Value-based model could improve hospital performance 30%

A value-based approach to hospital operations could improve performance by up to 30 percent, leading major providers like the Cleveland Clinic and Kaiser Permanente to embrace it, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

The value-based hospital model, which Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove has said will "change the face of medicine," has several operational advantages over the traditional model, according to BCG. For example, it involves systematically tracking outcomes, which is vital to helping the organization "understand its true performance and what kind of value it is providing--that is, the level of outcomes delivered for a given cost," the authors state. "In our client work, we have seen organizations achieve productivity and other improvements of approximately 30 percent in just three months."

Kaiser Permanente also pursues the value-based model, with Permanente Federation Executive Director Jack Cochran saying the model helped create "a culture that embraces data, acknowledgement, learning and improvement." Nor is it limited to the United States; Germany's Martini-Klinik and Schön Klinik, along with Terveystalo, the largest private healthcare provider in Finland, are also on board with the value-based model, according to the article.

Increased focus on outcomes also helps to bridge the gap between research and healthcare delivery, according to a second BCG piece. Current medical research primarily focuses on disease, patient groups, strict data analysis and management, they write. Collecting data independent of everyday care delivery is both more expensive and responsible for "a cultural barrier in which research is often considered a special interest with a limited direct linkage to the improvement of clinical practice and, ultimately, health outcomes."

Integrating outcome measurement into the delivery process, the authors write, improves alignment, such as the use of large, inexpensive, registry-based clinical trials that use disease-specific outcomes data to determine the effectiveness of current clinical practices.

 To learn more:
- read the first BCG piece
- here's the second