Using case studies and related research, America’s Essential Hospitals describes how waiver-based incentive programs support essential hospitals’ delivery system reform.
Policy Brief – Medicaid Incentive Programs: Extending the Reach of Health Care Transformation
KEY FINDINGS:
- Medicaid incentive programs give essential providers the ability to lead delivery system reform by providing incentives to them to achieve system reform milestones.
- Waiver programs encourage investments that track and improve population health and enable providers to identify issues beyond the hospital that impact their patients’ health.
- Waiver programs require data and other infrastructure improvements – a challenging up-front investment for essential hospitals.
- Quality improvement milestones that are built on existing measures help hospitals understand their own performance, resulting in better patient care.
- To ensure states and providers are able to promote achievable reform, funding for incentive programs must be in addition to existing core hospital funding.
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