PPACA & Workers' Compensation: What's in store for physicians?

With CMS focused on outcomes and growing standardization in the treatment of illness and injury, physicians will need to find and/or develop new strategies for improving outcomes while maintaining or increasing their profitability. Some of this will come from improvements in practice management and technology. A greater portion of these improvements is anticipated through a concerted effort of doctors and their service networks seeking closer alignment to create a treatment coalition modeled on the Patient- Centered Medical Home (PCMH). Finally, as an outgrowth of pay-for-performance and PCMH models, we anticipate a more proactive approach by physicians in communications and adherence in order to improve the probability of a positive patient outcome. For physicians whose practices focus on the diagnosis and treatment of workers’ compensation (WC) claims, there is a unique opportunity to retool their practices to exploit the financial and technological changes driven by healthcare reform—and to see greater returns on their investments.