Now that we're reaching the one year mark of the official launch of the health insurance exchange, critics and supporters continue to debate whether or not healthcare reform is reforming anything. According to an article in Forbes today, something much bigger is happening. Whatever you think of its merits, the Affordable Care Act is re-shaping American healthcare, radically altering business models that hadn’t changed in decades.

Talk about healthcare reform and paying providers to keep patients healthy set some forward thinkers down a new path before the U.S. Supreme Court declared the ACA constitutional two years ago. Health care executives have been busy recreating their businesses as if their livelihoods depend on it — which they do. They know that very soon they will be compensated not just for filling hospital beds, but for keeping patients out of the hospital altogether. That shifting of incentives, according to the article, from patient volumes to patient outcomes, is already having profound effects on our health system. 

The traditional fee-for-service model is giving way to a pay-for-performance model. Specialties such as radiology are seeking ways to demonstrate their role in improving patient outcomes as the industry is in the process of determining how to measure and reimburse for value and outcomes-based care. 

Read the entire article here.