Making Value the Overarching Goal

There is a great article in the current issue of Harvard Business Review on a strategy to fix health care.  According to the article, so much has been done over the years by so many well-intentioned people to bring improvement to health care.  There are many incremental fixes that have been attempted such as attacking fraud, reducing errors, enforcing practice guidelines, making patients better consumers and implementing electronic medical records.  Few have had much impact.  At least, until now.  

What's the new strategy that will fix health care according to HBR:  maximizing value for the patient.  It's the triple aim of health care reform.  Better care at the lowest cost and providing the most appropriate care in the most appropriate setting.  It is what WMHS has been doing for the last 3+ years.  We have lived the value transformation and now have come to embrace it.  

Please don't mistake this transformation for perfection, as can be the case from time to time.  I will frequently blog about what we are doing at WMHS to change the care delivery model and to ensure a future for this organization.  Then, there is someone who doesn't receive our best care as a patient and the individual wants to tear down what we have created.  It's apples and oranges.  If you have a less than satisfactory experience, I want to know about it.  Give me or someone else in the organization the specifics so we can bring improvement to the work that we are doing.  We learn through our mistakes and where necessary will do our best at service recovery.  But, we have to continually focus on the dramatic change that is required in order to stay ahead of a rapidly changing health care market.  So far, we are doing a great job at changing the care delivery model.

I thoroughly enjoy reading such articles as it is validation of all that we are doing at WMHS to successfully achieve the triple aim of health care reform.