Why Are Health Care Providers Forced to Downsize Just When We Need Them Most?
HBR 4/2/2020
Paul F. Levy, former CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, is Senior Advisor at Lax Sebenius, LLC
“Right now the issue is cash flow. Revenue is paid FFS with a settlement at the end. And too hard to predict what total medical expenses will look like through the peak and recovery.”
It was news to me that the month-by-month payments to Atrius and others were still based on a fee-for-service model (volume of patients, severity of illness or number of diagnostic and treatment visits) and only “reconciled” with the global payment at the end of the year. What a hodgepodge of incentives and financial outlay! To say that it is neither fish nor fowl gives short shrift to both families in the animal kingdom.
