Jaan Sidorov runs the initial numbers, and it doesn’t look promising. The reduction of claims expense would have to be at least 8 percent, a daunting number.
Put another way, if 100 Medicare beneficiaries signed up for the medical home, 1 to 2 hospitalizations would have to be avoided. Of course, random variation can easily skew the numbers the other way and make the program more expensive than it’s worth.
The way it’s currently structured, it looks like a lot of work for an awfully small carrot.