From Volume to Value: How Health Execs See the Future of Health Care

Health leaders concur that regardless of the politics of the Affordable Care Act and its prospects for whole or partial survival beyond November 2012, market pressures in the health sector are driving health providers and suppliers to an environment of lower costs and higher quality. The current system as fragmented and volume-driven in unsustainable given the growing ranks of un- and under-insured, and growing role of government as insurer. The macro payment model for a health system that’s “built to last” is based on fixed payment or bundling, delivering higher quality at lower reimbursement rates.

Under that scenario, population health management is required. “We’re good at getting sick people better,” said David Feinberg of the UCLA Health System. “We fix people after they get hit by trucks. We don’t try to get the trucks to go more slowly.”

Care outside of the hospital setting is Job 1, then, where, as Surgeon General Regina Benjamin says, is where people, “live, work, play and pray.” This will also require thinking about “service lines from the perspective of the patients’ experience, not our experience,” noted Kate Walsh, President and CEO of Boston Medical Center, another attendee at the Forum...