Does WellPoint Care About Quality…or Reducing Cost?

One large insurer is planning to begin paying hospitals based on quality.

“WellPoint is replacing the system it uses to help offset rising medical and other costs at hospitals in 14 states that serve its Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, which cover 34 million people. In recent years, it has raised its payments to those hospitals by an average 8% a year.

One large insurer is planning to begin paying hospitals based on quality.

Under the new system, the company will pay increases only to hospitals that score high enough on a test based on 51 indicators of treatment quality. The indicators include whether the facility tries to prevent patients from relapsing after they leave the hospital, whether it follows a safety checklist and how satisfied the hospital’s patients say they are with their treatment.”

Does Well Point really care about quality? The answer is maybe.

Improving quality of care could improve WellPoint’s bottom line. If patients demand improved quality of care, implementing a hospital VBP system could attract more members. Further, WellPoint could just be altruistic and this may be an attempt to improve the health of its members (the Healthcare Economist is skeptical of this point).

It could also be the case the WellPoint does not care at all about quality. High-quality hospitals will get the same annual increase they did before; low-quality hospitals will get less. The chairman of the Federation of American Hospitals (FHA) accurately notes that hospital quality measures are far from perfect and are less-than comprehensive. Nevertheless, even if the selected metrics measured quality inaccurately, certain hospitals would still receive lower payments and WellPoint would benefit either through increased profits or increased market share (by lowering premiums).

Rather than responding to pressure to increase qualityof care, WellPoint’s VBP efforts may in fact be a response to employer and beneficiary pressure to reduce premiums.