Payment & Delivery

In JAMA, Laura Dummit and colleagues, including Matthew Press, evaluate whether a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) bundled payment pilot program is associated with a reduction in Medicare payments. Specifically, the authors assess if Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) reduced Medicare payments and maintained quality in lower extremity joint replacement. This CMS program was launched in 2013 to test whether linking payments for services provided during an episode of care can reduce Medicare payments and maintain quality. The authors used a difference-in-...

In Gastroenterology, Marina Serper and colleagues, including David Goldberg, assess how various health care system factors affect survival rates in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). These factors included uptake of historically underutilized curative therapies, access to a hepatologist, and presentation of the case to a multidisciplinary tumor board. The authors found that, while curative treatments of HCC increased survival rates, only 25% of newly diagnosed HCC patients received treatment intended to cure the disease. Additionally, those who received care from only...

In a JAMA Special Communication message, Victor Dzau and colleagues, including Shiriki Kumanyika, review the most salient health challenges and opportunities facing the United States, and seek to identify practical priorities and policy initiatives essential to health progress. The authors assess 19 National Academy of Medicine-commissioned white papers, and review publicly available data on health care costs and outcomes. They find that, of the $3.2 trillion spent annually on health care, an estimated 30% is related to waste, inefficiencies, and excessive price. Major health...

In Oncology, Andre Konski considers health care payment models and the transition from fee-for-service to value-based payment as it applies to radiation oncology. Konski examines difficulties in determining value, pointing out that both patients and payers could be considered health care ‘customers’ . He assesses how traditional cost-effective analyses may not be suitable for novel radiation oncology therapies, especially as consumers are increasingly conscious of the costs of treatment plans. He argues that radiation oncologists must consider the cost to patients when designing...

In a National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, Juan Pablo Atal and colleagues, including Hanming Fang, study how a mandate designed to increase competition in the German private health care market influences rates of consumers switching insurers or switching plans within an insurer. In the German system, those who opt into private insurance are required to front-load premium costs, so that younger, healthier consumers pay disproportionately into old-age provisions to offset increased costs for older enrollees. Before a 2009 mandate, consumers who switched insurers could...