Origins In Oregon: The Alternative Payment Methodology Project

How the country pays for health care is currently at odds with its vision of how health care should be delivered. Traditional fee-for-service health care payments are linked to the volume of visits, rather than the quality of patient-centered care.

To unlink payment from the volume of services provided and begin aligning it with value, Oregon recently launched the Alternative Payment Methodology (APM) demonstration project, where participating community health centers (CHCs)—aka federally qualified health centers—no longer earn revenue based on the number of individual patient seen. Instead, community health centers will receive a monthly payment based on the size and composition of their patient population, shifting the paradigm from the number of doctor visits to the provision of high-quality, team-based, patient-centered care.

APM is being piloted at three Oregon Community Health Centers: Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center, Mosaic Medical, and OHSU Family Medicine at Richmond. The clinics are receiving technical assistance from the Oregon Primary Care Association (OPCA) and other community, regional and national partners.

With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a team of researchers from Oregon Health and Science University and OCHIN, one of the nation’s largest health information networks, is investigating the impact of APM on the delivery of primary care in safety-net populations. In addition to regular posts like this one, the research team will also share lessons learned and perspectives from key stakeholders on Frontiers of Health Care.