Dr Lee Newcomer: Partnership Is Key in Episode-Based Payments

Lee N. Newcomer, MD, MHA, senior vice president of oncology and genetics at UnitedHealthcare, discusses the partnership that is established with the implementation of episode-based payments, because now the physicians and other stakeholders have the same goal.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What work do you do with physicians to help them implement things like episode-based payments and educate them?

Well an episode payment is partnership, we both have the same incentive now. The more we can bring cost down and improve quality—the more we both win. The physicians will make more money and our patients are better served. So, rather than have a conflict here, that we do in fee-for-service, we now have a partnership where we are bringing them data from the claims system to show them what they could do differently. We are bringing them comparison data from other groups to show who’s got maybe a better way of solving a problem. We bring them together every year for a round-table discussion to look at that data and talk among ourselves about what our best practice is. So, partnership is the key word there. We are now working together because we have the same common goal.