Published 27 July 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3033
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3033

News

Massachusetts proposes putting providers on budget to rein in healthcare spending

Bob Roehr

1 Washington, DC

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A commission appointed by the governor and legislature in Massachusetts has called for reform of the state’s health policy in the next five years that would end payments for service, switching instead to a system that pays a fixed fee to cover a person’s care for a whole year.

The aim is that by working within a set budget, providers would have to better coordinate patients’ care, with the hope that quality would improve and costs fall. The new policy will require the creation of integrated care, from the family doctor to specialists and hospitals.

Massachusetts would be the first state to adopt such a "global payment" system and one that the Obama administration would watch closely, as it attempts to overhaul the national healthcare system.

The concepts of global payment and integrated care are common in much of the industrialised world. In the United States they are embodied in . . . [Full text of this article]


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