Search

Background: This study aims to contribute to the ongoing policy and scholarly debate on physician-hospital integration (INT) and health care cost by providing evidence for the role of physician boards in mitigating hospital expenditure associated with INT., Methods: We conducted our study of the relationship between INT, physician boards, and hospital expenditure using data on hospitals in California. We obtained data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, American Hospital Association, and California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development from 2002 to 2006. A hospital fixed-effect ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis was used., Results: Hospital expenditure was higher in a hospital with an integrated arrangement (e.g., a hospital that adopted an integrated salary model) than under other independent arrangements between physicians and hospitals, and the proportion of physician members on hospital boards negatively moderated the effect of integration on hospital expenditure., Conclusions: Physician boards may provide a context that affords benefits that can reduce hospital expenditures under INT. This finding highlights the importance to having a supportive organizational design when implementing INT.

The extent to which physicians lead, own, and govern accountable care organizations (ACOs) is unknown. However, physicians' involvement in ACOs will influence how clinicians and patients perceive the ACO model, how effective these organizations are at improving quality and costs, and how future ACOs will be organized. From October 2012 to May 2013 we fielded the National Survey of Accountable Care Organizations, the first such survey of public and private ACOs. We found that 51 percent of ACOs were physician-led, with another 33 percent jointly led by physicians and hospitals. In 78 percent of ACOs, physicians constituted a majority of the governing board, and physicians owned 40 percent of ACOs. The broad reach of physician leadership has important implications for the future evolution of ACOs. It seems likely that the challenge of fundamentally changing care delivery as the country moves away from fee-for-service payment will not be accomplished without strong, effective leadership from physicians., (Project HOPE—The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.)

We examined the consequences of contractual or ownership relationships between hospitals and physician practices, often described as vertical integration. Such integration can reduce health spending and increase the quality of care by improving communication across care settings, but it can also increase providers' market power and facilitate the payment of what are effectively kickbacks for inappropriate referrals. We investigated the impact of vertical integration on hospital prices, volumes (admissions), and spending for privately insured patients. Using hospital claims from Truven Analytics MarketScan for the nonelderly privately insured in the period 2001-07, we constructed county-level indices of prices, volumes, and spending and adjusted them for enrollees' age and sex. We measured hospital-physician integration using information from the American Hospital Association on the types of relationships hospitals have with physicians. We found that an increase in the market share of hospitals with the tightest vertically integrated relationship with physicians--ownership of physician practices--was associated with higher hospital prices and spending. We found that an increase in contractual integration reduced the frequency of hospital admissions, but this effect was relatively small. Taken together, our results provide a mixed, although somewhat negative, picture of vertical integration from the perspective of the privately insured.

Patients who have been hospitalized often experience care coordination problems that worsen outcomes and increase costs. One reason is that hospital care and ambulatory care are often provided by different physicians. However, interventions to improve care coordination for hospitalized patients have not consistently improved outcomes and generally have not reduced costs. We describe the rationale for the Comprehensive Care Physician model, in which physicians focus their practice on patients at increased risk of hospitalization so that they can provide both inpatient and outpatient care to their patients. We also describe the design and implementation of a study supported by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to assess the model's effects on costs and outcomes. Evidence concerning the effectiveness of the program is expected by 2016. If the program is found to be effective, the next steps will be to assess the durability of its benefits and the model's potential for dissemination; evidence to the contrary will provide insights into how to alter the program to address sources of failure.

Pay-for-performance, public reporting, and accountable care organization programs place pressures on physicians to use health information technology and organized care management processes to improve the care they provide. But physician practices that are not large may lack the resources and size to implement such processes. We used data from a unique national survey of 1,164 practices with fewer than twenty physicians to provide the first information available on the extent to which independent practice associations (IPAs) and physician-hospital organizations (PHOs) might make it possible for these smaller practices to share resources to improve care. Nearly a quarter of the practices participated in an IPA or a PHO that accounted for a significant proportion of their patients. On average, practices participating in these organizations provided nearly three times as many care management processes for patients with chronic conditions as nonparticipating practices did (10.4 versus 3.8). Half of these processes were provided only by IPAs or PHOs. These organizations may provide a way for small and medium-size practices to systematically improve care and participate in accountable care organizations.

Before embarking on a physician-integration strategy, hospitals and health systems should perform a detailed analysis of the following four critical areas to ensure that the strategy is competitive and sustainable: Strategic objectives; Financial resources; Requisite experience and functional capabilities; Organizational structure, culture, and commitment.

Three models for hospital-physician alignment may offer hospitals for which large-scale physician employment is not practical the best means to prepare for payment changes under accountable care: Comanagement arrangements Clinical joint ventures Professional services agreements with performance incentives.

Physician practice is in the midst of another historic change--from solo and small groups to large, hospital-sponsored employed-physician networks. The question remains as to whether these large, hospital-centric physician organizations are sustainable. This article examines the stress points that physicians and practice managers face as they find themselves thrust into new but often ill-defined business models. It offers insights and pathways to help them navigate the changes that will be necessary for these business models to survive, evolve, and thrive.

