Friday, June 10, 2011

Bending the Cost Curve

In the continuing debate about the budget crisis and health care reform many partisans continue to miss the fact that the process of healthcare and how we pay for needs to change, if we are going to affect the actual cost of care. For example, the State of Massachusetts has now officially endorsed a complete move away from fee-for-service and towards an ACO-like delivery system and financial reform. Blue Cross Blue Shield is the dominant payer in that State and has developed the model in the link to pay ACO-like groups of providers.

This is complicated stuff that is not susceptible to opinionated sound bites, and that is why the talking heads and politicians do not often address this issue, but it is critical to understand! If you are interested, you can check out 1 year of research on this model’s effect on cost and quality here:

Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts Report Click Here

The results are very promising! This is how we "bend the cost curve" and this is an example of the needed change that I have been talking about!