Dr David Blumenthal Discusses the Best Practices for Getting to Value-Based Care

Getting to value in healthcare has proven to be difficult, but succesful programs have certain characteristics, said David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, president of The Commonwealth Fund.

Transcript

As the healthcare industry continues to move toward value-based care, what best practices have come to light?

Getting the value is hard we’ve discovered in a number of best practices. We think that when providers and payers are closely aligned, that there tends to be an environment in which value is easier to achieve. An example of those are Geissinger and Kaiser and Henry Ford. We’ve also found in our work on high-need, high-cost patients that there are certain characteristics of successful programs that manage that very important population that seem to be found in common among successful programs. For example, the use of information technology to inform care, the use of teams, engagement of patients and segmentation of patients to identify those who need different types of care. I think we’re making progress overall, there’s no question that it’s hard work and there’s a lot more work to do.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve seen in the move toward value-based care?

Well one is measurement. It’s hard to measure quality and controversy and burden associated with it and a recognition that sometimes the measures produce selection of patients that’s not good for high-risk patients and low income patients. That’s one important challenge. The other is getting past fee-for-service and getting to a place where accountability for cost and quality are married in the same organizations. And the third is getting those organizations to have the right sills and the right technology so they can effectively manage and be accountable for the candidate provide.