Accelerating the Implementation of Value-Based Care and Payment: Recommendations from the 2016 National Payment Reform Summit

There is widespread agreement that there are serious weaknesses in the current payment systems used by Medicare and most health plans to pay physicians, hospitals, and other providers, and there is agreement that payment reforms are needed to correct these weaknesses in order to enable and encourage healthcare providers to deliver care in higherquality, lower-cost ways. However, stakeholders who are working to develop Alternative Payment Models (APMs) are facing a number of significant barriers and challenges, and those who would implement APMs or receive care supported by them have expressed a number of serious concerns about the way APMs are currently being designed and about potential negative consequences poorly-constructed APMs may have on patients, providers, payers, and communities. Failing to address these problems in a proactive and effective way will slow progress in improving the quality and affordability of healthcare and make it difficult to build support for implementing more effective payment models.