Value-based physician reimbursement: challenges and opportunities for physical medicine and rehabilitation.

omentum is increasing to base physician reimbursement not just on the provision of a ervice but also on other factors, such as quality and safety measures, provision of ecommended care, and avoidance of wasteful care. Purchasers of care refer to this as alue-based purchasing. Physicians should think of this as value-based reimbursement VBR). If you have yet to see revenue implications from this approach to payment reform, hances are high that you will within the next 5 years. It is important for physicians to nderstand the current and emerging future state of these activities. Although physical edicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) is not a specialty that has been impacted heavily by hese programs to date, payers will seek to differentiate value within the specialty. Those hallenges may be offset by new opportunities for the specialty that the new system would rovide. For example, it is quite likely that patient functional status will be included as a ommon value parameter for many conditions. PM&R’s subject matter expertise and ervices could be leveraged in the design and implementation of functional status measureent for value-based assessments.