Bundled Payments Associated With Lower Health Care Spending Without Loss Of Quality

Bundled payment interventions are associated with reductions in health care spending and utilization—but bundled payments had inconsistent effects on quality measures. Spending reductions due to bundled rate methodologies were less than 10% across different payment settings. Lower utilization rates ranged from 5% to 25%. These were the findings of “Bundled Payment: Effects on Health Care Spending and Quality, Closing the Quality Gap: Revisiting the State of the Science,” a meta-analysis of previous studies on bundled rate financing methodologies. The analysis was released as a report by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. In the study, a . . .