The American Medical Association (AMA) has passed recommendations for payment models that support new approaches to team-based healthcare for providing care, as long as the teams are lead by physicians.
Team-based health care delivery models are quickly emerging as the preferred method for providing coordinated, cost-effective, high-quality health care for patients.
“The success rate of physician-led team-based models of care has been proven time and again by trusted industry leaders like the Mayo Clinic, Geisinger Health System, Intermountain Healthcare and Kaiser Permanente. In the words of Dr. William Mayo, ‘It has become necessary to develop medicine as a cooperative science; the clinician, the specialist, and the laboratory workers uniting for the good of the patient.’ The AMA and the broader physician community firmly believe that this approach represents the future of health care delivery in America,” said AMA President Ardis D. Hoven, M.D. in the news announcement.
Pysician-led, team-based healthcare models are successfully improving quality and reducing costs by leveraging integrated, coordinated, physician-led teams of health care professionals to provide comprehensive patient care through health care delivery systems. According to a recent physician-led medical home associated with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan resulted in $155 million savings in 2012 for a total of $310 million saved since 2008.
With more healthcare organizations establishing these models, the AMA has been working providing more guidance on implementation. The much needed guidance also includes a report outlining the recommendations for the development of payment mechanisms that promote satisfaction and sustainability of team-based models in various practice settings.
AMA’s recommendations in the report include:
- Physicians who lead team-based care in their practices receive payments for health care services provided by the team and to establish payment disbursement mechanisms that foster physician-led team-based care
- Physicians make decisions about payment disbursement in consideration of team member contributions, including factors such as volume and intensity of the care provided, the profession, training and experience of each team member and the quality of care provided
- Payment systems for the physicians-led team-based care: to reflect the value provided by the team, with the savings accrued by this value shared by the team; to reflect the time, effort, intellectual capital provided by individual team members; to be adequate to attract team members with the appropriate skills and training to maximize the success of the team; and, to be sufficient to sustain the team over the time frame that is needed
The AMA’s House of Delegates also passed a report to further aid the implementation of new model that defines team-based roles and concepts.
Featured image credit: marsmet521 via cc
