Across the world, despite the hard work of committed, well-intentioned, highly trained clinicians, every care system is struggling with rising costs and uneven quality. Europe has reached a turning point in health:
It is time for a deeply new strategy with the aim of maximizing value for patients at its core: achieving the best outcomes at the lowest cost.
“’Value’ in health care is measured by the outcomes achieved, not the volume of services delivered. Value, for consumers, also increasingly includes the quality of the patient-family experience and interpersonal interactions.” (Michael E. Porter, Ph.D.)
We need to provoke changes in organisational and leadership structures to create system-wide cultural transformation.
With health systems broken and unsustainable, we should – and we must – be part of the solution. Approaching health system design from the perspective of creating high value presents a practical, general solution to providing comprehensive, effective, and affordable health care for nations across Europe.
Variations in health outcomes indicate that medical resources are not being used well. Value-based health care positions multi-stakeholder connections around ecosystems to share best practices and drive sustainable change, disrupting traditional health and social care delivery methods.
For payers, the risk is reduced by spreading it across larger patient populations. A healthier population with fewer claims means less drain on payer premium pools and investments. Value-based payment also allows payers to increase efficiency by bundling payments to cover the patient’s full care cycle.
Health care practitioners are exhausted and demotivated. In a value-based health care system, practitioners improve their daily practice by organizing themselves in multidisciplinary teams, agreeing on which protocols to follow, and accessing relevant information to deliver the best care to their patients. By doing this, they can measure their success and be paid accordingly.
This transformation is essential. Patients will choose the health care providers with the best outcomes.
In a value-based health care system, suppliers innovate and develop medicines and therapies oriented to the outcomes that matter most to patients. They add value and are fairly paid for doing so.
Variation in medical practice, health outcomes, and care costs harms patients. Many unnecessarily remain sick for too long, miss more work than they should, and spend more money than they should. In a value-based health care system, citizens have access to high-value care. This encompasses satisfying all aspects of patients’ care needs, enabling informed choices based on factual data, spending less time in hospitals and clinics, and paying a fair price for medical services.
Join the movement #Together4BetterHealth
Get involved