VALUE. I have written quite a bit in this space over the past three-and-a-half years on the role of value in healthcare and how it has been purported to be used as an effective public policy tool. Just type in, “value” on the search box to the right and 10 such posts will appear for your reading pleasure. But I haven’t written about value in the context I am about to now.

Earlier this week Paul H. Keckley, Managing Director of the Navigant Center for Healthcare Research and Policy Analysis, posted The Meaning of “Value” in Healthcare to the Health Care Blog.  In that post he argues rightly that the significant shortcoming of value as a driver of anything in healthcare is that it is not being defined by end users – i.e., patients, or consumers as it were. In stark contrast to what I have advocated in the past I would go beyond that.

Keckly muses of a system where consumer-driven healthcare is manifested in the dissemination of knowledge and information that empowers rational decision-making and the efficient allocation of resources. Where he stopped short – whether by omission or design – was to suggest the best means of achieving that nirvana. I will pick up the ball and take it a little further.

It is not enough to advocate for consumer-driven empowerment as the means of leveraging value in our healthcare system.  We must also recognize the stark reality that current healthcare policy – and in particular, the Affordable Care Act – is a tremendously effective impediment to achieving that empowerment.

I remain as convinced as ever that value – Porter’s axiomatic assertion that outcomes over cost will drive achievement of the IHI’s Triple Aim – is key to delivery system improvement. But I am terribly disillusioned that value can be effective in a system that is controlled in such a manner that it is determined artificially and arbitrarily by the likes of academics, bureaucrats, administrators and consultants.

Alternative payment models – and the care delivery models that are being developed in response to the artificial financial incentives they are offering – are doomed to ultimately fail because they lack the inert ability to leverage value as it is perceived by the individual consumer, one person at a time. By failure I do not mean they will be soon to go away – but they will not achieve the shared goals referenced above. Disagree?

Cheers,
  ~ Sparky