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Practices measure risks and rewards in testing new products

Physician Practice Insider, April 19, 2016

For some practices, testing new products is born out of necessity, while others are motivated by trends like new payment models that provide rewards for meeting patient care goals.

There are other payoffs for practices willing to test new ideas and products: Sometimes the benefit is knowing that you've blazed a trail for others to follow. That goes for things like telemedicine as well as new models of care, such as the patient-centered medical home.

"For many years, there was no incentive for practices to test the patient-centered medical home model, but many practices that were already successful under the old model did it anyway," says Todd Evenson, chief operating officer for the Medical Group Management Association. "And the patient-centered medical home model was successful because of the physicians who were willing to test the model before it was incentivized."

He notes that practices that were early adopters of the patient-centered medical home and other value-oriented care models are now in line to reap the rewards on the back end as more insurers switch to new models of care.

"When you look at the future of reimbursements systems, they're going to be linked to patient outcomes, care management, and the ability to keep patients healthy and out of hospitals and emergency departments," says Evenson. "And those models will change the way technology is adopted."

This article was originally published in Physician Practice Perspectives. Subscribers can read the full article in the May 2016 issue.

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