Dr Justin Bachmann on How Cardiology Is Handling Transition to Value-Based Care

Justin Bachmann, MD, MPH, FACC, instructor of Medicine and Health Policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, discusses how cardiologists incorporate value-based care into their procedures.

Transcript

How is cardiology handling the transition to value-based care and what models are a good fit with cardiology care?

I say we have a little bit of a head start. So cardiology has been involved in value-based care for a while now. We started in the '90s with the development with our registries, specifically the National Cardiovascular Data Registry, which was developed by the American College of Cardiology.

So we have registries that focus on specific procedures, for example PCI or percutaneous coronary intervention, this is soften normally for to as a stent. Also things such as implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). So these registries collect granular information on patients who are going through these procedures. That really prepared us for that transition so it continued to evolve as bundled payments and episodes of care continue to evolve. I think cardiology will be prepared for that.

A number of the proposed bundled payment models, for example focused on acute myocardio infarction or bypass and those, are a little bit in flux in present, but as these models continue to change and evolve and they’ll continue to do so over the coming years. I think cardiologists will engage with those.