Dive Brief:
- Insurers, patients, providers and employers seem interested in the prospects for bundled payments to cut costs and increase transparency.
- Commercial insurers -- whose participation is crucial -- are perhaps the most skeptical of this approach, though CMS is experimenting with a bundled payment program serving 500 Medicare providers.
- Nonetheless, some health insurers are working on bundled solutions; for example, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has launched a bundled payment program for knee replacement surgeries in partnership with two prominent local health systems.
Dive Insight:
Bundled payments for costly, frequently performed procedures were a fad at one time, but by this point it seems obvious that they're not an exotic idea any more. Under pressure to manage costs, insurers are likely to carry the bundled payment ball forward with increasing speed over the next few years, assuming it offers the kind of savings observers expect. In the mean time, we'll see how CMS does with its bundled payment pilot.