Health Care Providers Need a Value Management Office

Robert S. Kaplan; Catherine H. MacLean; Alexander  Dresner; Derek A. Haas; Thomas W. Feeley

Article | Harvard Business Review (website)

Health Care Providers Need a Value Management Office

by Robert S. Kaplan, Catherine H. MacLean, Alexander Dresner, Derek A. Haas and Thomas W. Feeley

Abstract

Many health care organizations are striving to implement a value agenda that delivers better patient outcomes at lower cost, medical condition by medical condition. To accelerate the dissemination and adoption of the value agenda, across many more medical conditions, leading institutions, such as MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Hospital for Special Surgery, have established a new central office to oversee the creation of all the capabilities and information for measuring and improving outcomes and cost, setting priorities for continuous improvement projects, facilitating the creation of value-based payment models with insurers and employers, and ensuring that new information technology platforms are aligned with the value agenda.

Keywords: Service Delivery; Value; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry;

Format: Electronic

Citation:

Kaplan, Robert S., Catherine H. MacLean, Alexander Dresner, Derek A. Haas, and Thomas W. Feeley. "Health Care Providers Need a Value Management Office." Harvard Business Review (website) (December 2, 2015). (Part of the “Leading Change in Health Care” series, a collaboration of the editors of Harvard Business Review and NEJM Group.)

Article | Health Affairs

Navy Medicine Introduces Value-Based Health Care

Alee Hernandez, Robert S. Kaplan, Mary L. Witkowski, C. Forrest Faison III and Michael E. Porter

In 2016 the newly appointed surgeon general of the Navy launched a value-based health care pilot project at Naval Hospital Jacksonville to explore whether multidisciplinary care teams (known as integrated practice units, or IPUs) and measurement of outcomes could improve the readiness of active duty personnel and lower the cost of delivering care to them, their dependents, and local retirees. This article describes the formation of the project’s leadership structure; the selection of four conditions to be treated (low back pain, osteoarthritis, diabetes, and high-risk pregnancy); the creation of the care team for each condition; outcomes and costs measured; and the near-term changes in outcomes during the twelve-month pilot period. Patient outcomes improved for three of the four conditions. We describe factors that contributed to the project’s success. After the pilot concluded, the Navy combined the back pain and osteoarthritis IPUs into a single musculoskeletal clinical unit and established a similar IPU at another naval hospital and its clinics. The diabetes IPU was continued, but the high-risk pregnancy IPU was not. We offer several observations on the elements that were key to the success of the project, explore challenges and opportunities, and suggest that the pilot described here could be taken to greater scale in the Military Health System and elsewhere.

Keywords: military health system; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Projects;

Citation:

Hernandez, Alee, Robert S. Kaplan, Mary L. Witkowski, C. Forrest Faison III, and Michael E. Porter. "Navy Medicine Introduces Value-Based Health Care." Health Affairs 38, no. 8 (August 2019): 1393–1400. View Details

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In 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched its first mandatory bundled payment program, the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) model, by randomizing metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) into the payment model. The paper analyzed Medicare costs for beneficiaries undergoing lower extremity joint replacement between April 1, 2016, through December 31, 2017. The introduction of the CJR was associated with reduced Medicare Part A spending ($582 per episode, a 2.5% savings) largely through lower post-acute spending in skilled nursing facilities. The CJR hospitals had no significant differences in hospital length of stay, readmissions, complications, 30- or 90-day mortality, volume of episodes, or patient characteristics relative to the non-CJR hospitals. We conclude that mandatory bundled payments may help to change clinicians’ and facilities’ behavior without harming quality.

Since its establishment in 2005, Hamburg’s Martini Klinik had single-mindedly focused on prostate cancer care with a commitment to measure long term health outcomes for every patient. A wholly owned subsidiary of the University Hospital Hamburg, Martini Klinik was a “hospital in a hospital” in close proximity to other medical departments and services. By 2019, Martini Klinik had become the largest prostate cancer treatment program in the world with 8,000 outpatient cases and more than 2,500 surgical cases annually. Patients came from all over Germany and from around the world. A new and expanded facility was under construction to have the capacity to manage more patients with prostate cancer.

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Health Care Providers Need a Value Management Office

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