Dataset Information

Value-Based Payments in Health Care: Evidence from a Nationwide Randomized Experiment in the Home Health Sector.

ABSTRACT: Value-based payment programs, also known as pay-for-performance, use financial incentives to motivate providers to invest in quality and are a critical part of Medicare health care reform. This study examines the first year of the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing program, a nationally representative cluster randomized experiment implemented by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in 2016. The goal of the program is to achieve better home health care quality. Home health agencies in treatment states were rewarded or penalized based on their performance on agency-reported and non-agency-reported quality measures. The program improved agency-reported measures by approximately one percentage point, and performance gains suggest a dose-response relationship with respect to incentive size. However, the performance gains in agency-reported measures did not reflect true quality improvement. I find evidence that agencies manipulated their coding of patients and inflated their performance. Coding manipulation explains the entirety of the program's impact on agency-reported measures.

SUBMITTER: Li J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10598776 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Value-Based Payments in Health Care: Evidence from a Nationwide Randomized Experiment in the Home Health Sector.

Li Jun J

Journal of policy analysis and management : [the journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management] 20220822 4

Value-based payment programs, also known as pay-for-performance, use financial incentives to motivate providers to invest in quality and are a critical part of Medicare health care reform. This study examines the first year of the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing program, a nationally representative cluster randomized experiment implemented by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in 2016. The goal of the program is to achieve better home health care quality. Home health agencies in tre ...[more]

PMID: 37881443

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Project description:ImportanceMedicaid patients with mental illness comprise one of the most high-need and complex patient populations. Value-based reforms aim to improve care, but their efficacy in the Medicaid program is unclear.ObjectiveTo investigate if New York state's Medicaid value-based payment reform was associated with improved utilization patterns for patients with mental illness.Design, setting, and participantsThis retrospective cohort study used a difference-in-differences analysis to compare changes in utilization between Medicaid beneficiaries whose outpatient practices participated in value-based payment reform and beneficiaries whose practices did not participate from before (July 1, 2013-June 30, 2015) to after reform (July 1, 2015-June 30, 2019). Participants were Medicaid beneficiaries in New York state aged 18 to 64 years with major depression disorder, bipolar disorder, and/or schizophrenia. Data analysis was performed from April 2021 to July 2023.ExposureBeneficiaries were exposed to value-based payment reforms if their attributed outpatient practice participated in value-based payment reform at baseline (July 1, 2015).Main outcomes and measuresPrimary outcomes were the number of outpatient primary care visits and the number of behavioral health visits per year. Secondary outcomes were the number of mental health emergency department visits and hospitalizations per year.ResultsThe analytic population comprised 306 290 individuals with depression (67.4% female; mean [SD] age, 38.6 [11.9] years), 85 105 patients with bipolar disorder (59.6% female; mean [SD] age, 38.0 [11.6] years), and 71 299 patients with schizophrenia (45.1% female; mean [SD] age, 40.3 [12.2] years). After adjustment, analyses estimated a statistically significant, positive association between value-based payments and behavioral health visits for patients with depression (0.91 visits; 95% CI, 0.51-1.30) and bipolar disorder (1.01 visits; 95% CI, 0.22-1.79). There was no statistically significant changes to primary care visits for patients with depression and bipolar disorder, but value-based payments were associated with reductions in primary care visits for patients with schizophrenia (-1.31 visits; 95% CI, -2.51 to -0.12). In every diagnostic population, value-based payment was associated with significant reductions in mental health emergency department visits (population with depression: -0.01 visits [95% CI, -0.02 to -0.002]; population with bipolar disorder: -0.02 visits [95% CI, -0.05 to -0.001]; population with schizophrenia: -0.04 visits [95% CI, -0.07 to -0.01]).Conclusions and relevanceIn this cohort study, Medicaid value-based payment reform was statistically significantly associated with an increase in behavioral health visits and a reduction in mental health emergency department visits for patients with mental illness. Medicaid value-based payment may be effective at altering health care utilization in patients with mental illness.