The success of health reform efforts will depend, in part, on creating new and better ways to organize, deliver, and pay for health care. Increasingly central to this idea is the accountable care organization model proposed for Medicare and a slightly different model for commercial health care. But these new health care delivery and payment models face considerable skepticism. Can Medicare succeed with accountable care organizations if physicians can't determine whether patients are in the organization or not? Will commercial hospitals use their clout to create accountable care organizations, leaving physician practices in a weaker position? This article answers those and other criticisms of the developing accountable care organization movement. If the concept fails, the nation may face indiscriminate cuts to health care payments, with resulting reductions in access, service, and quality.

The health care delivery system is changing rapidly, with providers forming patient-centered medical homes and exploring the creation of accountable care organizations. Enactment of the Affordable Care Act will likely accelerate these changes. Significant delivery system reforms will simultaneously affect the structures, capabilities, incentives, and outcomes of the delivery system. With so many changes taking place at once, there is a need for a new tool to track progress at the community level. Many of the necessary data elements for a delivery system reform tracking tool are already being collected in various places and by different stakeholders. The authors propose that all elements be brought together in a unified whole to create a detailed picture of delivery system change. This brief provides a rationale for creating such a tool and presents a framework for doing so.

The Affordable Care Act encourages the formation of accountable care organizations as a new part of Medicare. Pending forthcoming federal regulations, though, it is unclear precisely how these ACOs will be structured. Although large integrated care systems that directly employ physicians may be most likely to evolve into ACOs, few such integrated systems exist in the United States. This paper demonstrates how Advocate Physician Partners in Illinois could serve as a model for a new kind of accountable care organization, by demonstrating how to organize physicians into partnerships with hospitals to improve care, cut costs, and be held accountable for the results. The partnership has signed its first commercial ACO contract effective January 1, 2011, with the largest insurer in Illinois, Blue Cross Blue Shield. Other commercial contracts are expected to follow. In a health care system still dominated by small, independent physician practices, this may constitute a more viable way to push the broader health care system toward accountable care.

Context: Physicians have increasingly become the focus of clinical performance measurement., Objective: To investigate the relationship between patient panel characteristics and relative physician clinical performance rankings within a large academic primary care network., Design, Setting, and Participants: Cohort study using data from 125,303 adult patients who had visited any of the 9 hospital-affiliated practices or 4 community health centers between January 1, 2003, and December 31, 2005, (162 primary care physicians in 1 physician organization linked by a common electronic medical record system in Eastern Massachusetts) to determine changes in physician quality ranking based on an aggregate of Health Plan Employer and Data Information Set (HEDIS) measures after adjusting for practice site, visit frequency, and patient panel characteristics., Main Outcome Measures: Composite physician clinical performance score based on 9 HEDIS quality measures (reported by percentile, with lower scores indicating higher quality)., Results: Patients of primary care physicians in the top quality performance tertile compared with patients of primary care physicians in the bottom quality tertile were older (51.1 years [95% confidence interval {CI}, 49.6-52.6 years] vs 46.6 years [95% CI, 43.8-49.5 years], respectively; P < .001), had a higher number of comorbidities (0.91 [95% CI, 0.83-0.98] vs 0.80 [95% CI, 0.66-0.95]; P = .008), and made more frequent primary care practice visits (71.0% [95% CI, 68.5%-73.5%] vs 61.8% [95% CI, 57.3%-66.3%] with >3 visits/year; P = .003). Top tertile primary care physicians compared with the bottom tertile physicians had fewer minority patients (13.7% [95% CI, 10.6%-16.7%] vs 25.6% [95% CI, 20.2%-31.1%], respectively; P < .001), non-English-speaking patients (3.2% [95% CI, 0.7%-5.6%] vs 10.2% [95% CI, 5.5%-14.9%]; P <.001), and patients with Medicaid coverage or without insurance (9.6% [95% CI, 7.5%-11.7%] vs 17.2% [95% CI, 13.5%-21.0%]; P <.001). After accounting for practice site and visit frequency differences, adjusting for patient panel factors resulted in a relative mean change in physician rankings of 7.6 percentiles (95% CI, 6.6-8.7 percentiles) per primary care physician, with more than one-third (36%) of primary care physicians (59/162) reclassified into different quality tertiles., Conclusion: Among primary care physicians practicing within the same large academic primary care system, patient panels with greater proportions of underinsured, minority, and non-English-speaking patients were associated with lower quality rankings for primary care physicians.

