How Value-Based Payment Arrangements Should Measure Behavioral Health is an article, which you can access here; written by Bob Myers, Lloyd Sederer, Thomas Smith, and Joshua Berezin.
They conclude that:
- “Currently, mature payment schemes such as VBP are being implemented in an immature behavioral health performance measurement environment, (emphasis added) creating unique challenges for providers and stakeholders participating in VBP arrangements. But there is a clear path forward to overcome those challenges. The performance measurement activities we’ve described here will allow behavioral health providers to become valued and active partners any VBP arrangement and ultimately, to improve outcomes for individuals with behavioral health conditions.”A sample of the activities mentioned above include:
- “Health care leaders increasingly acknowledge the impact of social determinants on cost and outcomes, and behavioral health providers participating in VBP arrangements should emphasize that many social determinants are in fact targets for behavioral health interventions that should be incentivized.”
- “For populations of individuals with serious mental illness and/or substance use disorders, process measures of engagement and retention in care should therefore be employed until more relevant outcome measures are available. Examples include measures of timeliness and frequency of visits with community-based behavioral health providers following discharge from an inpatient program or following identification of a new substance use disorder.”
We will have to start working with ER vendors and funders to decide what should be measured and rewarded.