When Payor Innovation is Driven By Government
This tweet from Jamey Edwards, CEO of Cloudbreak Health, inspired a really interesting discussion in a Twitter DM (direct message) group I’m in called Healthcare Disruptors. For those not familiar with private DM groups, in this case, there’s a group of 49 people on Twitter that are part of this group and members of the group regularly share information, events, insights, etc and the group comments on it.
Thorough well done article on #1 issue at the polls:
“There’s one thing Republicans & Democrats agree on: The country’s healthcare system is broken & getting worse”
The Great American #Healthcare Panichttps://t.co/gSHQgFzMOx@politicomag#humanizehealthcare#hcldr#pinksockspic.twitter.com/TFRuO9XMtD
— Jamey Edwards (@jameyedwards) October 15, 2018
Private Twitter DM groups aside, one of the comments in the group highlighted a concept I’ve heard for years. The government (largely Medicare and Medicaid) is the largest payor and the private sector has been taking its queues from Medicare and Medicaid for years. Is it any wonder that we haven’t seen much evolution in the payor space when we’re waiting on a massive government entity to drive the innovation?
Waiting for government to drive innovation largely explains why healthcare hasn’t evolved.
To solve this problem, there are two options First, the government could evolve more quickly and create new models for reimbursement that change the landscape. Is there anyone holding their breath on this one? Don’t get me wrong. I’m quite intrigued by Medicare’s attempts to push telehealth related reimbursement codes and their decision to try and reimburse based on the time spent with patients instead of how much you document in the record. These are big changes and I’m hopeful that they’ll be good changes. Not to mention ACOs which will hopefully help show us the path to a full value based reimbursement world and get us off the fee for service treadmill.
That said, I’ll never forget a CMS listening session that I went to. Someone asked about a specific policy and when we might hear the details of the final rule. The CMS representative said, “Pretty quickly.” Then, he corrected himself and said, “Government quickly which probably means months, not years.” The government moves slow. That’s just the reality. This is why innovation in healthcare shouldn’t depend solely on the government.
The other way for innovation to occur is for other payors to lead the innovation. When was the last time that payors did something really innovative? When did Medicare take something from the private payor space because it was an innovative solution? I’ll admit that I’m not a complete expert on the payor space, but I asked some friends and so far none of us have remembered a time where this happened.
What’s going to change this? The answer to that is not clear. Do you see something I’m not seeing? The better promise comes from something outside this traditional system disrupting healthcare as we know it. It feels like something like that needs to come, because Jamey is right that this is a big problem for many Americans, both republicans and democrats.