Dr Bhuvana Sagar on Using Data Generated From Value Frameworks

Though Cigna’s reimbursement medical home model is still in its very early stages, Bhuvana Sagar, MD, national medical director of Cigna Healthcare, explained that discussing value in healthcare and getting back to smarter spending as well as better outcomes for patients should be the focus of all industry stakeholders.

Transcript slightly modified)

Will the information generated from the various value frameworks out there influence reimbursement decisions by Cigna?

Definitely, definitely. So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get as much data as possible and at this point with our reimbursement medical home models that we have in place—these have been there only for a short time, relatively a short time, probably about a year—we’re still trying to get data, we’re still trying to get experience with the program, providers are still getting used to it, customers are still trying to get used to it.

So once we have more information, we’re definitely going to look and see what works, what doesn’t work and where the greatest impact is going to be and go from there.

Why do you think we need to have the value discussion in healthcare today?

Well with rising healthcare costs and we can’t continue to ignore them at this point and we as a society need to do something to address the cost. You know, the different stakeholders need to be involved in the discussion and we’ve come to a point where we all understand that the fee-for-service system just seems to be adding a lot of that volume without necessarily affecting the quality of care.

So we want to go back to what’s important. We want to have smarter spending, better outcomes for our patients and overall better healthcare for our patients.