Value-based care isn’t just the future of healthcare; it’s a mandate. CMS has made it clear through its 2030 value-based care mandate: every Medicare beneficiary will need to be aligned with a value-based model. For providers, this creates both opportunity and risk. The opportunity lies in delivering better outcomes while capturing shared savings. The risk is that without the right tools and infrastructure, practices can quickly find themselves overextended, underperforming, or left behind.
The real challenge isn’t knowing what the value-based care mandate is—it’s knowing how to succeed within it. For independent physician groups especially, success comes down to three things: leveraging the right technology, having the infrastructure to scale, and having the data and analytics to step into risk with confidence.
These pillars aren’t ends in themselves—they are supports for the true foundation of value-based care: the clinical mission and patient outcomes. Technology provides the visibility to spot gaps and intervene earlier. Infrastructure builds the capacity for teams to adapt and sustain new ways of working. Risk sharing aligns financial incentives with better care. Together, they create the conditions where physicians can practice at the top of their license and patients receive the outcomes the system has long promised but rarely delivered.
Technology: The Foundation of Modern Value-Based Care
In value-based care, quality measures are the currency of success. They determine reimbursement, payer partnerships, and competitive positioning. To improve those measures, practices must go beyond compliance checkboxes. They need point-of-care technology, interoperable analytics, and patient-facing tools that make performance improvement part of everyday care.
A recent PointClickCare analysis highlights how many groups are still hampered by fragmented EHRs and care management tools. Without interoperability, real-time updates, or robust analytics, care coordination falters. Advanced care management platforms, predictive analytics, and AI aren’t optional anymore, they are prerequisites.
For example, predictive models can identify high-risk patients before an ER visit, while POC suspecting technology helps capture risk-adjustment opportunities in real time. On the patient side, portals, telehealth, and mobile apps keep patients engaged and more likely to follow through on care. Ultimately, technology matters because it enables clinicians to focus on their mission, which is delivering better outcomes for patients. The real value is not in the tools themselves, but in how they support the clinical work at the heart of care.
Infrastructure: Building the System Beneath the Care
If technology is the foundation, infrastructure is the scaffolding that allows value-based care to scale. As Lynn Carroll writes, legacy IT built for fee-for-service simply cannot manage today’s requirements. Systems designed for volume billing were never built to handle complex risk contracts, payer collaborations, or the incorporation of social determinants of health.
Value-based care runs on infrastructure the way a city runs on electricity. Large health systems have the equivalent of high-capacity grids: cloud platforms, analytics teams, and dedicated change management offices. Independent practices are often running on a single transformer. When the demands spike—new reporting rules, more complex contracts, expanding quality measures—it doesn’t take much to overload the system.
That’s why infrastructure must be understood as more than servers and software. True infrastructure includes:
- Interoperability that connects data across systems and care settings.
- Change management that helps teams adopt new workflows and sustain them over time.
- Upskilling that equips physicians, staff, and administrators with the knowledge to operate confidently in value-based models.
- Culture and governance that ensure incentives are aligned and accountability is shared.
Technology can light the way, but without this broader scaffolding, practices lack the resilience to absorb change or scale innovation. The gap is real: large systems have had the resources to build this infrastructure, while independent groups often face the same requirements without the same capacity. Yet this kind of foundation isn’t out of reach. With the right partner, it can be built within budget, in modular, scalable ways that strengthen resilience without overwhelming teams.
Risk Sharing: The Clinical Proof That It Works
Technology and infrastructure set the stage, but risk sharing provides the payoff. A new JAMA study covering more than 3 million Medicare Advantage members shows that value-based models outperformed fee-for-service on all 15 quality measures.
The differences were not small. Blood glucose control scores were 25 percentage points higher in VBC arrangements than in fee-for-service, and controlling high blood pressure was more than 23 percentage points higher.
The study also found that quality improved progressively as providers moved deeper into risk. Pay-for-performance beat FFS. One-sided risk beat pay-for-performance, and two-sided risk beat them all. In fact, two-sided risk outperformed every other model on every quality measure evaluated.
Risk sharing works because it ties financial incentives back to the clinical mission. It rewards the kind of care that keeps patients healthier, closes disparities, and delivers on the outcomes providers have always wanted to prioritize.
This study reinforces what technology and infrastructure set in motion: when providers have the right tools, capacity, and alignment, risk sharing doesn’t just redistribute dollars; it improves lives. Incremental gains in hypertension, diabetes, and cancer care show that the value-based care mandate isn’t about abstract policy. It’s about creating the conditions where clinical mission and patient outcomes finally move in the same direction as financial incentives
Why It Matters for Independent Practices
It’s no secret that independent physician groups often feel left behind in the race to value. Larger health systems have IT departments, financial reserves, and negotiation leverage. Smaller groups face limited staff, financial constraints, and rising burnout.
Independent practices are not powerless. With the right partner, they can adopt modular solutions that scale on their terms. They can phase in technology without overload, build infrastructure that matches their size, and test pilot programs before committing to full-scale transformation.
At VBCTP, our philosophy is simple: we meet you where you are. Whether you’re just starting to dip a toe into risk or managing multiple payer contracts, we bring the tools, analytics, and physician-led perspective to help you succeed without losing your autonomy or identity as a practice.
The Road Ahead
The healthcare system is at a tipping point. CMS’s 2030 value-based care mandate makes clear that value-based care is not optional. The question is whether practices will be prepared to thrive or left scrambling to comply.
The evidence is conclusive:
- Technology integrated into workflows elevates care quality.
- Infrastructure designed for interoperability and scale supports collaboration.
- Risk sharing consistently drives better outcomes and higher quality.
These pillars are not the destination. They are the supports that allow physicians to practice at the top of their license, restore purpose to clinical work, and deliver the outcomes patients deserve. The true foundation of value-based care remains the clinical mission itself—better care, better health, and a system that rewards both.
The future is coming fast. The challenge now is to ensure every practice has the tools, capacity, and confidence to step into it with strength. Let’s build it together.
