Delivery system innovation and collaboration: A case study on influencers of preventable hospitalizations

Abstract

ABSTRACT The fiscal pool that funds Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) projects has four interlinking categories, Categories I – IV. DSRIP that was adopted in nine counties of southeast Texas detected a decrease in Preventable Hospitalization (PH) rates formulating the problem statement: What were the proposed factors that influenced the detected decrease? The article is a delineation of the presumable influencers within DSRIP that may have resulted in decrease in PH rates, those likely being physician-hospital collaboration, mechanisms of reimbursements, types of measures leveraged to report quality initiatives and interplaying healthcare externalities within the implemeted counties. The paper explains functioning of the four aforementioned influencers, examines how those may have impacted DSRIP and thereafter elucidates mechanisms these influencers in a detailed discussion. Physician-hospital collaboration propagated relationship centered care geared towards patients. State reimbursements provided a fiscal ballast to initiate and continue DSRIP activities. DSRIP’s Categories itself were designed in a systematic way so as to procure health outcomes in a continual process. And lastly, interplaying healthcare externalities such as the presence of Medicaid Managed Care/Health Maintanence Organizations may have impacted patient health in the implemented areas. At large, DSRIP may have exemplified coordination of physicians, administrators and the state so as to likely procure outcomes in healthcare quality as described herewith.