5 Strategies for Offering Value-Based Healthcare

Offering value-based healthcare to your pharmacy’s patients begins with examining what value means. In healthcare, we define value as measured improvement in an individual’s health outcomes viewed against the cost of achieving that improvement. 

Although this approach to healthcare is sometimes viewed through the lens of additional considerations — quality of improvement, patient satisfaction, cost reduction — these factors should not be conflated with value. Ultimately, value focuses on improving patient health outcomes. 

Valued-based healthcare is best implemented at a facility using a strategic framework. Here’s what you need to know about the steps in this framework and how you can improve the care at your pharmacy or clinic.

The Value-Based Healthcare Framework

Enhancing value in healthcare isn’t a pie-in-the-sky concept. You’ll find organizations worldwide that deliver better patient outcomes at lower overall costs. And this, despite varied regulatory structures and payment settings. The vast differences in these operations aside, they all follow a similar strategic pattern:

1. Understanding patients’ needs
   
2. Designing solutions for optimal health outcomes
   
3. Integrating a facility’s team
   
4. Measuring health costs and outcomes
   
5. Expanding partnerships
   

By bearing this strategic framework in mind, you can help your organization construct a value-based care system that’s more effective and profitable.

Understanding Patients’ Needs

Healthcare in its most traditional form comes with inherent failings. These failings have led consumers to look elsewhere for medical assistance. Why? Because provider-centric services lack structure when it comes to patients’ needs. They also lack integrated services and convenience. 

For example, individuals with diabetes need coordinated and integrated healthcare options that are convenient. But these patients (and their caregivers) are met with the weighty task of structuring their care, which can prove intimidating, time-consuming, and inconvenient. Because of a lack of structure around planning for what’s standard and routine, patients and caregivers must improvise to solve common and foreseeable issues. As a result, Americans have reported dissatisfaction with the US Healthcare System in recent years.

Sadly, many individuals fall through the cracks. What’s more, the lack of structure results in expensive healthcare that doesn’t deliver optimal results. Instead, care should be structured around individuals with similar conditions and medical needs. This allows clinicians to anticipate and provide services more effectively and efficiently.

Designing Solutions for Optimal Health Outcomes

Once you clearly understand your patients’ needs, you can group them into segments. This enables your team to deliver care in a comprehensive and solution-based way. Returning to the example of the diabetic patient, they have routine healthcare needs that your team can anticipate and address. In addition, you can ensure access to essential care that a primary physician might overlook. 

For example, most diabetic patients will deal with peripheral neuropathy at some point. This debilitating and painful condition impacts the ability to live independently while increasing caregivers’ burdens. It leads to balance issues, loss of sensation, and even amputation. Patients with neuropathic pain walk into your pharmacy or clinic daily. These individuals may have been discouraged about the treatment for neuropathy in legs and feet in the past, and they may not know what to ask for when it comes to neuropathy treatment. 

Fortunately, you are perfectly positioned to provide them with value-based healthcare solutions. By identifying and addressing gaps in patient care, including diabetic neuropathy, you can broaden and integrate the services offered at your facility.

Integrating a Facility’s Team

To provide superior service to your patients, you need a team capable of implementing multifaceted solutions. The ultimate goal of your facility’s team should be the integration of care, reducing or eliminating the necessity for a coordinator. 

​Team members should partake in frequent and informal communication — assisted by co-locating them — to enhance the organization of efficient and effective care. After all, healthcare is improved and personalized through critical thinking, cooperation, and experience.

Measuring Health Costs and Outcomes

In a value-based healthcare system, you must evaluate health benefits to patients in terms of their costs. Without the ability to measure and analyze these factors, your organization will have trouble aligning its services and strategies effectively. 

Measuring outcomes shows your team where they’ve been successful while providing invaluable information for needed improvements. Moreover, these metrics allow for payment models associated with condition-based bundles. But what if your facility doesn’t know where to start when it comes to collecting this data? Focus on the outcomes that are most important to your patients within the context of service costs.

Expanding Partnerships

As your pharmacy or clinic works towards better addressing patient needs, it creates new areas for partnership. Potential partnerships stem naturally from shared goals such as creating high value, aligning stakeholder interests, and achieving better outcomes. 

Throughout the care cycle, your team will gain the expertise and ability to effect positive outcomes, and opportunities for partnering will expand. This interdisciplinary approach will also help your facility hone its ability to track results contributing to better overall care. 

​Moving towards a value-based healthcare model requires thinking differently about your organization’s role. It also means re-evaluating effective care solutions and measuring outcomes to glean valuable insights about what works and what needs improvement. In recent years, many pharmacies and retailers have made significant strides in redefining healthcare in the United States. Partnerships like those between UnitedHealth Group and Walmart represent a clear shift toward value-based care.

Offering Value-Based Healthcare

Consumers want convenience, affordability, and measurable value. A shift to a value-based healthcare model means your facility can meet these patient and caregiver expectations. 

This proves especially true for the segment of the American population suffering from diabetes. Your pharmacy or clinic is likely already addressing some of their routine (and daily) needs. But have they fallen through the cracks when it comes to peripheral neuropathy? A condition impacting between 25 and 30 million people annually? In most cases, the answer is yes. 

​We want to partner with your organization to offer the most effective value-based peripheral neuropathy care program on the market today. The NeuropaCalm Care Program is a fully integrated system designed with everything your patients need to address the symptoms of peripheral neuropathy at home. It’s convenient, affordable, and highly effective. Schedule a call to find out more about delivering value-based care to your diabetic neuropathy patients.