Reform Moves Stir Talk of Bundled Payments | BNET Healthcare Blog | BNET

A BNet article, Reform Moves Stir Talk of Bundled Payments, discusses healthcare reformers' conceptualizing bundling payments to align physician and health system/hospital outcome interests.  The article has a number of cites to other reports, discussions and administration statements.  It also points out what I find facinating about the trend -- what did not occur in the 1990s may be coming through healthcare payment reform today.   But are today's integrated delivery systems (and the regulatory environment) prepared for risk in any format other than PPS payments?

All of this reminds some observers of the rapid formation of integrated delivery systems during the ‘90s, when many hospitals and physicians were circling the wagons to fend off the expected onslaught of capitated managed care plans. That never materialized in most places, but many systems retained all or some of their employed primary-care physicians. Now, partly in expectation of healthcare reform, they’re also stepping up their hiring of specialists.

“The handwriting is on the wall,” Bill Jessee, MD, president and CEO of the Medical Group Management Association, tells BNET. “The push is going to be towards more integration of physicians, hospitals, home health, and other services. And Medicare or a private insurer may put the provider at risk, instead of the insurer being at risk. It’s not explicit, but it’s implicit in a lot of the reform discussions that that’s the direction they’d like to move. The bundled payment demonstrations are a manifestation of that.”

via Reform Moves Stir Talk of Bundled Payments | BNET Healthcare Blog | BNET.