What Healthcare Value Is All About

By Maryellen Lamb


Healthcare value for patients is measured in terms of the patient outcomes attained per dollar spent.It is the return for each dollar spent. The measurement of this return is key to ensuring the delivery of better health care services. It also facilitates process improvement, care reorganization, effective cost reduction techniques that does not undermine new approaches to reimbursement and outcomes. This program has brought together senior financial and clinical leaders from numerous health care organizations with the common goal of establishing new methodologies to outcomes and cost measurement.

The healthcare system aims at improving the value for patients. To improve the services offered in the care system the providers have to focus on three key factors. The delivery of care needs to be centered on the patient, payments for these services should be made with respect to the outcomes and transparency in treatment cost and quality should be emphasized. The consumers should be provided with adequate information on the cost and nature of the services available.

The care system has taken the initiative to embrace transparency. This has given consumers a wide range of information based on which they make comparisons of the price and quality of the many stakeholders. The consumers are now able to make the right choices. This reliable information empowers the choice of consumers and motivates the whole system to offer affordable services.

Consumers have devised new strategies to counter the growing costs and ensure they benefit from their healthcare investment. These strategies include the development of a culture of health in which employees actively participate in the system. The realignment of incentives to ensure improved health behaviors and controlled healthcare consumption. Ensuring a return based delivery of services and collaborating with the providers to achieve better outcomes and reduce the costs.

The idea of quality has generated a lot of confusion. In practice, quality is defined as the adherence to specified rules and regulations and the measurement is based on care process. Process measures are not effective in showing true outcomes thus providers do not get the information necessary for innovation.

The failure to give priority to the improvement of this factor in the manner in which services are offered and the failure to determine this return has prevented innovation. The management policies being used in some firms have increased the overhead costs. The knowledge of this factor is essential to reforming the reimbursement system to allow for integrated payments covering several years, terminal conditions and all the treatment process. Reimbursement should be aligned with this factor to improve outcomes and to provide a basis for accounting for substandard care.

The delivery of medical care services involves a large number of organizational units. However, none of them reflects the boundaries within which true value is created. The proper unit for determining it should consider all services or activities that determine the success in satisfying the needs of a patient. These needs are defined by the medical condition of the patient.

There are numerous ways of measuring healthcare value. These methods depend on the nature of medical care involved. To determine the value for preventive and primary care a group of patients with similar needs is studied. For medical conditions involving many providers the value is shared among them.




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