Obama’s impact on care delivery goes beyond ACA

After President Barack Obama makes way for President-elect Donald Trump on Jan. 20, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) may go away—but his changes to the delivery system for healthcare will be harder to roll back.

In part of a New York Times series on Obama’s legacy, reporters Abby Goodnough and Robert Pear examine how healthcare has begun its transition away from fee-for-service models towards value-based care.

“I don’t know who could be against it: higher quality and lower cost,” said Ryan C. Kitchell, an executive vice president and the chief administrative officer of IU Health, the largest health provider in Indiana.

The transformation has come with consolidation into larger health systems, benefitting large organizations like IU Health as they’ve acquired smaller practices. There are also complaints about the complexity of this new risk-based approach and the new systems of quality measures.

“It may be good in theory,” said John M. Thomas, MD, a primary care physician at an IU Health practice in Lafayette, Indiana. “But there are a lot of flaws.”

For more on hospital leaders and physicians who don’t want to see a return to pre-Obama norms in healthcare spending and care delivery, click on the link below: