Practice tip of the week: Negotiating value-based contracts

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With all the useful information available on Physicians Practice, it is easy to become overwhelmed.

With this in mind, the tip of the week is a chance to reflect on some of the wisdom found all across the site. In this March 2018 story on negotiating value-based care contracts with payers, Gabriel Perna gives these tips:

Strategy 1: Data is Your Friend

Among experts there is a universal agreement: The shift to value is predicated on showing payers that practices are collecting and analyzing data. As Williams says, it's hard to measure success without data. In fact, Milliman's three pillars of a successful value-based contracting strategy (transparency, stability, and control) involve substantial data gathering. Because payers have their own information to gauge and negotiate a value-based contract, practices need to ensure they are tracking the right metrics.

So what exactly are the right metrics? It depends on the practice, says Steve Selbst, CEO of HealthCents, a Salinas, Calif.-based consulting firm. Some can be pretty simple, he notes.

"If practices are using EHRs 100 percent of the time, they can safely agree that's one of the [bases on how] they're going to be measured. Same sort of thing when it comes to generic medications and things of that nature. So the practice needs to assess whether it has the systems in place to meet the goals of the value-based program they're being presented with," he says.

Click here to read the rest of the article and be sure to check back next week for another Tip of the Week!