Clinical Co-Management Agreements
Clinical Co-Management Agreements are arrangements where physicians and hospitals work collaboratively to improve the quality and efficiency of a hospital based service line. The management fee is structured as a base fee plus a productivity bonus upon the achievement of predetermined and measurable quality and efficiency metrics. The goal of a Co-Management Agreement is to increase quality and efficiency within a hospital department or service line in order to enhance patient care and satisfaction.
Typical Clinical Co-Management Agreements generally share the following characteristics:
- For a specific department or service line
- Contains quality improvement metrics
- Structured as fixed compensation for management of department or service line and variable compensation based on quality and/or productivity metrics
- Aggregate compensation set in advance
While Clinical Co-Management Agreements seem to be the future of healthcare, the contracts should contain the following:
- Economic terms of the contract must be consistent with fair market value
- Contain fixed and variable compensation to encourage productivity and quality gains
- Contain appropriate protections against over-utilization and fraud and abuse