By Sarah C. Threnhauser

Last month as part of our ongoing coverage of The 2018 OPEN MINDS Performance Management Institute, I had a chance to touch base with Debbie Cagle-Wells, Chief Marketing Officer at Centerstone about their value-based health plan partnerships (see The Evolution Of Successful Value-Based Contracting). During that conversation, she noted the increased use of health plan incentive payments based on an interesting quality metric: consumer activation. If you aren't familiar with consumer activation, it is similar to consumer engagement with one important difference— consumer decisionmaking power. Consumer activation refers to a consumer's knowledge, skills, ability, and willingness to manage his or…