How Value-Based Care Supports Physician Flexibility

Picture this common scenario: A physician is treating a senior patient grappling with multiple chronic conditions. The patient’s complex health needs require a flexible and personalized approach to their treatment plan. However, within the confines of traditional fee-for-service healthcare systems, the doctor is often restricted by limited options and bureaucratic hurdles, hindering their ability to provide the best possible care for the patient.

This is where value-based care emerges as a transformative solution. By shifting the focus from quantity to quality, value-based care models empower physicians with the flexibility they need to provide the right care for the right patient at the right time in the right place to improve the patient’s outcome and experience.

Why is Flexibility Important for Physicians in Value-Based Care?

In traditional fee-for-service settings, certain actions that doctors could undertake in a value-based care setting – where they assume full financial responsibility for patient results – are frequently impractical.  However, in the VBC model, providers are empowered to make decisions and render services that lead to enhanced outcomes. This achievement is facilitated through a collaborative team approach, allowing providers to allocate more time and flexibility to patients who need it the most. By embracing the VBC model, healthcare professionals can shape a future where patient-centric care thrives, and individual needs are truly met.

Addressing Common Frustrations with Fee-for-Service Care

In traditional fee-for-service healthcare systems, physicians often face common frustrations, including administrative burdens, limited treatment options, burnout, and financial constraints. These challenges can hinder their ability to provide optimal patient care for seniors. With the Medicare patient population estimated to grow to more than 80 million by 2030, primary care physicians need a new business model that will help them effectively meet increased demand.

Value-based care models address these frustrations by focusing on quality outcomes and care coordination. By streamlining administrative processes and emphasizing collaboration among care teams, value-based care reduces administrative burdens and allows physicians to focus more on patient care.

Treatment Plans and Care Teams

agilon’s Total Care Model empowers physicians to provide better care, manage a sustained and thriving practice and control costs. It transforms care delivery into a full-risk, value-based system through the use of high data visibility and actionable insights, highly coordinated care teams, PCP and patient accountability, and clinical and community programs.

By truly understanding these aspects and making provider approaches more consistent, there have been significant improvements across the board. For example, in agilon’s network, diabetes management has improved greatly by using structured plans that make sure patients get and follow their prescribed treatments. Providers look closely at data to determine what works and adjust it to fit each patient.

Using data and analytics to spot patients with special care needs, and working with care teams including nurses, home visits, pharmacists, social workers, and dietitians, results in better and more suitable treatment plans and resource distribution for patients. This method lets providers consider all aspects of a patient’s situation, making sure all their different needs are fully and effectively met.

The Role of agilon’s Total Care Model in Supporting Physicians

agilon’s model plays a crucial role in supporting physicians in delivering value-based care. Through our integrated care platform, agilon provides physicians with data-driven insights and tools that enable them to make informed decisions. By identifying patients with high-risk needs, agilon’s platform improves the ability to identify those who require more intensive and tailored treatment approaches.

agilon’s commitment to enhancing provider satisfaction is evident in various specialized programs, such as those dedicated to renal health, palliative care, high-risk patient management, and pharmacy services. These programs provide physicians with increased flexibility to engage patients in shared decision-making about their health journeys.

“With agilon’s resources and model, we’re able to build teams that can service patients in ways that we never could before. We’re able to follow them through the entire system,” Dr. Brady Steineck, an agilon health partner says.

This sentiment is echoed by Dr. John Notaro, a physician partner in western New York. “Our partnership with agilon has given us the opportunity to invest in a way that can keep patients out of the emergency room and home where they want to be and where their families want them to be,” Dr. Notaro says.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Physician-Driven Treatment Plans

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Innovation Center has set a goal to transition all Medicare beneficiaries to a total care model by 2030. In many ways, the future is now. By embracing value-based care models, physicians can exercise their expertise and judgment to deliver personalized care that aligns with individual patient needs.

Learn more about the advantages of agilon’s data-centered platform and join a network that empowers physicians to deliver patient-centered care.