Population-based payments to replace fee-for-service
The rapid decline of in-person visitation in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the unstable reality of fee-for-service payments, which should be replaced by population-based payments, authors of an article recently published in JAMA suggest. Suhas Gondi, BA, and Dave A. Chokshi, MD, MSc , suggest that financial clearance should be a new goal for payment reform . Though CMS designed and implemented various value-based are programs through alternative payment models to simultaneously improve the quality of care and reduce costs, the authors say these efforts have only had modest effects on health outcomes and spending. Furthermore, the authors write that the pandemic’s effect on in-person visitation reveals that fee-for-service payments are “exceptionally vulnerable to shocks that reduce demand for in-person care.” On the contrary, the authors suggest that population-based payments are more resilient in the face of shocks like COVID-19 and w