Most physician organizations are not prepared for the move to value-based care, and 95 percent CIOs of group practices and large clinics state they do not have the information technology or staff in-house needed to transform value-based care end-to-end, according to a recent Black Book Research.
This is driving many physician organizations to increasingly seek out the advice of value-based care consulting firms to review accountable care organizations opportunities. The survey also finds that a mounting number of multi-specialty practices are willing to accept risk.
Black Book surveyed nearly 900 physician organizations to gauge the increased demand for advisors to help medical providers and practices make the move to value-based care by easing their administrative burden across payers and support the launch and management of their own health plans.
Despite the decade-long movement away from physician-led practices to hospital employment, Black Book's 2018 value-based care study noted a recent shift in that trend. Physicians working for a hospital or in a practice with some ownership climbed in 2016 to 32.6 percent. But after a six-year upswing, independent and physician-led group practices began to rally back up to 72 percent in 2017.
To facilitate the transformation within physician organizations, providers are increasingly seeking the advice of value-based care consulting firms—68 percent of group practices of ten or more physicians reported they would seek external advisement on financially and clinically transforming their operations before Q2 2019, the survey found.
“Many physician organizations are not succeeding linearly through the transition towards alternative payment models and do not have well-defined plans to hit certain date-sensitive financial thresholds, hence the rise in demand for consultant firms with value-based care expertise in physician organizations,” Brown said.
The survey results indicate that 89 percent of surveyed physician organization decision makers on hiring a value-based care consultancy agree that they prefer an advisor with both population health management and revenue cycle management expertise. And, according to the survey, 21 percent of academic medical centers physician departments and clinics surveyed will have engaged a value-based consultancy by Q4 2018.
Physician organization executives primarily attribute the increased demand for value-based care advisory services on several factors out of their scope of current experience. For example, 93 percent have no strategic plan activated for transforming population health management or value-based care solutions end-to-end to confront known deadlines because there are no internal experts identified.
What’s more, less than 7 percent of physician organizations surveyed have begun comprehensive value-based care software vendor selection activities and are considering consultants to assist them.
As mentioned above, more than nine out of 10 group practice and large clinic CIOs state they do not have the information technology or staff in-house needed to transform value-based care end-to-end as their physician and or executive team envisions “Real end-to-end value-based care transformations require complex technology optimization, strategic assessment of patient mix and payers, analytics, decision support tools, staff training, outsourcing and new software implementations,” Brown said.
The new era of how providers get paid is going to impact the entire organization and most physician organizations aren't remotely prepared for it according to 88 percent of surveyed practice managers.
Black Book reports that 15 consultant and advisory practices received qualified ratings from 877 physician groups, practices and organizations. Black Book Market Research LLC measures customer satisfaction across 20 copyrighted key performance indicators specific to consultants and advisors.
CareAllies, Inc., a Cigna company, scored first in 9 of 20 key performance indicators focusing on healthcare advisory firms including: trust, reliability, transparency and confidentiality; return-on-investment and quality of engagement deliverables; best-of-breed advisory technology, strategic population health management options and delivery alternatives; and advisor experience and qualifications.
“Physician groups are seeking advisors to help them transition to value-based care and manage long-term health plans for patients in multi-payer environments,” Brown said. “Consultative approaches that emphasize physician engagement, culture change, actionable data and analytics are producing some very prepared and motivated physician organizations as they move from volume to value.”
