What will managed care contracting be like over the next two to three years or longer?Obviously, there are different contracting and different geographical locations that give rise to different types of contracting issues, according to Russell Foster, principal with pmpm® Consulting Group.
And, managed care contracting in the months and immediate years ahead will be under the shadow of any form of healthcare reform. Change is coming, said Foster, and certainly with reform, there will be changes and modifications in contracting.
"The current level of healthcare expenditure we know cannot be continued, we need to find ways to moderate the costs if we are going to be able to deal with the cost issue going forward and to ensure that more of the uninsured receive better care," he said
Foster acknowledged that the issue of improving quality has not really been completely addressed despite much effort underway to define quality. The quality issue "figures" into the managed care contracting equation.
Under healthcare reform, what are the payors and what are the providers looking to do to bring value in to the contracting equation, Foster pondered. We see in the macro sense we’re heading in the direction of value-based purchasing.
"What we call value-base