All too often, current healthcare payment systems not only don't reward efforts to improve healthcare quality, they actually financially penalize them. While well-intended, most current pay-for-performance initiatives won't by themselves solve the fundamental problems and disincentives that are built into the underlying payment systems.
The Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (a coalition of regional health initiatives) is working to make a quantum leap in thinking about how healthcare payment systems can be redesigned to reward quality as well as reduce costs. Our goals are to develop new and better concepts for value-based purchasing than are currently being discussed; to build consensus among national experts and national and regional payors on the desirability and feasibility of these concepts; and to identify strategies for aligning market incentives and solving key challenges in the implementation of these concepts.
The members of the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement are committed to informing near-term decisions made by CMS and other healthcare payors, and to designing and implementing regional demonstrations of innovative concepts for payment systems.