Amid the transition to value-based care, reimbursement for health care and tying it to quality and performance remains one of the major challenges in eradicating fee-for service models. According to a survey, only 41% of the physicians still placed their confidence in fee-for-service model for delivering patient outcomes.

Accountable care organizations, ever since they were brought on the frontlines have been promoting the delivery of accountable care all over the country and have been aiming to find a way that best aligns the organization’s performance with improvement measures and pursue the Triple Aim: improving the quality of care, with enhanced patient experience, while containing costs.

Over the past decades, healthcare has witnessed many trends, and a major one of those has been the movement of physicians from solo and independent practice models towards employed practice models, group practices, and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). However, there are many U.S. physicians that prefer to work in small practices: a study revealed that up until 2008, one-third of all physicians were solo practitioners, or have banded together to form Independent Practice Associations, or IPAs.

The MACRA rule proposed by the CMS includes a dual track Quality Payment Program and has many healthcare organizations considering their options. One of them is the much talked-about Merit-based Incentive Payment System, or MIPS and the other is Alternative Payment Models (APMs). APMs are being touted as an encouraging way to help the healthcare industry transition from fee-for-service to value-based care and improve the quality of care and contain costs. Despite some uncertainties, APMs are here to stay and will be a significant component in a value-based ecosystem.

The HIMSS 2017 conference late last month in Orlando hit on many healthcare trends, from machine learning to the future of ACA, among many things. It was abundantly clear that this year, the healthcare industry is hungry for technology solutions to drive efficiency and improve patient experiences. Renowned healthcare experts shared their insights and optimism on the future of healthcare and here are all the high points all in one place:

The healthcare industry is under immense pressure to contain costs and efficiently deliver care across the population. In the times of rising chronic conditions, aging populations, changing technology, and an increasing demand to improve the quality of care call for transforming the way healthcare is documented, obtained, and delivered.

Healthcare organizations are aiming to thrive in the new value-based care world, and are coming up with new strategies to improve and sustain their revenue growth. Healthcare organizations are deploying new strategies and partnerships with community providers and developing accountable networks to provide quality care to each and every patient. However, these network affiliations, if not conducted properly can have serious implications on both the patient’s quality of care and the hospital system’s bottom line. A study conducted on referrals showed that only 35%-45% of adult inpatient care remained within a network, implying that over half of a health system’s patients receive care out of their network.

Administration in the US has always been trying to  to transform the healthcare industry as much as possible. As compared to other functioning industries in the US, changes have been relatively slow but powerful. Most of the reforms were an effort to move away from the traditional Fee-For-Service system, the mantra of which was: to make more, do more to a  Value-Based Reimbursement procedure.

“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.”  – William A. Foster.

One of the most celebrated conferences in healthcare IT, HIMSS 2017, commenced on February 19th and more than 40,000 health IT professionals, vendors, and executives have gathered in Orlando to discuss the future possibilities healthcare holds. Day 1 brought with itself many insightful discussions varying from EHR safety, precision medicine and interoperability, to the need for increasing cybersecurity and medical identity theft. Here are some of the major takeaways from Day 1: