Chris Trimble, of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, talks with an institute interviewer  about the needed rise of the “physician innovator”. A  little bit of the review:

Q. In your book, you state that the ongoing transition to value-based payments presents a tremendous opportunity for innovation in health care. What is it about the fee-for-service model that has stifled innovation, particularly by those on the front lines? Is innovation possible where the fee-for-service model still exists?

A. Stuart Pollack… put it to me this way. “There is no more suffocating constraint on the imagination of the physician innovator than the Relative Value Unit (RVU).” I violently agree. Under fee-for-service medicine, you get paid zero for service you invent and you get penalized for keeping people healthy. I see no greater reason to be optimistic about the future of U.S. healthcare than the steady transition we are making away from fee-for-service. There are a few small corners in the healthcare universe where innovation is possible under the existing payment model, but so much more is possible.

To read the interview, please hit this link.