Dive Brief:
- The Cleveland Clinic is joining a consortium of leading healthcare organizations that push for a fast and effective move toward value-based care (VBC), according to a press release given exclusively to Healthcare Dive.
- The Health Care Transformation Task Force (HCTTF) has more than 40 members representing providers, payers, purchasers and patients.
- Other organizations who have recently joined include UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, CareCentrix, ChenMed, agilon health and Archway Health.
Dive Insight:
The Cleveland Clinic is a big name to add to the HCTTF’s influence as it’s already a champion of VBC. The large nonprofit health system has a focus on teaching and research. It also has a business unit dedicated to population health, which is another key element of the task force.
“It is essential for health systems to work collaboratively across industry with patients, payers, and purchasers to truly transform delivery systems,” Kevin Sears, executive director of market and network services at Cleveland Clinic said in the press release. “We are pleased to be a part of this task force for advocacy, payment model best practices, and support on the path to value-based care.”
Membership in the coalition has been steadily growing. Other big names include Aetna, Ascension and Premier. Members aspire to operating three quarters of the business under value-based payment methods by 2020.
VBC is certainly the name of the game right now. Last month at the World Economic Forum, a group of health leaders, including representatives from Kaiser Permanente and Medtronic, issued a report calling for more VBC models and outlining principles for them.
The CMS is also part of the movement. It has already converted 30% of its fee-for-service payments to a value-based model and has a goal of 50% by next year.
Jerry Penso, chief medical and quality officer at the American Medical Group Association, recently told Healthcare Dive that another tenet of VBC is putting the patient first. “Inappropriate care or wasteful services are not administered, so the patient experiences care that is safe, timely and congruent with their needs,” he said.
The VBC movement also has its challenges. A key obstacle is the lack of data interoperability. Also, transition can be more difficult for rural and small hospitals and clinics with fewer resources. HCTTF leaders, however, say they are “uniquely positioned to develop and disseminate strategic, operational and policy recommendations to spark rapid, measurable change across the health care landscape.”