Specialty Care Reform
Overview
Research demonstrates that specialty care providers contribute to a majority of health care costs and play an increasing role in managing care across the patient journey, but to date, they have had limited opportunities to engage in value-based models beyond acute events and major procedures that are often captured in “bundled payments.” Improving specialist engagement in accountable care reforms is crucial to achieving the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) 2030 goal to have most Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries in accountable care relationships.
Over the last decade, Duke-Margolis has developed deep expertise in opportunities to advance specialty provider engagement in accountable care models. Our current efforts focus on how to improve primary-specialty care integration to support chronic disease management and other aspects of patient care that require significant coordination between primary care and specialty providers. Working together with specialty providers and their societies, accountable health systems, and public and private payers, this work seeks to create more meaningful accountable care models for longitudinal management of patients by specialists together with primary care providers by identifying the short-term and long-term changes to model design elements. Our ongoing work aims to advance longitudinal models in major areas of specialty care, with a focus on cardiovascular and musculoskeletal care.
Duke-Margolis Research Team
Katie Huber, MPH
Policy Research Associate
Inga Morken
Policy Research Assistant
Frank McStay, MPA
Assistant Research Director
Robert Saunders, PhD
Senior Research Director, Health Care Transformation
Adjunct Associate Professor
Executive Team Member
Margolis Core Faculty
Mark McClellan, MD, PhD
Director of the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy
Robert J. Margolis, MD, Professor of Business, Medicine and Policy
Margolis Executive Core Faculty
