California Small Business Challenges/ HHS Health Payments

On February 11, I will be speaking at a Jobs, Economic Development, and the Economy Committee meeting in the Assembly. What I have been asked to speak about is challenges for small business in California.  What is working and what isn’t. Please give me your comments with solutions.

 Next week Small Business California will be sending out our 11^th annual survey.  I hope you will complete it and send to others. Could you let me know if you are a member of an association that would be willing to distribute?

 See below an announcement from HHS about driving health payments from quantity to quality. This is something that is long overdue.
 

HHS Sets Clear Goals and Timeline for Shifting Medicare Reimbursements from Volume to Value

Today, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced measurable goals and a timeline to move the Medicare program, and the health care system at large, toward paying providers based on the quality, rather than the quantity of care they give patients.

HHS has set a goal of tying 30 percent of traditional, or fee-for-service, Medicare payments to quality or value through alternative payment models, such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) or bundled payment arrangements by the end of 2016, and tying 50 percent of payments to these models by the end of 2018.  HHS also set a goal of tying 85 percent of all traditional Medicare payments to quality or value by 2016 and 90 percent by 2018 through programs such as the Hospital Value Based Purchasing and the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Programs.  This is the first time in the history of the Medicare program that HHS has set explicit goals for alternative payment models and value-based payments.

To make these goals scalable beyond Medicare, Secretary Burwell also announced the creation of a Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network.  Through the Learning and Action Network, HHS will work with private payers, employers, consumers, providers, states and state Medicaid programs, and other partners to expand alternative payment models into their programs.  HHS will intensify its work with states and private payers to support adoption of alternative payments models through their own aligned work, sometimes even exceeding the goals set for Medicare.  The Network will hold its first meeting in March 2015, and more details will be announced in the near future.

Read the full press release here.

A full factsheet can be found here.

Read a new Perspectives piece in the New England Journal of Medicine from Secretary Burwell about this announcement here.

Scott Hauge
President
Small Business California
2311 Taraval Street
San Francisco, CA  94116
shauge@cal-insure.com
415-680-2188