Employers who blend value-based health insurance with the medical home model will save money and improve outcomes, according to a new study.
The study, released Tuesday in Washington, D.C., was authored by researchers from the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative and the University of Michigan Center for Value-Based Insurance Design.
The study examines 10 case studies including employers, health plans, state governments and a municipality to find how combining value-based insurance with the patient-centered medical home can lower costs. The organizations profiled are Whirlpool, the state of Washington, the city of Battle Creek, Mich., IBM, Roy O. Martin Lumber, CIGNA, Universal American, Geisinger Health System/Health Plan, Aetna and the state of Minnesota.
"The objectives of value-based insurance design and the patient-centered medical home are to improve quality and continuity of care in a fiscally responsible manner," said A. Mark Fendrick, MD, one of the study's authors and co-director of the University of Michigan Value Based Insurance Design Center.
According to Fendrick, employers play a pivotal role in improving the healthcare system, and medical homes are a key ingredient.
Because patient-centered medical homes vary in governance, financing and structure from region to region, employers need to be involved in building multi-stakeholder initiatives and developing medical home models that add value to the health benefits they provide, he said.
Andrew Webber, president and CEO of the National Business Coalition on Health, said discussion of the medical home model has focused on re-engineering primary care practices and payment reform to align practitioner incentives.
"Yet the role of consumers in advancing the medical home has been largely missing in the conversation to date," he said.
Webber said the new study helps complete the story by describing the use of innovative employee benefit design strategies and incentives to encourage healthy lifestyle choices, preventive services, self-management, treatment compliance and selection of medical homes.
"These employer- and health plan-led strategies are needed to ensure that as we build the medical homes of the future, they will come," he said.
The PCPCC is a coalition of more than 700 organizations representing business leaders, consumers, primary care physicians and other healthcare stakeholders.