode ill for the program’s successor, launched in early 2017 because its basic design is similar to the failed, earlier iteration of the model.
Read more:
- The Value-Based Payment Modifier: Program Outcomes and Implications for Disparities. Annals of Internal Medicine. 28 November 2017
- Healthcare Finance News: http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/study-claims-value-based-modifier-program-not-improving-quality-increasing-disparity