Study Outlines Strategies to Test New Payment Models for Healthcare

A new RAND Corporation study outlines methods that might be used to test a novel payment system for medical care that would provide doctors, hospitals and other health providers a set fee for treating an ailment such as hip replacement surgery.

Proposals to pay health providers for so-called "episodes of care" have gained momentum during the ongoing debate about national healthcare reform as a strategy that could both curb medical spending and improve the quality of care.

While payments based on episodes of care have been widely discussed, the approach is largely conceptual with little real world experience that might help guide the design or adoption of the strategy, according to the study published in the September/October edition of the journal Health Affairs.

Researchers from RAND Health analyzed claims information from a large group of Medicare beneficiaries and identified key issues that should be considered to help determine how to define episodes of care and identify which provider is accountable for an episode.