Milestone document released by the Center for Health Value Innovation

October 29, 2010 — The Foundation for Chiropractic Progress (F4CP) is pleased to announce that the Center for Health Value Innovation (CHVI) has released a landmark document: Outcomes-Based Contracting™: The Value-Based Approach for Optimal Health with Chiropractic Services.  

Cyndy Nayer, CEO of CHVI and the voice of value-based design, along with leaders from the center, point to chiropractic intervention as one area in which new analysis may define the placement in the care continuum. 

“The Foundation asked us to consider the insertion of chiropractic into the value-based benefit designs for low back and neck pain based upon a recently published study,” notes Nayer, citing the 2009 study “Do Chiropractic Physician Services for Treatment of Low Back and Neck Pain Improve the Value of Health Benefit Plans?” conducted by Niteesh Choudhry, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Arnold Milstein, MD, MPH, which concluded that chiropractic care could be an effective and cost-efficient service for relief of pain and reduction in disability.

“Because of the support from the Foundation, we were able to convene a panel of experts to consider the implications and a framework for contracting that was built on outcomes. The conclusion:  there is a basis for including chiropractic in the patient-centered models of value-based design.”

Nayer continues, “We believe the market is ready to broaden the reach of value-based designs into the delivery system, and chiropractic should now be measured prospectively on how it improves workforce performance and economic efficiencies, getting our businesses back to work.”

A panel of experts including Nayer and Choudhry convened at the Innovators’ Summit on Chiropractic Services held May 1, 2010, Orlando, Fla. including: 

• Ford Brewer, MD – Chief Medical Director, The Little Clinic

• Laura Carabello – Principal, CPR Strategic Marketing Communications

• Niteesh Choudhry, MD, PhD – Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School

• Gerry Clum, DC – President, Life Chiropractic College West

• Steven Delaronde – Director of Medical Informatics, Triad Healthcare

• Peter Hayes – Secretary, CHVI

• Jack Mahoney, MD, MPH – Chief Medical Officer, CHVI

• Cyndy Nayer, MA – CEO, CHVI

• Jerry Reeves, MD – Principal, Health Innovations LLC

• Bruce Sherman, MD – Consultant Medical Director, Whirlpool and Medical Consultant, CHVI

• Mark Ziegler, DC – President, Northwestern Health Sciences University  

This newly released authoritative report follows the recent unveiling of the CHVI ground-breaking contracting mechanism, Outcomes-Based Contracting™, an approach that transforms health benefit design. 

Outcomes-Based Contracting™ (OBC) recognizes value-based benefit design (VBBD) as a superior engagement tool for aligning the delivery system with the goals of the payer to drive accountable care, enhanced health status and cost efficiency.  Outcomes-Based Contracting™ emerges as the only sensible contracting mechanism to move the system away from commodity pricing and into measurable, meaningful outcomes.

According to Dr. Clum, Foundation spokesperson, “The CHVI document is a breakthrough for the profession because it weaves chiropractic care into the context of a value-based benefit design. As the paper eloquently states, there is sufficient basis for plan sponsors to reevaluate their current chiropractic benefit for treatment of neck and low back pain.”

Source: Foundation for Chiropractic Progress, www.f4cp.org