Practices that served more socially high-risk patients had lower quality and lower costs, and practices that served more medically high-risk patients had lower quality and higher costs. These patterns were associated with fewer bonuses and more penalties for high-risk practices.

So concludes a new study that looked at the results of the first year of the Medicare Physician Value-Based Payment Modifier Program.

The study looked at 899 physician practices serving more than five million Medicare beneficiaries, and it points to the continuing challenge of how best to serve patients who pose greater socio-economic risks than the average patient.

Private safety-net hospitals serve far more high-risk patients than the typical American hospital.

Learn more these findings and how they were reached in the study “Association of Practice-Level Social and Medical Risk With Performance in the Medicare Physician Value-Based Payment Modifier Program,” which can be found here, on the web site of the Journal of the American Medical Association.