Employers are increasingly engaging in value-based purchasing activities. From a provider perspective, is this movement a good thing? What are some of the key advantages or disadvantages?

Respond: Providers have been looking to expand their value-based purchasing activities and are looking more towards alternative payment models, rather than high deductible plans. Providers are also looking at ways to gain more clients and to have better options for these clients to pay their medical bills. From a provider perspective, this movement is a good thing, because it allows more clients (patients) to find and pay for services they need and ones that they may have been putting off, due to high deductible costs. A big advantage of providers doing this, is to broaden the spectrum of patients that a healthcare facility can take and allowing those even without insurance, to receive healthcare.

Respond: Some healthcare stockholders in the US have come to the conclusion that the main causative factors of high cost and poor performances is because the fee-for-service. This is a payment arrangement in which the providers are paid based on their services instead of the quality of care. The National Commission on Physician Payment Reform said that the phase-out for fee-for-service over time because of problematic financial incentives, which then urged them toward the approach of being charged based on quality or care and value. This is a good thing because providers have been getting paid for their services no matter the quality of care that has been given and if they are being charged on their quality it may make them be more cautious in how they will treat the patients. A huge advantage to this would be that the providers be able to see where they may go wrong with given good quality care and they can be able to fix it soon than if they were just worrying about the services they would be providing.