As Value-Based Care Escalates, CVS Eclipses 50 Hospital Deals
It would appear that your healthcare is being “given” to large organizations – mostly for profit – that is going to be in charge of providing the best care for the lowest possible cost. When these corporation’s bottom line profits are on the line… what do you think that optimizing your quality of life will be on their corp priority list ?
CVS Health (CVS) said it has signed two new clinical affiliations with major regional medical centers in Chicago and Arizona as the giant retail pharmacy chain reaches across the country to health systems in preparation for the move away from fee-for-service medicine.
Clinical affiliations between pharmacies owned by CVS, Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), other chains and their retail clinics are becoming more common as insurance payments from health plans and the government under the Affordable Care Act move toward value-based care. The traditional fee-for-service approach to medicine can lead to over treatment and unnecessary medical tests and procedures.
The clinical affiliations announced by CVS with Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and Tucson Medical Center and its accountable care organization (ACO) known as Arizona Connected Care bring to “more than 50” health system deals CVS has negotiated across the country. By comparison, Walgreens has about half as many.
CVS Health chief medical officer Dr. Troyen Brennan told Forbes in a statement the company’s “goal is to forge affiliations with health systems and health care providers in most major metropolitan areas across the country.”
Such relationships are particularly important given the Obama administration earlier this year said that 50 percent of payments from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to medical care providers would be value-based by 2018, tying performance, health outcomes and other measures to patients. Private insurers are also moving in this direction by contracting with health systems and provider-led ACOs to provide a full menu of services for populations including pharmacies and their affiliated retail clinics.
“Our quality improvement and pharmacy care programs provide value for our affiliates and their patients,” Brennan said. “This occurs by creating tighter coordination between our pharmacists and hospital providers across sites of care and improving medication adherence for patients.”
A report last week by RAND Corp. funded by the American Medical Association said doctors lack capital for information systems and the ability to evaluate and gather data necessary for adequate population health.
“These clinical collaborations provide two-way connectivity with the affiliates’ electronic health records allowing us to seamlessly share information across sites-of-care, which ultimately improves patient care and health outcomes,” Brennan said.
Wondering how the Affordable Care Act’s push to new payment models will affect your health care? The Forbes eBook Inside Obamacare: The Fix For America’s Ailing Health Care System answers that question and more. Available now at Amazon and Apple.
Filed under: General Problems
Apparent scuttlebut from my husband’s employer is that next open enrollment is that they will be pushing us to utilize the WAGS clinic before the preferred insurer’s urgent care to keep immediate care costs down. I will choose to use the urgent care because I know my doctors will be more likely to be ‘in the know’ of the the care I received as they are all in the same system instead of relying on WAGS sending the info or NOT ….already been there done that when I was on another ‘preferred network’…it never, ever made it into the chart…….