Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Medicare Officials Announce Major Shift To Pay For Quality
The Associated Press: Gov't To Overhaul Medicare Payments To Doctors, Hospitals
Medicare will change the way it pays hospitals and doctors to reward quality over volume, the Obama administration said Monday, in a shift that officials hope will be a catalyst for the nation's $3 trillion health care system. "It is in our common interest to build a health care system that delivers better care, spends health care dollars more wisely and results in healthier people," said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 1/26)
The Wall Street Journal: Medicare To Rework Billions In Payments
The effort faces a long climb ahead amid potential resistance from health-care providers and skepticism from beneficiaries and lawmakers. Medicare, which covers more than 50 million Americans, started to pay some doctors and hospitals on the basis of their performance as part of a provision in the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Currently, around 20 percent of payments are made in this way, and the federal government said Monday it will aim to get that share to 30 percent by the end of 2016 as an interim goal. (Radnofsky and Beck, 1/26)
Kaiser Health News: HHS Pledges To Quicken Pace Toward Quality-Based Medicare Payments
The Obama administration Monday announced a goal of accelerating changes to Medicare so that within four years, half of the program’s traditional spending will go to doctors, hospitals and other providers that coordinate their patient care, stressing quality and frugality. The announcement by Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell is intended to spur efforts to supplant Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service medicine, in which doctors, hospitals and other medical providers are paid for each case or service without regard to how the patient fares. Since the passage of the federal health law in 2010, the administration has been designing new programs and underwriting experiments to come up with alternate payment models. (Rau, 1/26)
Los Angeles Times: Medicare To Transform How It Pays Doctors And Hospitals
Most experts believe that this shift is crucial to improving the quality of care that patients receive, while also restraining costs at a time when millions of baby boomers will be entering the nation's primary insurance program for the elderly. Under the goals announced Monday, Medicare will make 30% of its direct payments to doctors, hospitals and other providers through alternative payment models by next year, up from nearly nothing four years ago. (Levey, 1/26)
McClatchy: HHS Announces Major Changes To Its Medicare Payment Formula
The Obama administration on Monday announced plans to change the way Medicare pays doctors and hospitals, moving away from a system that encourages excessive medical treatment and services with little accountability to one that rewards quality of care and value. (Pugh, 1/26)
The Washington Post's Wonkblog: The Obama Administration Wants To Dramatically Change How Doctors Are Paid
Rather than pay more money to Medicare doctors simply for every procedure they perform, the government will also evaluate whether patients are healthier, among other measures. The goal is for half of all Medicare payments to be handled this way by 2018. Monday’s announcement marks the administration’s biggest effort yet to shape how doctors are compensated across the health-care system. As the country's largest payer of health-care services, Medicare influences medical care generally, meaning the changes being initiated by the administration will likely be felt in doctor's offices and hospitals across the country. (Millman, 1/26)
USA Today: Feds Step Up Changes To Hospital Payments
Health care, including for Medicare patients, has traditionally used the "fee for service" model that pays providers for each individual treatment rather than for the overall treatment of a patient or group of patients. That is, they are paid for making people better; not just for trying. For consumers, the end result of HHS' push should be better health care, but it may not seem that way to some. (O'Donnell, !/26)
Marketplace: Big Changes For Medicare
The Department of Health and Human Services has announced a plan to move Medicare away from the current fee-for-service system and toward a quality-based payment system. (Ryssdal, 1/26)
Politico Pro: HHS Steps Up Medicare Shift To New Payment Models
HHS has outlined a sharp acceleration of its efforts to move Medicare away from traditional fee-for-service and tie provider reimbursements to quality, setting an ambitious goal of having half of payments in alternative pay models by the end of 2018. (Pradhan, 1/26)
Modern Healthcare: Medicare's Payment Reform Push Draws Praise And Fears
By 2018, half of Medicare spending outside of managed care will be paid under contracts with incentives to manage quality and costs, federal officials said Monday. The goal was broadly greeted with enthusiasm but also with warnings that the effort will be wasted if the new models are too weak or tied to flawed measures. (Evans and Demko, 1/26)
Politico Pro: Will Health IT Help Or Hinder Medicare Pay Policies?
A big leap of faith lies at the center of Monday’s HHS announcement that Medicare will move dramatically away from traditional fee-for-service payments. The efficient use of technology is crucial to the plan to pay doctors and hospitals on the basis of care quality rather than volume. To date, the tech hasn’t been ready to support quality-based payments in most health care systems. On the other hand, quality-based pay hasn’t been important enough to incentivize good use of technology, experts say — creating a chicken-and-egg problem. (Pittman, 1/26)
