Salient MD was honored to be a presenter at the SHM Gulf States Hospital Medicine Conference (June 2023). Our Presentation was entitled “Value-Based Purchasing: Hospitalist Implications”, addressed the origins and evolution of Value-Based Purchasing (VBP), and provided a summary of results to date. We discussed the critical role Hospitalists play in hospital performance improvement in general and improving VBP Metrics specifically.

Our conclusions regarding VBP: (1) Medicare will remain the pacesetter (2) Other Payers have and will introduce VBP Concepts and Metrics and (3) Properly led and structured Accountable Care Organizations (ACO’s) hold promise (4) VBP as currently configured Is overwhelmingly complicated (5) Attempts to accomplish too much (6) Is Characterized by Significant Reward/Penalty Imbalance (7) Will continue to expose Hospitalist-Hospital financial misalignment.

For a given hospital and hospitalist group, both parties should strive to incorporate achievable VBP Metric Incentives into hospitalist compensation plans.

“Incentives drive behavior, and behavior spawns culture.” Forbes