Despite the widespread use of financial incentives to improve value in health care, the effectiveness and unintended consequences of these programs remains unclear. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act established Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP), making Medicare payment subject to quality performance for acute care Hospitals in the United States. The objective of the current project is to apply econometric methods to longitudinal Medicare data and primary data from a national survey of hospital administrators to estimate the effectiveness and unintended consequences of HVBP in its first five years of implementation. The following three aims will be addressed: 1) Evaluate the effectiveness of Hospital Value- Based Purchasing. We expect that HVBP will improve clinical process performance and patient experience but will not improve mortality, patient safety, or costs of care. We will use econometric methods to compare the changes in our study outcomes between hospitals that were exposed to HVBP and a matched set of hospitals that were not exposed to HVBP, before and after HVBP was implemented. 2) Evaluate the unintended consequences of Hospital Value-Based Purchasing. We expect that HVBP will distribute incentive payments away from hospitals caring for disadvantaged patients but will not decrease quality of care for patients treated in these hospitals and will not affect quality for areas of cae that are not subject to financial incentives. 3) Understand the barriers and facilitators to value improvement in Hospital Value-Based Purchasing. The study team will field a national survey to assess hospital administrators' knowledge of HVBP, perceptions of the costs and benefits of value improvement, perceptions of unintended consequences, perceptions of the barriers and facilitators to value improvement, and the specific strategies used for value improvement in HVBP. We will contrast survey responses between high and low performing hospitals in HVBP. The proposed research is significant because it will provide crucial information to inform the ongoing implementation HVBP to increase value for Medicare while minimizing unintended consequences for hospitals and patients. Our study is innovative because it will use novel econometric methods and will provide the first survey results about hospitals' response to the incentives of HVBP. Approximately 190,000 Medicare patients admitted to hospitals each year with heart attack, heart failure, or pneumonia die within 30 days of admission. A 1% reduction in 30- day mortality rates would leave 1,900 of these patients alive after 30 days. This potential impact of HVBP underscores the importance of understanding how HVBP can be best designed to improve care.

Public Health Relevance

The proposed project is relevant to public health because it would provide crucial information to inform the implementation of Hospital Value-Based Purchasing in future years to improve the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries while minimizing unintended consequences for Medicare beneficiaries and hospitals. Given the size of the Medicare program and the national implementation of Hospital Value-Based Purchasing, even minor improvements to the design of Hospital Value-Based Purchasing have the potential to improve the health and patient experience of thousands of older Americans. Successful completion of the proposed project would advance the National Institute of Aging's effort to extend the years of healthy life for older Americans.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01AG047932-03
Application #
9308802
Study Section
Health Services Organization and Delivery Study Section (HSOD)
Program Officer
Bhattacharyya, Partha
Project Start
2015-09-01
Project End
2020-05-31
Budget Start
2017-07-15
Budget End
2018-05-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2017
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Department
Miscellaneous
Type
Schools of Public Health
DUNS #
073133571
City
Ann Arbor
State
MI
Country
United States
Zip Code
48109
Ibrahim, Andrew M; Dimick, Justin B; Sinha, Shashank S et al. (2018) Association of Coded Severity With Readmission Reduction After the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program. JAMA Intern Med 178:290-292
Sinha, Shashank S; Moloci, Nicholas M; Ryan, Andrew M et al. (2018) The Effect of Medicare Accountable Care Organizations on Early and Late Payments for Cardiovascular Disease Episodes. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes 11:e004495
Doran, Tim; Maurer, Kristin A; Ryan, Andrew M (2017) Impact of Provider Incentives on Quality and Value of Health Care. Annu Rev Public Health 38:449-465
Markovitz, Adam A; Ellimoottil, Chandy; Sukul, Devraj et al. (2017) Risk Adjustment May Lessen Penalties On Hospitals Treating Complex Cardiac Patients Under Medicare's Bundled Payments. Health Aff (Millwood) 36:2165-2174
Ryan, Andrew M; Krinsky, Sam; Adler-Milstein, Julia et al. (2017) Association Between Hospitals' Engagement in Value-Based Reforms and Readmission Reduction in the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program. JAMA Intern Med 177:862-868
Sukul, Devraj; Sinha, Shashank S; Ryan, Andrew M et al. (2017) Patterns of Readmissions for Three Common Conditions Among Younger US Adults. Am J Med 130:1220.e1-1220.e16
Ellimoottil, Chad; Ryan, Andrew M; Hou, Hechuan et al. (2017) Implications of the Definition of an Episode of Care Used in the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Model. JAMA Surg 152:49-54
Markovitz, Adam A; Ryan, Andrew M (2017) Pay-for-Performance: Disappointing Results or Masked Heterogeneity? Med Care Res Rev 74:3-78
Ryan, Andrew M; Krinsky, Sam; Maurer, Kristin A et al. (2017) Changes in Hospital Quality Associated with Hospital Value-Based Purchasing. N Engl J Med 376:2358-2366
Chee, Tingyin T; Ryan, Andrew M; Wasfy, Jason H et al. (2016) Current State of Value-Based Purchasing Programs. Circulation 133:2197-205

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