The United States Government is a large stakeholder in the medical industry and
uses their position to mandate healthcare delivery and healthcare reform. There
is another stakeholder that we sometimes forget to consider, those who benefit
from the implementation of these reforms, the average American.
It is to my personal benefit that there is enough funding left in the “Medicare
Account” when I become eligible to participate in the program. The Medicaid
Program is also to my benefit. Patients who would otherwise choose to not seek
treatment until there was no other alternative may be able to prevent long-term
illness reducing overall cost of healthcare for everyone. “By improving patients’
health outcomes, value-based health care reduces the compounding complexity
and disease progression that drive the need for more care” (Teisberg et al., 2020).
We learned in the COVID 19 pandemic the cost of high utilization of hospital
resources and the impact it had patients who required those resources for elective
surgery or emergency care not related to the pandemic. a
Value-based care models can benefit both the insurer, the patient, and the
provider. “By organizing teams to care for individuals with similar needs, a
value-based approach enables expertise and efficiency, rather than rationing, to
drive costs down. This puts decisions about how to deliver care in the hands of
the clinical team, rather than those of an insurance administrator, supporting the
professionalism of clinicians and the power of clinician–patient relationships to
deliver effective and appropriate care “(Teisberg et al., 2020).
References
Teisberg, E., Wallace, S., & O’Hara, S. (2020). Defining and implementing
value-based health care. Academic Medicine, 95(5), 682–685.
https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000003122
