Value Based Health Care (VBHC) is a way of organising health care to maximise the outcomes that matter to patients, relative to the end-to-end costs of their care.
The focus should be on value for the patients, not just lowering costs.
It does this by taking a long view – considering value not based on a single healthcare encounter, but in terms of the outcomes of a full pathway of care and the resources involved along the way. VBHC also takes a system view: instead of asking an individual clinician to work harder or do better to improve care, it looks at how all aspects of a health system can enable better value in care delivery.
The health outcomes that matter to patients are multidimensional, including factors much broader than traditional clinical indicators. The resources or costs must reflect the actual costs of the care delivered to a patient over a full cycle of care.
The routine collection, sharing and analysis of outcomes and cost data and other relevant information will be enabled by an integrated health information infrastructure, enabling both patient and population-level health information. This data is internationally and clinically recognised as Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) in the form of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) and Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs).
As with any information system, using PROMs/PREMs includes not only the hardware and software of health informatics systems, but also the standards governing such systems and organisational capabilities to use them effectively.
The eHealthier platform and the services offered by the eHealthier team are part of the solution allowing health practitioners to quickly, and easily, implement VBHC to improve health care.