March 20, 2009 -- A new report from the Commission on a High Performance Health System provides greater detail on key payment reform recommendations in its report, The Path to a High Performance U.S. Health System. In Reforming Provider Payment: Essential Building Block for Health Reform, Fund researchers explain that the recommended payment reforms aim to: strengthen primary care by enhancing Medicare payment for services and ensuring annual increases; encourage adoption of the medical home model and promote more accessible, coordinated, patient-centered care; promote more effective, efficient, and integrated care delivery through "bundled payment" approaches, with rewards for quality, outcomes, and efficiency; and correct price signals in health care markets to align payments with value.
In the first in a new series of Fund publications, Policy Points, released the same day, Commonwealth Fund Senior Policy Director Rachel Nuzum summarizes the Path report, which contains recommendations for how to achieve affordable, universal coverage while improving health outcomes and slowing the rate of national health spending by a cumulative $3 trillion through 2020.