Dive Brief:
- Growing health systems busy acquiring other hospitals and physicians may not be the best entities to achieve value-based care, some experts say.
- Vikas Saini, MD, president of The Lown Institute, and Shannon Brownlee, senior vice president at The Lown Institute, told Bloomberg that with large hospitals and health systems often commanding the highest prices, and not better than peers in many quality measures, how will they achieve the goals of value-based care?
- In their view, single-payer and financial support for primary care-based organizations are the keys to a better healthcare system. "Until we give primary care groups control over what happens to patients, large hospital systems and specialist dominated groups -- those with the greatest access to capital -- will be able to keep raising prices, even as they issue press releases about their plans to control costs and improve care," The Lown Institute experts told Bloomberg.
Dive Insight:
Value-based healthcare is still an embryonic concept, so it's hardly surprising that it has its detractors. I'm sure fans of value-based payment see plenty of holes in this argument, as there are clearly powerful incentives for bringing large hospitals' and systems' care and costs into line. However, the experts raise a good question. How well will a system work if a key player is prone to high-priced care?