Top stakeholders form task force to accelerate shift to value-based care

A group of the top U.S. health systems, payers and stakeholders has formed the Health Care Transformation Task Force, a private-sector alliance aimed at accelerating the healthcare industry's transformation to value-based care.

Task Force members, which include six of the nation’s top 15 health systems and four of the top 25 health insurers, are committed to allocating 75% of their business into value-based arrangements that focus on the Triple Aim of better health, better care and lower costs by 2020.

This move comes just two days after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced that Medicare would shift 50% of its provider payments into alternative payment arrangements such as accountable care organizations (ACOs) or bundled payments by 2018. Together, the two announcements send a clear signal that the public and private sector are aligning around a new trajectory for healthcare payments that moves away from fee-for-service and into alternative payment models.

Read the list of Task Force members here

“With deep experience in both private and public sector healthcare, together with the experience of patients and purchasers, we provide a critical mass of business, operational and policy expertise to increase the momentum of delivery and payment system reforms,” Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, Task Force member, told Managed Healthcare Executive.

“Providers and payers are committed to working together with the purchaser and patient members to create new business and clinical models that meet the shared goals of all stakeholders,” says Ness. “Our goal is clear-to reform our healthcare system so that it finally delivers the high-quality, coordinated, patient- and family-centered care that all individuals deserve.”

The Task Force will develop timely and actionable policy and program design recommendations for the private sector, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Congress and others; new delivery and payment models; and the best-practice tools, benchmarks and approaches to implement them. Initial priorities include improving the ACO model, developing common bundled payment framework and improving care for high-cost patients.

The Task Force also released its first consensus recommendations on how best to design the next generation of the ACO model in commercial, Medicare and Medicaid programs. The recommendations will form the basis of the Task Force’s upcoming comment letter on the CMS proposed changes to the Medicare Shared Savings ACO program.

The Task Force defines value-based payment arrangements as those which successfully incentivize and hold providers accountable for the total cost, patient experience and quality of care for a population of patients, either across an entire population over the course of a year or during a defined episode that spans multiple sites of care.