Defining and Implementing Value-Based Health Care: A Strategic Framework

Value in health care is the measured improvement in a person's health outcomes for the cost of achieving that improvement. While some descriptions conflate value-based health care and cost reduction, quality improvement, or patient satisfaction, those efforts-while important-are not the same as value, which focuses primarily on improving patient health outcomes. A decade of research into organizations that have achieved better outcomes while often lowering costs suggests a strategic framework for value-based health care implementation that starts with identifying and understanding a segment of patients whose health and related circumstances create a consistent set of needs. An interdisciplinary team of…

• DM
  Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin