The RAND Corporation's COMPARE Initiative provides information and tools to help policymakers, the media, and other interested parties understand, design, and evaluate health policies. The COMPARE website presents a range of policy options that allows the user to explore the effects of commonly proposed health care reforms.

This document explores how increased use of bundled payment approaches would affect health system performance along nine dimensions. Bundled payment approaches have the potential to reduce spending, consumer financial risk, and waste. Evidence is mixed regarding how these approaches would affect health. There is no good evidence about the effects of bundled payments on reliability of care or patient experience. Bundled payment approaches are not applicable to coverage or health system capacity. Implementing bundled payment approaches would require fundamental changes in the way that health care providers bill and are paid for services.

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