Continuing our series of posts on health outcome models and value in measuring healthcare we explore the work led by the International Consortium on Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM).
“The best way to avoid health care cost is not to do stuff that doesn’t work”, says Caleb Stowell, ICHOM
The U.S. Department for Health & Human Services (HHS) announced last year that 85% of all traditional Medicare payments would be tied to quality or value by 2016 and 90% by 2018.
What Matters Most
The International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM) published a downloadable book What Matters Most – Patient Outcomes and the Transformation of Health Care. It presents the why, how and what of building transformation in value-based health care through outcome measurement.
ICHOM was founded in 2012 by Professor Michael Porter, Stefan Larsson and Martin Ingvar from Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet.
The Medtronic series in partnership with Harvard Business Review is excellent. The Measuring Outcomes: The Key to Value-Based Health Care webinar and Key Learning Summary is highly recommended and worth taking a couple of hours to absorb. It is authored and presented by Christina Akerman, MD, PHD who is President of ICHOM and Caleb Stowell, MD who is VP of Standardization and Business Development at ICHOM.
ICHOM – 5 reasons why outcomes measurement is essential
- Outcomes define the goal of the organization and set direction for its differentiation
- Outcomes inform the composition of integrated care teams
- Outcomes motivate clinicians to compare their performance and learn from each other
- Outcomes highlight value-enhancing cost reduction
- Outcomes enable payment to shift from volume to results
The topic of patient centred care is not new and again I refer to Dr Terrence Montague’s insightful book Patients First: Closing the Health Care Gap in Canada. It is good to see his subsequent paper on how things changed in the ten years after the publication of Patients First; Improving Patient Care: Can We Predict, and Influence, the Future?
Our own work has focussed on how Med Tech companies can seek to gain deeper, broader relationships with executive healthcare decision makers through outcome partnership programs through reduction in preventable healthcare acquired conditions. As the 2015 McKinsey&Company post emphasized there is great value that these beyond-the-product solutions can bring to Med Tech companies, the healthcare system providers and patients.
DOWNLOAD OUR FREE HEALTH OUTCOME MODELS WHITE PAPER
ICHOM – 4-step Implementation Journey
The 4-step Implementation Journey described in the how of ICHOM’s What Matters Most really resonated and aligns with our own thinking around culture change on reducing preventable healthcare acquired conditions.
- Engage the organization
- Set up data collection
- Measure & analyse
- Drive change
There are dramatic illustrations cited in the Measuring Outcomes webinar, key learning summary and in What Matters Most from centres delivering excellence in outcomes in specific therapy areas.
We continue to keenly explore the approaches taken by the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, NHS Safety Thermometer and others to really understand in what they are achieving real improved healthcare outcomes.
I will be presenting core messages from the Health Outcome Models white paper at the Hacking Health Waterloo café in March.
