Value-Based Care Might Serve As Trigger For Expanded Care Integration

Value-based care (VBC) is a promising funding framework that places quality at the center of health care contracting. It relies on the hope that medical-behavioral health integration will be more effective and less costly than routine care. One potential concern is that VBC has no behavioral health funding criteria, so the adequacy of resources can never be guaranteed. Given fee-for-service (FFS) care’s rigidity, I think it’s likely that many specialty care providers will prefer the challenges of negotiating VBC revenue.;

Of course VBC contracts will sometimes include insufficient behavioral health funding, but underfunding . . .