White House Launches Network for Alternative Payment Models

APA President Paul Summergrad, M.D. (left), was among those in attendance when President Barack Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell today helped launch the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network to help shift health care payment from a model based on quantity to one that rewards providers for quality of care.

The Network is one way to make health care more effective and more efficient, said Obama in remarks noting the fifth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“It is in our common interest to build a health care system that delivers better care, spends our health care dollars more wisely, and results in healthier people,” said Burwell.

The Network has signed up more than 2,800 entities involved in all aspects of the health care system: clinicians, patients, payers, employers, state and local governments, advocates, and professional medical societies, including APA. Its goal is to link 30 percent of payments made under the ACA to quality measures by 2016 and 50 percent by 2018, goals that were set previously for Medicare.

The Network will be funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and administered by the MITRE Corporation. Through teleconferencing, best practices in alternative payment models.

“Our goal is to improve how providers are paid, how care is delivered, and how information is distributed,” said Burwell.

For more in Psychiatric News on accountable care organizations, see “Moving to an Integrated Medical and Psychiatric Payment Platform.”

--aml  (Image: APA)