Reimbursement and incentive contracts in health care By Alan Maynard.
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Transcript of Reimbursement and incentive contracts in health care By Alan Maynard.
Background What’s wrong with the health care market?1. Variations in clinical practice : the Dartmouth
Medical School (Wennberg and Fisher), Yates and Bloor-Maynard(HSJ 12/2002)
2. Inappropriate care (Bernstein et al IJHTA 1993)
3. Medical error (Too err is human IOM 1999)4. Failure to measure outcomes (Nightingale:
dead , relieved and unrelieved)
Hospital payment systems What are you try to achieve?1. Expenditure control, or cost
containment2. Efficiency3. Equity, in health care funding,
access? and utilisation? Or health status
The policy issue of ranking and trade offs
Payment options Global budgets Retrospective budgets Prospective payment per case Non financial incentives related to
activity, patient access and patient outcomes (levels of patient outcome and distribution between social classes)
Global budgets I
Fixed financial allocation to the hospital How is it fixed?
last year plus x+y+z (where x=inflation, y=scandals in the press and z=influence of local politicians!
Or allocation by formula according to capitation weighted by need
how do you determine and monitor prices, quantity and quality?
Global budgets II A global budget can give expenditure control But offers no micro regulation regulation of:
price quantity (volume) quality
What measure of volume? What of quality?
‘The operation was a success but the patient died ……’ !
Global budgets III
Contracts: who bears the risk? Purchaser or provider? Block contract: fixed allocation to
cover all care delivered in the year risk with provider Need for activity ceilings and floors
cost per case contract risk for purchaser without a
volume.activity cap?
Global budgets V: summary Macroeconomic cost containment can
be achieved Microeconomic problems continue:
prices: is provision at least cost? quantity: is volume appropriate? quality: is treatment provided
efficiently(I.e low cost and good outcomes) with medical errors controlled at least cost?
Retrospective budgets I
Fee per item of service U.C.R. system in the USA pre-
1980s UCR= “usual, customary and reasonable”)
Cross subsidisation Still exists in some parts of the US
system today
Cross subsidisation in UCR system
Private insurerPrivate insurer
Blue cross/blue shieldBlue cross/blue shield
Medicare/MedicaidMedicare/Medicaid
PoorPoor
CostCost
Type Type ofof
funderfunder
Retrospective budgets II
Perverse incentives maximise activity regardless of
appropriateness and efficiency? No systematic management of
quality activity mix depends on relative
prices lack of cost control
Retrospective budgets III: the German case Majority (80%) paid on per diem
basis Longer lengths of stay: inefficient
and costly Too many beds and hospitals Move towards DRGs Retrospective budgeting is seen as
inflationary and inefficient, but it does incentivise activity
Prospective payment by case I Diagnostic related groups
470 groups Hospital revenue/income is
determined by DRG price x volume of activity
DRG systems require hospitals to manage with good information systems but these systems focus on price and volume
Prospective payment by case III Further problems:
sticky prices: how are DRGs adjusted over time as technology and relative prices alter?
DRG “creep”: specialist software to maximise income/revenue
funding medical schools, usually separate information needs (high transactions
costs) no control of volume or quality
Prospective payment by case IV
Effects: length of stay ‘quicker-sicker’ (Rand studies in the
1980s) cream skimming removal of cross-subsidisation hospital closures access for poor (uncompensated care) supply side moral hazard (reduce
service content)
Purchasing hospital care 1 What do you want to purchase? Global budgets give to expenditure
control if the budgets are “hard” Global budgets do not give you control
over volume/access which is important to patients and to Governments concerned about waiting times
Do global budgets and DRGs enable you to achieve expenditure control and explicitness about volume?
Purchasing hospital care 2 Global budgets and DRGs do not resolve
the problems of variations in medical practice activity, appropriateness and quality/outcome measurement
Policies to deal with activity variation and outcome measurement :job plans for clinicians, publishing mortality data and measuring HRQOL
Purchasing hospital care 3 Job plans :measure, manage and police
practitioner activity data about 4 aspects of their work
1. What do they produce by case mix and outcome
2. How much do the produce relative to their peers?
3. What principles determine their adoption of new and abandonment of old technologies
4. Who gets what care by social class?
English national tariffs York’s reference costs are 85, so we
are 15% below the national average. UCH is above the national average
Why bother with national tariffs?1. Sort out accounting and clinical
practice variations?2. To increase activity?3. No efficiency and equity effects? No
outcome measures and “RAWP” trade off?
Paying doctors Doctors can be paid on the basis of1. Fee for service2. Capitation3. Salary “There are many mechanisms for
paying physicians, some are good and some are bad. The three worst are fee for service, capitation and salary” Jamie Robinson, Milbank Quarterly 2001
Type of pay
Incentive effects
increase activity
decrease activity
shift costs
target the poor
control cost
fee-for-service
yes no no maybe no
salary no yes yes no yes
capit-ation
no yes yes no yes
Doctor payment systems
Paying GPs The role of the GP :the John Wayne
contract! General practice is a data free
activity! About 40% are now on salary and
the rest are self employed and paid by a mix of capitation, ffs and salary elements. Contracts are 24/7/365 cover for patients
The 2004 contract Contract is with the practice. GPs
can stay salaried or on the old capitated contract
“Out of hours” opt out Ten item “quality contract” What will be excluded? “What is
not incentivised is marginalised”
GP Contract quality framework A: Clinical indicators
CHD: 121 Stroke: 31 Cancer: 12 Hypothyroidism: 8 Diabetes: 99 Hypertension: 105 Mental health: 41 COPD: 45 Epilepsy: 16 Total: 550
Overview of new contract Uncosted e.g pharmaceutical costs Knock on effects for secondary care: e.g
referrals for diagnostics and I/p care Administrative costs of data systems ,
collection and policing: the likelihood of gaming
The problem of incentivising GP practices e.g. GP fund holding (see Dusheiko,Gravelle, Jacobs and Smith, CHE technical paper 26)
Conclusion “ The only way to pay doctors is to
change the system every three years as by then they have learnt to game it!” Bob Evans