About Us

Our Mission

Health Care Transformation Task Force is an industry consortium that brings together patients, payers, providers and purchasers to align private and public sector efforts to clear the way for a sweeping transformation of the U.S. health care system. We seek to provide a critical mass of business, operational and policy expertise from the private sector that, when combined with the efforts of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other public and private sector stakeholders, can accelerate the pace of delivery system transformation.

What Makes Us Different

Our members represent every sector of health care. While at times we have competing interests, we share a common commitment to transform our business and clinical models to deliver the Triple Aim of better health, better care and lower costs. Our outputs will not reflect the simple self-interest of any one organization or market segment, but rather agreement on common private and public approaches that will best facilitate transformation.

We believe so strongly in our mission that our payer and provider members commit to put 75 percent of their respective businesses operating under value-based payment arrangements that focus on the Triple Aim by January 2020. Our purchaser and patient members commit to creating and sustaining the demand, support and education of their constituencies necessary to reach this goal.

The Need

There is a vital need for the industry to work cooperatively to accelerate health care transformation and position it for success. We need to overcome doubts about the certainty and pace of the transition and improve our knowledge about how to best produce the Triple Aim of better health, better care and lower costs. We need to make individuals and families aware of and involve them in health system redesign. If we want providers and payers to commit to this transformation, we must offer certainty that the nation will stay the course. Finally, we must ensure that the transition does not decrease competition across the industry.

Our Work Groups and Advisory Groups

The Task Force groups provide member forums for shared learnings; provide opportunities for collaboration; encourage member progress towards shared goals; and identify areas to develop and promote consensus positions and strategic approaches on how existing value-based payment and care models can improve and evolve to accelerate the pace of transformation to higher-value, lower cost care.

Advanced Payer/Provider Partnerships

The Advanced Payer Provider Partnerships Work Group shares learnings and develops strategies and readiness principles for advanced risk and/or mature total cost-of-care models. The Work Group identifies best practices and areas for improvement in managed care capitation arrangements and two-sided risk models; identifies best practices and processes for implementing commercial clinical episodes; anticipates “future state” needs for alternate payment models; and shares lessons learned and challenges faced by organizations trying to scale mature total cost of care or advanced risk payment models.

Implementing Value Models Group

The Implementing Value Models Work Group shares learnings and provides technical review and support of existing value-based payment models, including public and private sector models that are primarily grounded in fee-for-service. The Work Group seeks to evaluate specific models, identify improvements to model design and implementation, and assess market factors and provider/payer characteristics that impact success, while finding opportunities to synchronize the operations of various value models.

Patient-Centered Priorities Work Group

The Patient-Centered Priorities Work Group focuses on fully developing consumer perspectives to be infused into innovative payment and delivery models. The Work Group identifies opportunities to advance implementation of patient-centered priorities; share lessons learned from current value model experiences, especially as they pertain to the patient experience and high-need, high-cost patients; and evaluate benefit design and patient engagement in innovative value models.

The Path to Transformation Advisory Group is a forum for members to discuss a variety of issues and challenges that may directly or indirectly impact their ability to transition their organizations to value models and to meet the Task Force’s goal of having 75 percent of member business in value-based arrangements by 2020. The Advisory Group’s primary focus is to identify and share learnings about implementation and transitional strategies to promote success as a value-based organization.

Path to Transformation Advisory Group

The Promoting Value Advisory Group pursues opportunities to publicly promote the benefits of value-based payment and care delivery by showcasing both the collective efforts of the Task Force in moving towards value, and the related work of individual Task Force members.

Promoting Value Advisory Group

The Public Policy Advisory Group takes the lead on setting policy priorities, identifying opportunities for the Task Force to promote a public policy arena that advances value-based transformation, and encouraging alignment across public and private payers. The Advisory Group will also develop guidelines for the Task Force as it relates to engaging policymakers and other external organizations in issue education and advocacy, and shared value-based promotion.

Public Policy Advisory Group

Guiding Principles

The Health Care Transformation Task Force believes it is a national priority for the healthcare industry to collaborate in the transition to value.

Health care costs should not continue to crowd out other vital national investments. As such, growth in total health costs, both public and private, should aspire to be at or below the overall rate of GDP growth.
All payers—public and private—should pursue value-based contracts and use the full extent of their capabilities and authority, including that provided to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, to make successful models national policy.
Broad-scale adoption of value-based models among providers is critical to support the transition away from fee-for-service to achieve a truly person-centered system of care.
Alignment among public and private payers is critical. Common accountability targets, measures, and incentives across payers are necessary for expedited transformation, and will allow for meaningful comparability and true best practice identification.
Data is essential to driving the success of care coordination and should be provided at a sufficiently granular (e.g., individual patient) level by those private and public entities currently holding it to allow for standardized measurement, evaluation, and ad hoc reporting by care coordinating entities.
Meaningful competition should expand and not contract during this transition. Market participants should be equipped with the information and tools they need to compete fairly.

The Health Care Transformation Task Force believes value-based payment and delivery systems should demonstrate the following elements:

Incentivize and hold payers and providers accountable for the patient experience, and quality of care, and total cost, for a group of patients – either across an entire population over the course of a year or for a clinical category of patients during a defined episode that spans multiple sites of care – while providing adequate support and education to facilitate success.
Encourage individual and caregiver participation and engagement at all levels of system transformation—from point of care to redesign of care delivery, including governance, evaluation, and oversight.
Provide for person-centered, coordinated care models with robust primary care capabilities at the core that meet the needs of particular patient populations, including strengthening the safety net for disadvantaged populations.
Share savings achieved through alternate payment models among people, payers/purchasers and providers to ensure adequate investment in new care models.
Promote transparency of quality and cost metrics in a manner that is accessible to, and easily understood by, consumers, in order to foster accountability and quality improvement while enabling consumers’ and purchasers’ ability to compare information on outcomes and cost.
Ensure that providers can recoup reasonable returns on investments in care coordination by calibrating performance standards to draw in as many players as possible early on, and raising the bar gradually, yet consistently, over time.
Create a glide path – both financially and operationally - to a sustainable value-based system by gradually, yet consistently, raising performance standards over time.
Reduce administrative complexities and address potential impediments to value-based care adoption, including providers’ professional satisfaction.
Allow for market-based solutions that ensure patients receive high-quality care that improves outcomes and experience while lowering costs by allowing all health care organizations committed to value-based care to collaborate in innovative ways that make it easier and less costly for each organization to better serve patients.