Are we on a real path to reducing health care costs and improving our citizens’ health?
Those were stated goals in the early 2000s that developed into what is now called Value-Based Health Care (VBHC). VBHC has come to mean a major reform effort to slow the pace of cost increases through changes in incentives for both providers and health care consumers. So far, however, the gains have fallen short of expectations.
VBHC reforms require significant changes in the role of providers and consumers in order to succeed. These role changes are evolving too slowly. Health care costs continue to escalate beyond the government’s and employers’ willingness to pay, and beyond consumers’ ability to pick up their share of the costs. Cost transparency is being challenged by providers. Hospitals are suing patients for lack of payment. Quality measurement is rolling back. Consumers’ fight for health care affordability, health care equity, and fair coverage is now a major political battle. Across many measures, health care outcomes are worsening compared to other developed countries.
In our latest Roji Health Intelligence eBook, we examine how to redraw the path for VBHC toward success, with both providers and consumers engaged in creating an accountable and affordable system. Providers will need to be stewards of the system if they hope to retain a leadership role in health care, and help patients achieve cost and medical literacy so that they can make good decisions.
In turn, health care consumers will need to learn how to take an active role in their health care and treatment—what questions to ask, what evidence to demand, and how to form a true shared decision-making partnership with their clinicians.
Only then will we all achieve what health care needs to deliver: quality care that is affordable and accessible, with dependable, best-possible outcomes.
Get your free copy of Turn Health Care Chaos into Value: Give Voice to Providers and Consumers.
Founded in 2002, Roji Health Intelligence guides health care systems, providers and patients on the path to better health through Solutions that help providers improve their value and succeed in Risk.
