As health insurance and health care costs continue rising, more employers and health plans are turning to centers of excellence to manage patients with chronic conditions.
Centers of excellence are unique operations that focus on containing costs and delivering quality and coordinated care from diagnoses to treatment and recovery for patients with acute or chronic conditions. These centers will typically offer bundled-payment programs for high-cost procedures in orthopedics, cardiology, oncology and organ transplants.
A study by the Rand Corporation looked at three major surgical procedures and found that centers of excellence with bundled-payment programs reduce the cost of surgeries by more than $16,000 per procedure.
Centers of excellence are available in certain health plans, and employers with workers who have chronic conditions that are costly to treat may be able to control their plan costs better if they chose a plan that has one. Additionally, many self-insured and partially self-insured employers contract directly with these centers to reduce their overall cost outlays and improve their workers’ health outcomes.
The good news is that there are other benefits to centers of excellence besides controlling costs. These include: Centers of Excellence Save Money, but Have More Benefits Too