Fewer than one in four hospitals are scheduled to hit the Obama Administration's 2018 goal of providing at least half their care through value-based structures, research shows.
Not only are few hospitals scheduled to meet the 2018 value-based goal set by the Department of Health and Human Services, but only 3% meet that goal right now.
Further, only 23% expect to meet it even as late as 2019. The survey of 190 U.S. hospitals was conducted by Health Catalyst, a healthcare data and analytics company.
Extrapolating findings from the non-scientific survey to the entire hospital industry can be perilous, but many of its conclusions confirm anecdotal information from hospital leaders about the slow pace of adoption of risk-based reimbursement.
The survey results mirror research from HealthLeaders Media, which found that while proficiency and access to analytics capabilities will be critical to success under these models, only 36% of organizations believe their clinical data analytics tools have predictive capabilities.
The majority of health systems (62%) have either zero or less than 10% of their care tied to the type of risk-based contracts identified by CMS as "value-based," including Medicare accountable care organizations (ACOs) and bundled payments.
Not surprisingly, small hospitals with fewer than 200 beds comprised the majority of those reporting no at-risk contracts.
A contributing factor may be that smaller hospitals are five times less likely than larger organizations to have access to sufficient capital to make risk-based contracting work, according to Health Catalyst data.
Survey results reflect the opinions of 78 healthcare professionals who responded to an online survey by Health Catalyst in May 2016. Some 51% of respondents were CEOs or CFOs of large hospital-owned physician groups and hospitals ranging in size from 15 acute care beds to over 1,000 beds.
The remaining respondents all held executive roles, including several Chief Medical Information Officers, Chief Medical Officers and Chief Nursing Officers.
The organizations represented include many multi-hospital and multi-state health systems with a cumulative 756 inpatient and outpatient facilities and 20,416 acute care beds.