Focusing on Better Health Care Value

Traditional approaches to reducing health care spending often involve eroding coverage for care indiscriminately and fail to take a holistic perspective on all sources of costs and value. We believe that affordability in health care delivery is best achieved by efficiently allocating costs across the entire budget and spectrum of care.

The proper framework is to move from how much we spend to how well it is spent. Inefficient spending not only drives up costs, but can negatively impact patient outcomes and consumes resources that could be redirected towards both underutilized routine care (e.g., colonoscopies, lifestyle counseling by primary care providers, and vaccinations), and underutilized innovative care that offers higher value (e.g., Hepatitis C drugs). A more efficient allocation creates the “headroom” for additional spending on high-value services.

The Value Assessment Initiative from the PhRMA Foundation provides the opportunity to move in this direction.