Dr Peter Aran: Smaller Practices Need Help Transitioning to Value-Based Payments

Payers and other organizations can help smaller practices develop the necessary infrastructure to complete their healthcare transformation, said Peter Aran, MD, medical director of population health management at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma.

Transcript

How do value-based incentives differ based on practice type?

Big health systems have the money and the infrastructure to have full-time equivalents who do quality, who do information technology, who do communications and public relations. They have the people and the resources to do that and to lead programs. A 2-, 3-, 4-, or 5-doctor group in rural America will not have that. So, this is an issue not just with the oncology care model initiative, but with the primary care plus initiative as well. And with the [Merit-based Incentive Payment System], which is: do we need to have some type of virtual group for the smaller practices to help them develop the infrastructure to do the healthcare transformation that we want them to do? It’s more challenging for the small groups and we need to help them—so that’s the role of the payers.

The payers and other kinds of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the government, one of the challenges and responsibilities we have is to help those programs that don’t have the built-in infrastructure and that don’t have the big mega systems of 40, 80, 100 hospitals systems have. The Community Oncology Alliance, and the [American Society of Clinical Oncology], and other groups are going to be basic in trying to help us to make these changes for a couple reasons. They are a vocal force in communicating their changes with their docs in practices, they convene them at national meetings once or twice a year, and then their monthly publications help educate them. So, they are a vital aspect to getting this done.