Policy and Medicine
Posted by Thomas Sullivan on July 13, 2012
Forbes Insights recently released “Getting From Volume to Value in Health Care: Balancing Challenges & Opportunities,” a study examining health care professionals’ opinions about value-based purchasing (VBP). At its most basic, value-based purchasing (VBP) asserts that buyers should hold providers of health care accountable for both cost and quality of care.
As one widely used definition puts it: “Value-based purchasing brings together information on the quality of health care, including patient outcomes and health status, with data on the dollar outlays going towards health. It focuses on managing the use of the health care system to reduce inappropriate care and to identify and reward the best-performing providers.”
Medicare’s Value-Based Purchasing program under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) goes into effect on Oct. 1, 2012, the start of the government’s FY 2013. Under the program Medicare will withhold a small part of hospital reimbursement each year and then redistribute it as incentive payments based on specific groups of quality measures…