Some health care leaders view with trepidation the new, disruptive health care alliance formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase. But I’m excited because disruption is all about delivering a new level of value for consumers. If this trio can disrupt the United States’ health care system into consistently delivering high-value care, we will all owe them our gratitude.
We Won’t Get Value-Based Health Care Until We Agree on What “Value” Means
Different stakeholders define it differently.
February 27, 2018
HBR STAFF
Summary.
It turns out one reason there’s been such little progress in creating a value-based system is that the stakeholders in the U.S. health care system — patients, providers, hospitals, insurers, employee benefit providers, and policy makers — have no common definition of “value” and don’t agree on the mix of elements composing it (quality? service? cost? outcomes? access?). That’s the big takeaway of University of Utah Health’s The State of Value in U.S. Health Care survey. It asked more than 5,000 patients, more than 600 physicians, and more than 500 employers that provide medical benefits across the nation how they think about the quality, service, and cost of health care. It discovered that there are fundamental differences in how they define value in health care and to whom they assign responsibility for achieving it. Value, it seems, has become a buzzword; its meaning is often unclear and shifting, depending on who’s setting the agenda. As a result, health care stakeholders, who for years thought they were driving toward a shared destination, have actually been part of a fragmented rush toward different points of the compass.