Arkansas Program to Enhance Care and Cut Costs

Today Arkansas will kick off a program to reduce its Medicaid costs and improve care through a partnership withits largest private insurance companies — Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield and QualChoice. If successful, experts say the state’s Medicaid program could save about $4.4 million in FY 2013 and $9.3 million in 2014.
Saving money isn’t the only thing on private insurers’ minds. They want to transform the way doctors view health costs,especially for patients who require extensive treatment.
The Health Care Payment Improvement Initiative is a shared-savings plan that begins to move the state and private insurance market away from a traditional fee-for-service payment system, to one in which providers are paid based on how well they deliver care and manage their costs. But it isn’t a move toward managed-care, either. Instead, it’s taking the health care delivery system that is already in place and adding new incentives and accountability.
This concept, one of the first of its kind– especially on this scale – got the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services‘ go-ahead earlier this month.