Value-Based Health Care

One of SLHI’s long-standing goals is to ensure that all Arizonans have access to affordable, integrated, high quality and cost-effective health care.

Value-based health care combines access, quality and cost into an overarching value strategy intended to transcend competing views and interests and invite ways to improve overall outcomes. Time has shown that measuring the discrete quality of a process or method is insufficient, that deepening and broadening the meaning of value is where the action is. The more we link efforts – from community groups, from providers, insurance plans, government stakeholders and advocacy groups – to each other, the greater our odds become of delivering true health improvement.

We have focused on the transformation of the healthcare system in Arizona for over ten years, beginning with the first Arizona Health Futures reports and continuing with milestone publications such as 2004’s Arizona CAN (Coverage and Access Now) and Collaborate to Compete (2007). The analysis continued in FY2011 with the release of two key Arizona Health Futures publications, After the Dust Settles and ImpAct Arizona.

The last year has seen a particular emphasis on making positive forward progress within the context of  (1) the recent federal health reform law, (2) a highly-challenging state fiscal environment – particularly for the state’s most vulnerable residents – and (3) a fractious social and political climate.

Throughout FY2011 we continued to invest in educating citizens about the impact of healthcare reform, work with other leadership organizations and civic groups to develop a vision and plan for improving health in Arizona, and support learning networks like the Arizona Bioethics Network and DesertNet (a practice network for primary care providers) that are working toward shared goals of implementing value-based health care.

As we’ve learned over the previous 16 years on access, quality and cost, the work is never done. That simply makes doing the work on improving the value of health care all the more important.