RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – The Department of Health and Human Services plans to expand a national network of local organizations, called chartered value exchanges (CVEs), that will have access to Medicare data for reporting care and cost outcomes to the public.
At an August 12 town hall meeting co-hosted by the North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance, Inc., HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt said he would like to increase CVEs from the current 14 to 25 by year’s end.
Upon Leavitt’s prompting, the NCHICA has passed a resolution to establish the first CVE in North Carolina.
Leavitt said CVEs will help change the U.S. healthcare sector into a healthcare system. “We need national standards, but local control,” he said. Leavitt said Medicare is at the heart of America’s healthcare woes because other insurance companies pattern themselves after Medicare. Incentives based on volume, not value, are part of the problem, he said. Last year the NCHICA was designated a community leader for value-driven healthcare by Leavitt, one of the requirements to be a CVE. Allen Dobson, MD, chairman of Community Care of North Carolina, said adding a CVE to other initiatives already underway in North Carolina is an important step. ”The leadership of NCHICA in promoting collaboration in this effort will prove to be extremely important to our future success,” Dobson said. “North Carolina is now poised to be a national leader in building a better healthcare system for all our citizens.”
Over the last year, HHS has designated more than 100 value-driven healthcare community leaders. From among 38 applications, HHS selected 14 collaboratives in a dozen states to be CVEs.
Some doctors don’t favor the idea of report cards, saying they could give a false representation of their practice. One Healthcare Finance News reader predicts doctors “will become fed up with manipulation by insurance executives and politicians” and will Cside-step the rigged system one way or another.C
If that happens, “many will retire early and far fewer bright kids will want to become doctors," said Darrell Pruitt, a dentist in Fort Worth, Texas. "As always, the poor will be hurt the most while clever entrepreneurs will get rich at their expense,” the reader said. “Nothing changes.”