Jayson Slotnik Weighs the Future of Value-Based Payments After the Pandemic

Value-based payments were a benefit during the pandemic, but it remains to be seen if patients are interested in keeping those changes in care delivery as the pandemic recedes, said Jayson Slotnik, partner, Health Policy Strategies, Inc.

Transcript

Organizations participating in value-based payments fared better than those in fee-for-service (FFS) during the pandemic. Will this success help accelerate the move to value-based care, or will we return to the FFS status quo?

So, those organizations that were able to implement value-based contracting during the pandemic fared better than those that were not. And I posture that one of those reasons is because it represents a corporate approach towards being very flexible, treating the patient—taking into consideration patient needs—and overall, just being able to go with the flow. And they were more successful. Those that were more rigid, were not.

The question of whether or not this can be sustainable going forward, really, I think, depends on the patients and their tolerability for some of the changes that were made like telehealth or seeing different physicians at different places at different times. Some of the tools that may have worked patients might have been more, no pun intended, patient with because of the pandemic. But will that continue when the pandemic recedes? Patients may want to go and actually see their physician. Patients may want to go and have that face to face and not want to do it through telehealth. Or see their physician and not go to different locations that are in network, out of network.

So, I don't know what the success will be. I pretty sure though that some will succeed, some will fail. And over time, we will learn from our mistakes and continue to improve and perhaps make more and better decisions related to remote and value-based care and feedback loops to patients and physicians and driving towards the better outcome.