Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
September 19, 2008 at 11:53 AM
The strategies public and private U.S. health plans use to pay health care providers drive up costs and promote fragmented care.
Dr. Robert Berenson, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, Washington, delivered that assessment this week during a U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearing on health care incentives.
Berenson, who has been a doctor, a medical director at a preferred provider organization, and an official in the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says one problem is that current payment systems encourage doctors in the same specialty to team up to bargain for higher rates, rather than encourage doctors to form multispecialty groups that could improve the quality of care for people who suffer from several different chronic illnesses at the same time.
Another problem is that plans tend to have separate types of payment systems for different types of providers.
One effect of using different payment systems “is to reinforce the culture differences that already exist across the spectrum of providers which need to work together in patients’ best interests,” Berenson told members of the Senate Finance Committee, according to a written version of his remarks posted on the committee’s Web site.
Medical schools themselves encourage students to learn to work independently, rather than working in teams, and to adhere to standards of care that may not actually produce the desired results, Berenson said.
Meanwhile, even though large, integrated practices often can come up with statistics showing that they provide better care than small physician practices, patients often prefer to work with small practices, Berenson said.