Project description:BackgroundIn 2014, a revision of the national medical tariffs for inpatient health care services took place in Iran, and a new hotline was set up to report informal payments. It was expected that such measures would eliminate or decrease informal payments prevalence. This study estimates the prevalence of informal payments for inpatient health care services in the post-reform period, explores factors associated with informal payments and examines patients' and healthcare providers' views regarding the causes of informal payments and possible practical solutions for their reduction.MethodsWe surveyed by phone patients who used inpatient health care services in seven Iranian hospitals in 2016. Descriptive and regression analyses were used to estimate the prevalence and determine factors associated with informal payments. We conducted a qualitative analysis through thematic analyses based on focus group discussions and in-depth interviews.ResultsOf 2696 respondents, 14% reported paying informally for inpatient services. Informal payments were reported more frequently among private hospital users, given more frequently to physicians in public teaching hospitals and 'other staff' in private hospitals, in the form of cash and voluntary. Being an adult, hospital or treatment type, being insured, and household head's education influenced the probability of paying informally. The amount paid informally was associated with being insured, the educational status of the household's head, household size, service, and hospital types. Based on qualitative findings, the leading causes of informal payments reported by patients and healthcare providers can be categorized into four groups - financing challenges; governance challenges; service delivery challenges; and actors and stakeholders. Modifying, adjusting and applying policy interventions; supervision, monitoring and evaluation; and actors and stakeholders were identified as possible solutions for tackling informal payment in the inpatient health care services.ConclusionThe prevalence of informal patient payments for inpatient services in the post-reform period seems to have reduced; however, they remain to be common. Regular monitoring, reviewing of payment policies to the physicians, informing patients, changing the behaviour of healthcare providers and patients, and developing ethical guidelines to prevent informal payments were suggested for reduction and elimination of informal payments in the Iranian healthcare sector.

Project description:ImportanceThe original Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) model provided financial incentives to home health agencies for quality improvement in 9 randomly selected US states.ObjectiveTo evaluate quality, utilization, and Medicare payments for home health patients in HHVBP states compared with those in comparison states.Design, setting, and participantsThis cohort study was conducted in 2021 with secondary data from January 2013 to December 2020. A difference-in-differences design and multivariate linear regression were used to compare outcomes for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries who received home health care in HHVBP states with those in 41 comparison states during 3 years of preintervention (2013-2015) and the subsequent 5 years (2016-2020).ExposuresHome health care provided by a home health agency in HHVBP states and comparison states.Main outcomes and measuresUtilization (unplanned hospitalizations, emergency department visits, skilled nursing facility [SNF] visits) for Medicare beneficiaries within 60 days of beginning home health, Medicare payments during and 37 days after home health episodes, and quality of care (functional status, patient experience) during home health episodes.ResultsAmong 34 058 796 home health episodes (16 584 870 beneficiaries; mean [SD] age of 76.6 [11.7] years; 60.5% female; 11.2% Black non-Hispanic; 79.5% White non-Hispanic) from January 2016 to December 2020, 22.6% were in HHVBP states and 77.4% were in non-HHVBP states. For the HHVBP and non-HHVBP groups, 60.4% and 61.0% of episodes were provided to female patients; 10.0% and 13.6% were provided to Black non-Hispanic patients, and 82.4% and 75.2% were provided to White non-Hispanic patients, respectively. Unplanned hospitalizations decreased by 0.15 percentage points (95% CI, -0.30 to -0.01) more in HHVBP states, a 1.0% decline compared with 15.7% at baseline. The use of SNFs decreased by 0.34 percentage points (95% CI, -0.40 to -0.27) more in HHVBP states, a 6.9% decline compared with the 4.9% baseline average. There was an association between HHVBP and a reduction in average Medicare payments per day of $2.17 (95% CI, -$3.67 to -$0.68) in HHVBP states, primarily associated with reduced inpatient and SNF services, which corresponded to an average annual Medicare savings of $190 million. There was greater functional improvement in HHVBP states than comparison states and no statistically significant change in emergency department use or most measures of patient experience.Conclusions and relevanceIn this cohort study, the HHVBP model was associated with lower Medicare payments that were associated with lower utilization of inpatient and SNF services, with better or similar quality of care.

Dataset Information

Value-Based Payments in Health Care: Evidence from a Nationwide Randomized Experiment in the Home Health Sector.

Publications

Value-Based Payments in Health Care: Evidence from a Nationwide Randomized Experiment in the Home Health Sector.

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