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February
Update |
Want more V-BID news? Follow us:  
If you would like additional information, please be in touch at vbidcenter@umich.edu or 734-615-9635. |
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 | Countdown to Feb. 28: Federal Request for Information on V-BID |
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Responses to the Federal Request for Information on V-BID and preventive services are due on February 28. The Center continues to gather and share information to answer these crucial questions, which will help shape Federal Departments' perspective on V-BID implementation. Please be in touch if you'd like to discuss this further. The Center will post our response on our website by February 28.
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| Atul Gawande in The New Yorker Illustrates Value of V-BID |
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Atul Gawande's recent article in The New Yorker focuses on the need to improve the care of high-cost patients as a way to lower overall health care costs. The article includes a real-life example that illustrates the salience of V-BID.
Gawande discusses the example of a company, faced with all-too-familiar rising health care costs, which increases the co-payments in its health benefits. While utilization went down in almost every category of service, overall medical costs did not. Puzzled by the result, the company performed an analysis which revealed the reason: the increased co-pays caused a high-risk employee with heart disease and diabetes to stop taking his medication and avoid the doctor. As a result, he had a heart attack and was left disabled with chronic heart failure. The cost to treat this patient and other employees with chronic disease overwhelmed any savings produced by the increased cost-sharing for the other thousands of employees.
V-BID solves this problem: it eliminates the disincentive created by cost-sharing for those targeted interventions that can improve health and keep people from having costly episodes. We hope this example makes clear why V-BID is a valuable step to improve health care outcomes and contain costs. We invite you to share this article with others and we welcome your feedback. |
| Gail Wilensky offers support of V-BID in Health Affairs Blog |
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 In her Feb. 2 Health Affairs blog, Gail Wilensky offered support for V-BID in Medicare: "I support the strategy of not providing higher reimbursement for products and services that do not provide clinically superior outcomes... It would be even more useful to incorporate notions of Value-Based Insurance into this process. Under VBI principles, the lowest co-payments would be used for those products and services that have the best clinical outcome, in general or for a particular subset of the population. Similarly, products and services whose outcomes are highly uncertain or of less clinical value, would have higher co-payments." |
| More Employers, Insurers Turning Attention to V-BID |
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In Crain's Detroit Business, Kathryn Levine, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Products at Blue Cross said, "'We see V-BID as part of the total equation. It is optimizing health and productivity and delivering value.'" According to Levine, the company currently uses V-BID in preventive services and diabetes care, and they are considering adding V-BID to other chronic disease programs, including obesity, asthma, coronary artery disease, heart failure and hypertension.
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| Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on V-BID and Preventive Care |
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 On Dec. 28, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published Preventive Services Without Cost Sharing. This brief looks at the impacts of measures to eliminate cost sharing for high-value preventive care, as included in health reform legislation. |
| New Study Shows Discrepancy in Medicare Preventive Care |
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A study published in January in the Annals of Family Medicine finds that, as of 2009, Medicare partly covered 93% of high-value preventive care services (based on US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) ratings). Currently, Medicare usually only covers coordination of these services. The study also found that Medicare covered 7 of 16 services considered low-value by the USPSTF.
V-BID in in Section 2713 of the Affordable Care Act allows HHS to restrict coverage of low-value services and also mandates that recommended services be covered without cost sharing.
Read the full study
Read coverage of the study
Read other V-BID publications |
| Featured Partner: Center for Health Value Innovation |
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 The V-BID Center works closely with a range of research partners, health coalitions, and thought-leaders to help our work be as integrated, relevant, and informative as possible. Please be in touch if you'd like to discuss partnership. We'll feature partners in our newsletter to help spread the word about related organizations that we think will interest our V-BID followers. The Center for Health Value Innovation (CHVI) is a resource for health benefit designs and invites you to join in their 'relentless pursuit of better health and measurable results.' CHVI will launch the Value Based Design 2010 Survey (conducted with Buck Consultants) results this month, which will be available at the CHVI website. View all V-BID Center Partners |
| V-BID Faculty at Upcoming Events |
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March 8, Washington, DC: AHIP National Policy Forum March 25, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Purchasers Health Alliance (MichPHA) Value-Based Purchasing Workshop
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