Jay Resnick, MD, the President-elect of the AMA, put out this article entitled Time to pursue patient-centered payment models designed by doctors. It’s not a fun read but I recommend you check it out. Here are a few highlights:
- Every day, front-line physicians experience frustrating examples of payment policies that stand in the way of improvements they know could reengineer care to improve quality and value. To implement the evidence-based, patient-centered innovations that are needed, we need to stop creating complex and punitive incentives and instead take a radically different approach to payment reform.
- In order to achieve higher-quality, more affordable care while addressing our nation’s chronic disease epidemics and unacceptable health disparities, we need to accelerate efforts to remove the barriers created by our current payment systems.
- Physicians are intrinsically motivated to achieve quality improvement, and desire information systems that put valid, actionable information about their performance in front of them at the point of care. They particularly respond to transparent measures that address areas of substantial harm or waste and were developed by peers, rather than black-box metrics delivered months or years after care has been provided.
Dr. Resnick goes on to name of few programs that have worked. Do you know what he doesn’t mention? Direct Primary Care. Why? I can’t say for sure but the fact that the AMA makes a ton, if not most, of its money from CPT coding may have something to do with it.
Only 25% of doctors are in the AMA now. This is an example of why.
DPC takes away the punitive incentives mentioned above. DPC removes barriers created by ridiculous payment systems. DPC is transparent and has no black-box metrics to deal with.
Say our name, Dr. Resnick. Say our name .
DIRECT PRIMARY CARE.