Dive Brief:
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has announced that participation sign-ups are now available for the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network, which will aim to help the healthcare industry transition from fee-for-service to alternative, value-based payment.
- The Network will "provide a forum for public-private partnerships to help the US healthcare payment system (both private and public) meet or exceed recently established Medicare goals for value-based payments and alternative payment models," according to a press release.
- The announcement invites all payers, providers, employers, states, consumer groups, individual consumers and other interested parties to participate in discussing how the transition should be achieved. The announcement notes that the names of registered organizations will be public.
Dive Insight:
As the CMS notes on their website, payers and other healthcare organizations will have to make fundamental changes to their operations to make this transition possible, and there will only be incentive for such change if "a critical mass of payers" align their efforts in adopting new alternative payment models.
"When providers encounter new payment strategies for one payer but not others, the incentives to change are weak," the CMS writes. "When payers align their efforts, the incentives to change are stronger and the obstacles to change are reduced."
The Network is slated to kick off with a live streaming event on March 25.