FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.” —Steve Jobs The late Steve Jobs may be correct. It’s exciting to watch a home run and then turn around to high five the fans around you at the ballpark. Still, a Major League Baseball player has higher chances of hitting a double (5.00% in the 2021 MLB regular season) than hitting a home run (3.78%). The devotion to quality over quantity and easy user interfaces are what drove massive sales of Apple products. Let’s apply the baseball analogy to medicine, where the value-based care model of reimbursement is pushing physicians to emphasize quality or quantity. In this issue of Arizona Physician, we examine what the payment system means to physicians, who benefits, and how it could help patients or lower costs to the healthcare system. Physicians often cite quality of care as their guiding star. You chose medicine to improve the lives of your patients. As a patient, I greatly appreciate any effort to provide the best care at the right price. How you achieve better quality of care is always changing, as techniques and procedures evolve and improve. Just as in baseball, the rules sometimes change. Payment systems, and their various incentives, have shifted over the decades. Medicare, for example, was modeled on the fee-for-service structure of the 1960s. As health costs rose, we saw the rise of managed care and capitation models. Since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is the largest payer of healthcare services in the United States, CMS decisions have an outsized impact on the reimbursement models that private insurers adopt. Additional CMS efforts to rein in healthcare expenditures have led to value-based care of today. Whether value-based care leads physicians to hit home runs in the operating suite or bedside is yet to be seen. Maybe we’ll see if more singles and doubles in medicine are more valuable than home runs.
S P O T L IG H T ON VA LU E-B A S E D C A R E We greatly appreciate David Ott, MD, of OrthoArizona for speaking with Managing Editor Edward Araujo regarding how the orthopedic surgical practice has adopted the value-based care model and continues to analyze data to drive its decisions. For our section What Arizona Docs are Saying, we learn about upsides and downsides of valuebased care and how physicians could measure whether quality of care or outcomes for patients has improved. MCMS interns Mariana Nicolaides and Anna Hartman write about the big picture of value-based care and how difficult it may be for some practices or small hospitals to implement the model. As they state, “Many physicians may question the barriers of transitioning to this model, and whether the change will truly benefit their practice and improve the value of healthcare delivery.”
VA LUA BL E A R T IC L E S David Shelley shares recommendations for having the correct tools and layered security in place to prevent ransomware and minimize the impacts of harmful hacking that is on the rise. Lawyers Melissa A. Soliz and Helen Oscislawski share updates regarding the new information blocking rule that requires the immediate release of electronic health information to patient portals. Finally, we congratulate Stephen O’Neill, a medical student at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, for winning our annual essay contest. Please read Stephen’s answer to the question of “What does culturally competent healthcare mean to you?” Contact us at information@arizonaphysician.com with any comments or suggestions.
We are looking for article contributors, podcast guests, and virtual event presenters. Contact us at info@arizonaphysician.com for these and many more opportunities. 6
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Enjoy the magazine.
By John E. McElligott, MPH, CPH
