Perhaps the hottest buzz words in the managed care industry are "value-based care." In some ways lead by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Studies (CMS), the industrywide push toward value-based care (VBC) refers to a range of efforts to align the financial incentives of health care providers (including hospitals, physician groups and ancillary service providers) and payors (including commercial insurers, self-funded employer benefit plans, managed Medicaid and Medicare Advantage plans). The core concept of VBC is to have health care payors pay providers more for successful (and hence ultimately less costly) patient outcomes, and less for unsuccessful outcomes. The goal of most VBC arrangements is to transfer some financial risk for the cost of health care from the plan sponsor to the health care provider.