Salt Lake City, February 28, 2018 – Value-based care is changing how physicians practice medicine and the training they need to practice successfully. Today, Leavitt Partners published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst, “Preparing a New Generation of Physicians for a New Kind of Health Care,” that examines how medical schools and policy makers have key roles in shaping the clinician workforce in the future.
Using 2018 Medicare Physician Compare Data provided by the Leavitt Partners Torch InsightTM platform, the authors found that physicians who graduated from medical school in 2010 or later are more likely to practice in larger groups, be female, and practice primary care than physicians who graduated in or before 1960. These changing physician demographics come at a time of significant changes in the payment and delivery of health care. Key findings and policy implications include:
- The median 2016 group size for physicians who graduated from medical school in 2010 or later is 136 physicians, compared to a median group size of two for those who graduated in or before 1960.
- Medical schools have both an opportunity and a responsibility to train new physicians to succeed in a value-based care environment, including how to practice under risk-based contracts and with episodic payments.
- Physician training should emphasize teamwork, strategies to address patients’ social determinants of health, and prioritizing value not volume in care delivery.
- Policy makers can facilitate the transition to value-based care and can help ameliorate the impending physician shortage by encouraging the use of care teams and allowing physician assistants and nurse practitioners to practice at the top of their licenses.
Moving value-based care preparation upstream to medical school curriculum can equip a new generation of physicians for a new kind of health care practice. Value-based care involves a distinct set of realities and challenges—including more financial constraints and more attention to patients’ social and non-medical factors—and physicians need the training and skills to succeed in this new context.
The article can be viewed here.
About Leavitt Partners:
Leavitt Partners is a health care intelligence business. The firm helps clients successfully navigate the evolving role of value in health care by informing, advising, and convening industry leaders on value market analytics, alternative payment models, federal strategies, insurance market insights, and alliances. Through its family of businesses, the firm provides investment support, data and analytics, member-based alliances, and direct services to clients to support decision-making strategies in the value economy. For more information please visit www.LeavittPartners.com.
About Torch Insight:
Torch InsightTM, a Leavitt Partners data solution, offers access to an integrated data warehouse and analytics suite that addresses the current fragmented nature of healthcare data resources. We understand the transforming healthcare system, which allows us to provide clean, accurate resources for data analysts, and intuitive user-friendly analytic tools that help drive decision making. Learn more at https://torchinsight.com/.