HEALTHCARE QUALITY PAGE

Value-based care refers to health outcomes that matter to patients divided by the cost of delivering those outcomes. It has been a challenging concept for healthcare organizations to implement, and a quality improvement approach can help. Traditionally, healthcare organizations are not organized by patient condition with all healthcare professionals who are involved in helping patients with a condition achieve desired outcomes working in the same team or even service. Budgets in healthcare organizations traditionally are allocated to individual healthcare professions, for example, nursing, physiotherapy, or pharmacy.

 

A quality improvement project (QIP) is a practical way to implement value-base care. A QIP can focus on improving outcomes for a defined group of patients through systematic analysis and changes in care processes and team working. Most healthcare organizations are not yet structured around patient conditions. However, a QI approach can still bring together the different professions and services involved in a patient pathway to share an aim to improve the effectiveness of care for a group of patients, measure outcomes that matter to patients, and reduce delays and unnecessary variation. QI can help healthcare organizations transition to value-based care by building collaboration and teamwork among professional groups dedicated to providing the best possible quality of patient care.