POST 2022 SUMMIT BLOG
NP VBP: IS THE JUICE WORTH THE SQUEEZE?
NNPEN hosted its first Value-based Payment Summit on February 11th and 12th with attendance of 30+ like-minded professionals, all focused on NPs getting paid for the nursing model’s value add . Together the Summit ROCKED on content, every session recorded to reach a much larger audience. NNPEN experts agreed that a fee-for-service model is unsustainable for nurse-led practices and NPs need to understand the benefits associated with an at- risk payment strategy. With a focus on health promotion and disease prevention under a nursing model of health care delivery, the NP can survive and benefit from a value-based payment arrangement. Our narratives built one on another and made sense together: how often does that happen? We think this summit marks the beginning of a ground-up mapping to critical mass numbers! Many, many thanks to our subject matter expert speakers: researchers, payers, practice owners and educators.
We owe equal gratitude to the robust support NNPEN received from first-time sponsors, topped off with exhibits by the Emory Nursing Experience, a professional development initiative for nursing and Medical Advantage, a practice management company supporting NPs. These sponsors see the value of NPs in this space, even while we recognize NPs lag behind for many reasons revealed during the Summit sessions: lack of knowledge, small panel size and lack of incentives, to name a few.
The Summit concluded with these questions: How can we do this? How will we raise the value-based payment participation rate of nurse-led practices—and in turn, give NP practices agency over how they deliver the services their patients need, create sustainability both financially and clinically for their practices, and act with urgency? NPs as a workforce cannot waste this opportunity to leverage the pandemic’s access crisis in each of the 50 states!
We have several takeaways to hold close as we push to construct the roadmaps to NP VBP model participation:
1. NP attendance at the Summit tells us there’s more work to be done to move the value- based payment needle for NPs – not in 10 years’ time [the most common chat response on timing of VBP’s arrival for nurse-led practices] but starting now. Policy wonks, including CMS, peg the transition timeline closer to 3-5 years.
2. VBP covers services that are patient-centered, not volume driven, and aligns with the patient-centered nursing model. Sharing values with payers bodes well for patient-centered partnerships—not so much with FFS payers that reward volume
3. Our biggest risk is NOT down-side risk, but NP failure to plan for a transition to VBP that will be here, championed by Medicare and employers, in the frequently cited timeline of 3-5 years.
4. We know that nurses are bottom-up problem solvers [because there has always been resource constraint in conflict with what our patients need?]. So, we need to get local NP organizations talking with each other, with a common agenda, to ultimately answer this one meta question: IS THE JUICE [THE TRANISITION TO VBP] WORTH THE SQUEEZE? WHO DECIDES? Remember if we are not at the table, we are on the menu!
How will this happen? NNPEN will edit the recorded Summit sessions, summarize a bit, and then invite partners on a local level to draft a consensus vision for NP VBP and to propose next steps, including sources of funding, that fit the region and that will lead to region-specific answers to our meta question, “Is the VBP Juice worth the Squeeze?”.
We are also looking for other stakeholders who see the need for action to join us. Is this too much to ask? We don’t think so.!!
Sandy Berkowitz, Lynn Rapsilber, and Lorraine Bock
NNPEN
