Who has heard the favorite healthcare reform saying these days? “We need to reward providers for value, not volume!” It has almost become cliche. And conventional wisdom would teach that something touted frequently would be well thought through by the people touting it; but we all know conventional wisdom is often wrong. (Did I just say that the knowledge that conventional wisdom is often wrong is conventional wisdom?) I admit that I have not read everything by everyone doing the touting, but I’ve never heard anyone break down exactly how we can reward value instead of volume. So I’ll tell you.
There are only two ways to do it: a dumb way and a smart way. But first, let’s review how a healthcare provider makes money:
Revenue = Price x Quantity
Do you see that there are only two components (that we can control, at least) that determine how much money a company makes? We can change the prices we pay them or the quantity they sell.
Now, let’s suppose we are able to identify an objectively highest value healthcare provider out there. Let’s further suppose that we want to reward this high-value health system for its amazingly high value so that it can be financially rewarded for being so awesome and so (we hope) others will copy them to have high value and be rewarded, too. How can we do it? Let’s look at our two options:
Increase price: You’ll recognize this as what Medicare is trying to do. Will it have the intended effect? Probably. High-value providers will be rewarded with higher prices. But hold the phone–isn’t our true intended effect to get society the highest-value healthcare we possibly can? So how are we maximizing value if we’re raising prices? Raising prices lowers value. So we’re identifying the highest-value providers and then lowering their value. Hm. Ah, but maybe there will be an overall aggregate effect of higher value because we won’t raise prices much, but we’ll get lots of low-value providers to improve their quality. I guess. But all this seems to be doing is increasing the total money we pay on healthcare, which is not a good idea right now. So I call this the dumb approach. But people haven’t thought hard enough to know there’s also a smart approach . . .
Increase quantity: What this means is getting more people to the highest-value providers, so now we’re rewarding value with volume. Their hospital beds are full, their specialists are performing lots of high-margin surgeries, etc., and they are rewarded handsomely for being high value. Not only does this reward the high-value provider, but look what happens to patients–they get to have higher-value care because they’re going to the high-value providers! In other words, society collectively will be receiving higher-value healthcare. And the low-value competition, meanwhile, will not be so busy anymore, they’ll start to lose money, and they might actually go out of business UNLESS they improve their value as well. That’s quite an incentive to change (probably the most powerful one, actually).
So why aren’t we doing this rewarding value with volume thing? I could list a bunch of reasons why we’re not, but that wouldn’t be very clear thinking now, would it? Instead, I’ll ask this: Who is deciding which providers patients will go to? Whoever is making that provider selection (sometimes it’s the insurer or employer, sometimes it’s other providers, usually it’s the patients themselves) needs to (1) have the price and quality information necessary and be able to determine which provider they think is the highest value and (2) bear the financial consequences of their choice (otherwise they’ll just choose the highest quality every time without regard for price!). If the provider-selecting party can meet both of those conditions, they will be making what I call value-sensitive provider selections.
In summary, policy ideas to reward value with higher prices will not do much for aggregate healthcare value our society is purchasing. But policy ideas that can get those 2 conditions fulfilled for the parties making the provider selections will successfully reward value with volume and concomitantly provide low-value providers with an ultimatum to either improve value or go out of business.
So the questions we should be asking ourselves if we want to “reward providers for value, not volume” is How can we remove the barriers to value-sensitive provider selection?” When will I write another post that enumerates all of the most salient barriers and how to remove them? Ask me tomorrow, but not today.
Clear Thinking on Healthcare 