BCBSMA’s Alternative Quality Contract First-Year Results Released

First-year results of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Inc.’s Alternative Quality Contract (AQC) agreements with physicians and hospitals have been released, evidencing that sharing accountability with providers for health care quality and costs by changing the payment model can stimulate significant improvements in both areas.

The AQC is a modified global payment model, designed to encourage cost-effective, patient-centered care by paying participating physicians and hospitals for the quality, not the quantity, of the care they deliver.

BCBSMA says first-year results show the AQC is on track to achieve its original goal of reducing annual health care cost trends by one-half over the five years of the AQC contracts, while improving the quality of patient care. Improvements in the quality of patient care were greater than any one-year change seen previously in its network of hospitals and physicians, significantly exceeding the rates of improvement on quality measures that AQC groups were achieving prior to the contract and outpacing the rates of improvement among non-AQC physicians, says BCBSMA.

With the contracts, for the first time, physicians and hospitals have agreed to share responsibility for efficiency of care, says BCBSMA, adding that the AQC model brings both predictability and stability to annual health care cost increases, and has already positively influenced two major health care cost drivers: hospital readmissions and the use of emergency rooms for non-emergent care.

Click here to view the official whitepaper.