In the four years since that was written, the world has changed dramatically. And not just because of the pandemic. Global healthcare systems are under pressure from rising energy costs and seemingly endemic inflation, as well as shrinking government budgets. Some argue that the real crisis is a shortage of healthcare workers. It’s been called
‘A Ticking Time Bomb’ in the press.
The World Health Organization revealed that across Europe many countries were experiencing a ‘severe shortage of nurses.’ Even places like Finland, often cited as a place where healthcare works highly efficiently, was suffering. Falling numbers of GPs, clinicians in all disciplines, support staff, even cleaners, was described by Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, as “a ticking tomb bomb… likely to lead to poor health outcomes, long waiting times, many preventable deaths and potentially even health system collapse.”
It might seem odd, then, to start introducing concepts like Value-Based Healthcare and talking about the ‘continuum of care’ at a time of crisis. Surely we need to sort out the fundamentals before bandying about buzzwords and phrases in PowerPoint presentations at conferences or sales meetings! Well, I believe that those so-called buzzwords and phrases are a key element in solving the problems we face both in the short- and long-terms.
Why? Because when a system is close to being on its knees (as the global healthcare system is), you either take radical action or you just try and patch things up in the hope that the tide will turn. I don’t believe the tide will turn without a radical re-evaluation of how healthcare works across both the private and public sectors. I’m not pessimistic. I’m optimistic. That’s because the value-based healthcare approach has been growing in importance over the years. It’s not a new concept. In fact, you can go back to the early 2000s and Geisinger’s Model for Care Transformation. That introduced the idea of basing reimbursements in healthcare on patient outcomes. It was a new paradigm which has been growing in popularity ever since.