What is Hospital Value Based Purchasing?
What is Value Based Purchasing?
The federal agency that runs Medicare is changing the way Medicare pays for hospital care by rewarding hospitals for delivering high quality service. Medicare uses information about how the quality of a hospital's care affects the payments it gets from Medicare. The Hospital VBP Program, established by the Affordable Care Act, is a pay-for- performance approach to the payment system that accounts for the largest share of Medicare spending. Hospital Value Based Purchasing which adjusts portions of payments to hospitals from Medicare has already started. The adjustments are based on how well a hospital performs on several measures compared to other hospitals and how much the individual hospitals improve their performance during a baseline period.
Hospitals are ranked by a total performance score, which is made up of the Clinical Process of Care domain score, the Patient Experience of Care domain score, and the Outcome domain score. These are not weighed equally in the overall score. The Clinical Process of care domain is weighted to 45% of the Total Performance Score, while the Patient Experience of Care domain is ranked at 30%, while the Outcome domain score is 25% of the score.
According to Medicare, "the Hospital VBP Program is designed to promote better clinical outcomes for hospitalized patients and improve their experience of care during hospital stays." If your facility wishes to improve its Total Performance Score for the VBP program, many safety consultants advise strong fall and HAI prevention guidelines. Communication and patient experience are also key to keeping the Total Score high. Facilities must be designed with patient experiences in mind.