Background: Payment schemes exist for health care in the United States that are perverse and, in many cases, antithetical to the goals of all concerned. A fundamental reorganization will be required if care is to be broadened and sensible economies achieved., Methods: For some time, we have experimented intellectually with reorganization of the specialist/hospital axis in contemporary medical care, seeking a more functional relationship among the parties (ie, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and their patients)., Results: A virtual partnership between surgical specialists and the hospital provides many of the favored factors for productive and mutually respected care for patients with a feasible method for limiting costs., Conclusions: A virtual partnership, as exemplified for 3 major surgeries, could create a relationship that benefits the patient, the surgical specialist, the hospital, and the ethical payer., (Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Generic dispensing ratio (GDR) is an important measure of efficiency in pharmacy benefit management. A few studies have examined the effects of academic detailing or generic drug samples on GDR. On July 1, 2007, a physician-hospital organization (PHO) with a pay-for-performance incentive for generic utilization initiated a pilot generic medication voucher program that augmented its existing pharmacist-led academic detailing efforts. No published studies have examined the role of generic medication vouchers in promoting generic drug utilization., Objective: To determine if supplementing an existing academic detailing initiative in a PHO with a generic medication voucher program would be more effective in increasing the GDR compared with academic detailing alone., Methods: The intervention took place over the 9-month period from July 1, 2007, through March 31, 2008. Vouchers provided patients with the first fill of a 30-day supply of a generic drug at no cost to the patient for 8 specific generic medications obtained through a national community pharmacy chain. The study was conducted in a PHO composed of 7 hospitals and approximately 2,900 physicians (900 primary care providers [PCPs] and 2,000 specialists). Of the approximately 300 PCP practices, 21 practices with at least 2 physicians each were selected on the basis of high prescription volume (more than 500 pharmacy claims for the practice over a 12-month pre-baseline period) and low GDR (practice GDR less than 55% in the 12-month pre-baseline period). These 21 practices were then randomized to a control group of academic detailing alone or the intervention group that received academic detailing plus generic medication vouchers. One of 10 intervention groups declined to participate, and 2 of 11 control groups dropped out of the PHO. GDR was calculated monthly for all pharmacy claims including the 8 voucher medications. GDR was defined as the ratio of the total number of paid generic pharmacy claims divided by the total number of paid pharmacy claims for 108 prescriber identification numbers (Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] or National Provider Identifier [NPI]) for 9 intervention groups [n = 53 PCPs] and 9 control groups [n = 55 PCPs]). For both intervention and control arms, the GDR for each month from July 2007 (start of 2007 Q3, intervention start date) through September 2008 (end of 2008 Q3, 6 months after intervention end date) was compared with the same month in the previous year. A descriptive analysis compared a 9-month baseline period from 2006 Q3 through 2007 Q1 with a 9-month voucher period from 2007 Q3 to 2008 Q1. A panel data regression analysis assessed GDR for 18 practices over 27 months (12 months pre-intervention and 15 months post-intervention)., Results: A total of 656 vouchers were redeemed over the 9-month voucher period from July 1, 2007, through March 31, 2008, for an average of about 12 vouchers per participating physician; approximately one-third of the redeemed vouchers were for generic simvastatin. The GDR increase for all drugs, including the 8 voucher drugs, was 7.4 points for the 9 PCP group practices with access to generic medication vouchers, from 53.4% in the 9-month baseline period to 60.8% in the 9-month voucher period, compared with a 6.2 point increase for the control group from 55.9% during baseline to 62.1% during the voucher period. The panel data regression model estimated that the medication voucher program was associated with a 1.77-point increase in overall GDR compared with academic detailing alone (P = 0.047)., Conclusion: Compared with academic detailing alone, a generic medication voucher program providing a 30-day supply of 8 specific medications in addition to academic detailing in PCP groups with low GDR and high prescribing volume in an outpatient setting was associated with a small but statistically significant increase in adjusted overall GDR.

The economic environment and the current health care debate have prompted a critical reevaluation of previous and current physician-hospital integration models. Even though the independent, self-employed, private practice, medical staff remains the most common model, surgical specialists such as vascular surgeons are increasingly being employed and integrated into health care delivery systems. The degree of integration varies from minimal to full integration or full employment. This review defines the forces driving these changes and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each employment model from the physicians' point of view. Strategies for the successful implementation of a 21st century integrative employment model are discussed.

Previously, a hospital contract meant tenure for the incumbent group of radiologists; however, those days are long gone. Exclusive contracts have morphed into exclusive contracts with carve-outs. Turf erosion has become a fact of life for radiology practices. Now radiologists are losing their hospital contracts in record numbers. Group size, though helpful for a variety of reasons, does not ensure that a practice will be secure in its hospital setting. The reasons that groups lose their hospital contracts are varied, and in this paper, the author discusses the most common ones. Suggestions to help practices avoid this unfortunate fate are presented.

Strong hospitals and health systems should be on the lookout for opportunities today to acquire physician businesses at depressed fair market values. In some instances, an outright purchase of physicians' interest in a physician-hospital joint venture may be preferable; in others, the hospital may benefit more from simply increasing its interest in the venture. A critical part of the strategy should be taking steps to ensure the physicians remain engaged, including addressing physicians' income goals and need for control.

To establish an effective, and lasting, collaboration with physicians, a hospital must: Create a positive vision of the future. Structure the collaboration to reflect market imperatives. Work only with the best partners and make it clear from the start what the expectations are for those partners. Establish accounting and governance practices that promote the venture's near-term profitability and the long-term goals.

Current affiliation strategies tend to focus on joint ventures and employment. Careful planning and organizing of a joint venture can mitigate their associated legal, tax, regulatory, and cultural risks. The success of an employment model depends upon a compensation structure that aligns the incentives of physicians and the hospital. Fora successful affiliation program, hospitals should determine needs and trends, implement strategic planning, and conduct due diligence.