UnitedHealth Expands Bundled Payments in Its Medicare Advantage Plans

The essence of value-based care is that reimbursement is based on positive outcomes for patients as opposed to fee-for-service in which in which providers select the services delivered, often with insufficient attention to outcomes. Ideally, value-based care results in higher quality care at a lower cost (see:Provider Organizations Beginning to Compete on the Basis of Value-Based Care. One of the key questions regarding value-based care is how to achieve this goal. It now appears that a major"on-ramp" will be Medicare Advantage plans and bundled payments as explained in a recent article (see:UnitedHealth To Expand Bundled Payments In Medicare Advantage). Below is an excerpt from it:UnitedHealth Group said it will expand to its private Medicare Advantage plans an effort to pay doctors and hospitals for an array of surgeries and procedures by moving to bundled payments, a proliferating value-based care model.UnitedHealth ’s UnitedHealthcare is rolling out a new voluntary program that offers doctors and hospitals contracted with itsMedicare Advantage plans in more than 30 states “the opportunity to participate in the value-based care payment program” for eight medical procedures including certain hip and knee joint replacements, spinal infusion, heart valve replacement and coronary bypass....The move to bundled payment models in Medicare Advantage by the nation ’s largest health insurer is significant given the rapid growth of such insurance. Across...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Insurance Medical Consumerism Public Health Quality of Care Source Type: blogs