Premise

Premise

The BTE mission in a nutshell: help the best clinicians build their practices, help patients get healthier, help insurers and employers manage costs better.

BTE programs are designed around three key lessons gained from our research and experience.

First, it’s critical to measure what matters most—the handful of indicators that have truly significant clinical and financial impact. These are the quality measures most predictive of improved patient health. These measures also form a set of indicators to help practices identify patients who are not well controlled and need more proactive management.

Second, clinicians who follow those quality measures will consistently provide better care at lower costs. Typically, they outperform their peers on process measures of quality, and have lower average costs per patient and per episode. In part, this is because they tend to rely more on evaluation and management and less on tests and procedures; they know costlier care is not always better care.

Third, incentives only work if they are fair and designed to increase over time, so clinicians who continually improve their practices are rewarded in kind. The better they get, the more incentives they deserve—and the more patients should be encouraged to utilize them. As in any industry, the best performers should earn the most and have the biggest market share.