Though physicians and health plan executives agree health IT technology will speed the shift to value-based care, only a quarter of respondents to a survey including them said they were investing in that technology within the next year.
The third annual value-based care survey was conducted by Regina Corso Consulting on behalf of Quest Diagnostics in April and May. It included 300 hospital-affiliated primary care physicians and 151 health plan executives.
Six survey findings:
1. A majority of physicians and health plan executives (67 percent) believe the U.S. has a fee-for-service healthcare system versus a value-based care system (27 percent). Last year 63 percent believed the U.S. has a fee-for-service healthcare system versus a value-based care system (29 percent).
2. Fifty-seven percent of health plan executives believe physicians lack tools to succeed under value-based care, up from 45 percent in 2017.
3. Sixty-two percent of health plan executives believe there has been progress toward alignment between payers and providers in the last year. Only 41 of physicians believe the same.
4. Fifty-five percent of physicians and 75 percent of health plan executives agreed emphasizing a consumer-based approach to healthcare will help value-based care move forward.
5. Most health plan executives and physicians agreed technologies such as bioinformatics (73 percent), artificial intelligence (68 percent), the SMART App Platform (65 percent), FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) (64 percent), and machine learning (64 percent) can potentially improve value-based care.
6. However, only 25 percent of respondents said they were investing in new health IT technology in the next year. They identified "incompatibility between systems" and "more work with little/no benefit" as the greatest barriers to adoption.
Access the full survey results here.
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