A Radiologist's Primer on Bundles and Care Episodes

Bundled or episode payments are among the most heavily emphasized approaches to aligning incentives and promoting care coordination, efficiency, and accountability in health care redesign. Bundled or episode payments price a market basket of services for an entire episode of care with both a clearly defined trigger and termination. Because the radiologist is "ancillary" in many bundles, the specialty is often unaware of the phenomenon. This is likely to change rapidly. Radiology is pivotal in high-prevalence, high-impact care areas such as low back pain and stroke that are focuses of widely used system performance metrics. More important, radiology is central to the diagnosis and management of a wide range of important diagnostic issues in areas such as breast cancer, pulmonary nodules, and incidental findings. Three models of bundled care will probably involve radiology intimately in the near future. Pure radiology bundles might be constructed for breast cancer screening and diagnosis, and these could be priced on the basis of guideline-based best-practice frequencies of care events such as recall and biopsy. Clinical bundles, for example low back pain, could be priced on the basis of optimal imaging frequencies. Finally, pricing of imaging studies might include evidence-based frequencies of follow-up imaging for incidental findings.