Designing and Implementing Value-Based Care Delivery and Payment Models for Musculoskeletal Care.

Payors, purchasers, health care providers, and patients are increasingly focused on improving the value-defined as health outcomes that matter to patients per dollar expended-of health care delivered to patients. Orthopaedic providers are in a unique position to pioneer this transition given the introduction of alternative payment models as well as the longitudinal, multidisciplinary, and relatively homogenous nature of high-cost, high-burden orthopaedic conditions (eg, osteoarthritis). First, doing so requires identifying and objectively measuring outcomes that are important to patients (eg, quality of life, pain, functional status) over time. Second, it requires applying value-based principles by reorganizing delivery systems into integrated practice units-a team-based, multidisciplinary model-focused on delivering longitudinal care in a method that is tailored to each patient's values, goals, and disease state. Third, providers must understand the true cost of delivering such care through time-driven activity-based costing approaches. With this knowledge of outcomes and cost, providers and payors/purchasers will be adequately equipped to develop contracts that reward providers for delivering better value (across an orthopaedic patient population) while minimizing risk. The transition to value-based health care is feasible regardless of practice setting.