Health Care Providers

It's no secret that the Affordable Care Act favors primary care. Several incentives in the law work to boost the primary care workforce as the focus switches to prevention and more American gain health insurance coverage.

On the other hand, specialists like radiologists will see a changing paradigm as the fee-for-service model slowly fades away under the law and is replaced with bundled payments and accountable care organizations.

These new models of care, which reward quality and lower costs, will also affect hospitals. In October 2012, the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program, began either rewarding or penalizing hospitals monetarily based on their relative performance on certain quality measures. The law also calls for Medicare to stop preventable hospital readmissions by financially penalizing hospitals with high readmission. How will these penalties affect hospitals, particularly those who care for a majority of poor and uninsured patients?