Hospitals, health systems, and physician practices must find ways to adapt to the quickly changing market forces around them. Sources of change include value-based contracting, provider competition, consumerism, changes in government and commercial payment models, health system regionalization, government regulation, and technological innovation.
Health systems and physicians increasingly are finding it in their best interests to affiliate with one another in new ways, but how they collaborate depends on specific forces in their market. Some markets have larger populations and more significant provider competition than others. Some are more likely to have health plans that want to implement value-based payment models.