Despite efforts by insurance companies and other payers to move toward compensating physicians based on the quality and value of care they provide, most physicians employed in group practices owned by health systems are paid primarily based on the volume of care they provide, according to a new study by RAND Corporation researchers.
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Spending on low-value health care among fee-for-service Medicare recipients dropped only marginally from 2014 to 2018, despite both a national campaign to better educate clinicians and increasing use of payment revisions that discourage wasteful care, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
Three items accounted for two-thirds of the low-value care. Among these, prescribing opioids for acute back pain increased despite a growing national awareness of the harms caused by the drugs and the role of such prescribing in fueling the nation s opioid crisis.
The study found that the proportion of study participants receiving any of 32 low-value services decreased from 36.3% in 2014 to 33.6% in 2018. Annual spending per 1,000 individuals on low-value care also decreased, from $52,766 to $46,922 from 2014 to 2018. The findings are published online by the journal