In early January, the Michigan Value Collaborative (MVC) distributed 2020 Program Year (PY) scores to hospitals for the MVC Component of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Pay for Performance (P4P) program. This marked the completion of the first year of a two-year cycle for which hospitals have selected two service lines (out of seven) to be scored on their episode spending using MVC data. These service lines include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), colectomy, congestive heart failure (CHF), coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), joint replacement, pneumonia, and spine surgery. Figure 1 shows the frequency of hospital service line selections for the two-year program cycle.
Figure 1.
The program evaluates hospital’s risk-adjusted, price standardized, average 30-day episode payments for their two selected conditions through two methods. One way that hospitals earn points in the program is by reducing their payments from the baseline period (index admissions in 2017) to the performance period (index admissions in 2019). These are termed ‘improvement points’. Alternatively, hospitals are able to earn points by being less expensive than the other hospitals in their cohort. These are referred to as ‘achievement points’. The MVC cohorts are groups of hospitals determined to be peers using bed size, case mix index, and teaching status.
While participants are scored on both improvement and achievement, members receive the higher of the two scores for each service line. Hospitals are also eligible to earn a bonus point for each service line provided all hospitals in their respective cohort who selected the same condition reduce spending by five percent. A maximum of ten points can be awarded for participating members. Figure 2 shows the distribution of total points earned by hospitals for Program Year 2020.
Figure 2.
On average, hospitals earned six points, an increase of around one point from the 2019 program year average. Twenty-four hospitals received bonus points within the COPD, colectomy, joint replacement, and pneumonia service lines. Consistent with previous years, joint replacement had the average points, with pneumonia coming in a close second (see Figure 3).
Figure 3.
If you have any questions regarding the MVC Component of the BCBSM P4P program, please refer to the P4P Technical Document for Program Years 2020 and 2021 and the MVC P4P FAQ PY 2020-2021 . If you would like to set up a meeting to review your hospital’s performance, please contact the Coordinating Center at MichiganValueCollaborative@gmail.com.
