Contact: Richard Gulla
Tel: 781-434-7101
E-mail: rgulla@mms.org
Waltham, Mass. -- February 14, 2011 -- Payment reform will
require "major changes in health plan operations"…the proposals
will call for a "significant departure from the status
quo…physicians and professional and institutional providers have
concerns about both "the pace and direction of these policies"…and
approaches to improving the value and reducing the cost of health
care "require systematic reengineering of the delivery system and
investments in both human capital and infrastructure."
Those were some of the conclusions drawn from a review of a
conference on payment reform by Meredith B. Rosenthal, Ph.D.,
Associate Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the Harvard
School of Public Health. Professor Rosenthal's comments were
contained in her analysis of the October conference, Towards a
Shared Vision of Payment Reform, sponsored by the Massachusetts
Medical Society, the statewide association of physicians, and The
Commonwealth Fund, a national private foundation in New York City
that supports independent research on health care issues.
The conference featured national health care experts discussing
the topics of payment and delivery systems, implementation
strategies for payment reform, affordability of healthcare, and
what the next steps for payment reform might be for Massachusetts.
Professor Rosenthal's review was released this month.
In a 10-page summary of the conference, Professor Rosenthal
writes that participants acknowledge the risks and opportunities of
payment reform; that no evidence-based treatment yet exists for the
problems of fragmentation, waste, and poor quality that Accountable
Care Organizations and global payments are proposed to address; and
that the design and implementation of reform must contain six
attributes: transparency to providers and patients; flexibility;
tailored locally with respectful engagement of physicians;
undertaken through pilots with evaluation and dissemination of best
practices; timely data sharing from payers to providers and
throughout referral networks; and supported by resources adequate
for providers and payers to make the transition to new models.
Finally, she concludes that conference participants agreed that
a "truly collaborative effort among payers, providers, and
government would be needed to identify and implement effective
reform."
Professor Rosenthal's complete analysis may be read at www.massmed.org/whitepaper/rosenthal
Conference participants included Stuart
Guterman, Vice President, Program on Payment System
Reform, The Commonwealth Fund; Howard R. Grant,
J.D., M.D., Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer,
Geisinger Health System; Michael van Duren, M.D.,
M.B.A., Chief Medical Officer, Sutter Physician Services;
Sara Rosenbaum, J.D., Hirsh Professor and Chair of
the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University
School of Public Health and Health Services; James A.
Hester, Ph.D., Director of the Vermont Health Care Reform
Commission; JudyAnn Bigby, M.D., Secretary of
Health and Human Services, Commonwealth of Massachusetts;
Dana Gelb Safran, Sc.D., Senior Vice President,
Performance Measurement and Improvement, Blue Cross and Blue Shield
of Massachusetts; Gene Lindsey, M.D., President
and CEO, Atrius Health and Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates;
Barbara Spivak, M.D., President, Mount Auburn
Cambridge Independent Practice Association.
The Massachusetts Medical Society, with more than 23,000
physicians and student members, is dedicated to educating and
advocating for the patients and physicians of Massachusetts. The
Society publishes the New England Journal of Medicine, a leading
global medical journal and web site, and Journal Watch alerts and
newsletters covering 13 specialties. The Society is also a leader
in continuing medical education for health care professionals
throughout Massachusetts, conducting a variety of medical education
programs for physicians and health care professionals. Founded in
1781, MMS is the oldest continuously operating medical society in
the country. For more information, visit www.massmed.org, www.nejm.org, or www.jwatch.org.
