George Washington University’s Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health has released a new policy brief, Community Health Centers Making the Move to Value-Based Payment. The brief provides in-depth findings from a qualitative study to understand and document community health center experiences with Medicaid alternative payment models (APM) and move to value-based payment (VBP). Interviews with primary care associations and health centers in twelve case study states revealed that health centers participate in a variety of VBP models. Their engagement is spurred by substantial Medicaid patient volume, the need for more predictable and stable financing, and the desire to move away from an encounter-based care delivery system to models that allow for greater care coordination and team-based care. The report concludes that states can encourage the move to VBP models by recognizing the essential role that health centers play as the backbone of the healthcare safety net and that given the strong potential for VBP models to alleviate financial pressures on health centers, allow health center providers to offer more efficient and coordinated care, and transform care delivery for their patients, these efforts merit support.
