Top payers, providers form alliance to promote Triple Aim

Several leading healthcare providers and payers announced a new alliance aimed at hastening the healthcare industry's transition to value-based models that reduce costs and strengthen outcomes.

Participants in the Health Care Transformation Task Force (HCTTF) include major providers such as Partners HealthCare, Heritage Provider Network, Dignity Health and Premier, Inc. Members committed to transitioning three-quarters of their business into value-based models that emphasize the Triple Aim--improved care, improved outcomes and reduced costs--and urged other payers and providers to work toward the same goal. Members of the HCTTF include six of the top 15 health systems in the nation and four of the nation's top 25 health payers, according to the announcement.

"The formation of this Task Force and its ambitious goal demonstrate that the private sector embraces a value-based approach to improving care and lowering costs," said HCTTF Chairman Richard J. Gilfillan, M.D., CEO of Trinity Health. "We are committed to rapid, measurable change both for ourselves and our country that will improve quality and make healthcare more accessible for all American families."

The move follows the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) announcement this week that it will tie 30 percent of fee-for-service payments to alternative payment models' quality initiatives by 2016, increasing the number to 50 percent by 2018. "Those models will depend on how well providers care for their patients, instead of how much care they provide," HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said.

The HCTTF aims to create actionable policy recommendations for both government institutions and the private healthcare sector, according to the announcement, and has released consensus recommendations regarding accountable care organization (ACO) design, which will serve as the model for its forthcoming comment letter on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' proposed changes to the Medicare Shared Savings ACO Program.

The value-based model could improve hospital performance by as much as 30 percent, according to a 2014 report by the Boston Consulting Group, FierceHealthcare previously reported.

To learn more:
- here's the announcement
- read the consensus recommendations