Patient Experience Unites Industry around Value-Based Care
Value-based care allows for multiple interpretations of the term “value,” but the patient experience can play a key role in fostering unity across the industry.
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- The meaning of value-based care has not always been cohesive, but the healthcare industry may be moving toward a clearer understanding of what value is and how to develop care coordination across different perspectives.
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In 2019, Humana interviewed experts in the healthcare industry and asked them to define terms such as “value-based care” and “population health.” The disparate answers stirred some surprise and discouragement within the industry.
But according to LeChauncy Woodard, MD, director of Humana Integrated Health System Sciences Institute and professor at the University of Houston, and Tray Cockerell, a strategic relationship executive at Humana, the healthcare industry has moved beyond that initial bewilderment.
“The definition of value depends on what perspective you're looking at value from, whether we're looking from the perspective of the patients, from the perspective of payers, from the perspective of healthcare providers or a broader healthcare system,” Woodard told Healthcare Strategies.
The term remains nuanced, but there are certainly rewards to having a better grasp of value-based care.
“Consistency of definition really allows us to transform more quickly to systems that reward value,” Cockerell explained.
“The consequences of not agreeing on value is, is slowing that transition and really reinforcing the waste. Focusing on the integration of the disparate pieces relative to healthcare drives much greater outcomes: agreeing on what value means, really thinking about value-based care as the center point of that, and bringing care teams together and then moving upstream to help students learn in teams.”
It is also difficult to implement quality measures when the definition of value varies widely, Woodard added. But again, that does not mean that the industry can conform to a one-size-fits-all definition of value.
“When we're thinking about measurement and consistency of definition, we need to make sure that there is flexibility for different patient populations,” Woodard emphasized.
So if having one single definition for value-based care is recognized as impractical in this complex healthcare environment, how should the industry unite around value-based care?
To Cockerell and Woodard, high quality care and lower costs are still consistent factors of value-based care. Also, recognizing the diverse perspectives on “value” across healthcare professionals can force the system to place patients at the center so that patients and their experience of care remain key to high-value care, no matter what “value” may mean.
“The core of it is how we put patients at the center and make everything we do in their care about improving the patient experience and health outcomes. That then has the rising effect of improving the experience for all the providers in the system and being able to operate in a team-based environment,” Cockerell said. “Being able to bring your individual lens to that care is just incredible and it adds tremendous dimension to care delivery overall that we don't see in other kinds of care delivery models.”
