Capsule Commentary on Huskamp et al., Effects of Global Payment and Accountable Care on Tobacco Cessation Service Use: An Observational Study

Excerpt

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death and disability in the US. Unfortunately, despite decades of smoking cessation effort, 18% of US adults smoke.1 In this study, Huskamp and colleagues2 found that an Alternative Quality Contract, in which accountable care organizations receive incentives for improving care performance on 64 measures, reduced smoking (from 2.02 to 1.87%). This is despite the fact that tobacco cessation was not 1 of the 64 measures of care. The authors posit that a multi-year global payment contract incentivizes tobacco cessation as an intervention that can potentially lower future disease burden. The authors also suggest that including tobacco cessation as a specific metric could create even stronger incentives. …