More than a dozen health systems including Ascension Health and Trinity Health have joined with four insurers and several major employers and patient stakeholders to form a new task force, pledging 75 percent of the businesses will run under value-based payment arrangements by 2020.
The formation of the Health Care Transformation Task Force comes on the heels of Medicare’s plan to tie 50 percent of payments to quality by 2018.
[Also: HHS ramps up bundled payments]
"By joining together with other industry leaders to align the way we provide care and pay for care, this Task Force will achieve the Triple Aim outcomes needed to improve the nation's health,” said Richard Gilfillan, the CEO of Livonia, Michigan-based Trinity Health who’s serving as the Task Force’s chairman. “Together, we recognize that now is the time for rapid, measurable change, and we are committed to leading the way.”
Among the Task Force’s provider members are Ascension, the nation’s largest nonprofit health system, Trinity, Partners HealthCare, Advocate Health Care, Providence Health & Services, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health and Dignity Health.
The four payers include the nation’s third largest insurer, Aetna, Blue Shield of California, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Health Care Services Corp., the owner of Blue Cross insurers in Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and New Mexico.
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Caesars Entertainment and the Pacific Business Group of Health are representing employers on the task force, while the National Partnership for Women and Families represent patients. Among Task Force advisers are experts from Brookings Institution, the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Evolent Health, PatientPing and Remedy Partners.
“The country cannot continue down the path of fee-for-service medicine that produces fragmented and unsafe care,” said David Lansky, president and CEO of the Pacific Business Group on Health. “The cost of health care undermines our global economic competitiveness and erodes the financial security of individuals and families.”
Trinity’s Gilfillan said that the Task Force offers “a critical mass of business, operational and policy expertise to increase the momentum of delivery and payment system reforms.” In addition to transforming their respective operations, a large part of Task Force’s work will be aligning the public and private payer systems and crafting “common accountability targets, metrics and incentives,” and drafting best practices.
The Task Force has already released its first consensus recommendations with ideas for the next generation of accountable care organizations in commercial, Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Those recommendations cover three major areas: honoring patient choice and improving attribution, improving quality measurement and improving financial sustainability.
Twitter: @AnthonyBrino