Bundled pricing represents an alternative approach to fee-for-service that shifts the risk of extraordinary costs from payers to providers, and it creates incentives for providers to make cost effectiveness a factor in clinical decisions. Both of these outcomes are attractive to payers, who increasingly have an interest in containing healthcare cost inflation. That’s why this idea is likely to rise to the top of agendas for payers and providers alike.

Even if you’re not sure that you will need or want to go down the bundled pricing path, building the necessary infrastructure positions you for better managing your costs, and there’s no question that you will need to go down that road.