What is Value-Based Care?
Value-based care is an innovative approach to care-deliver systems that serves as an alternative to the transactional fee-for-service care models that dominate many healthcare systems globally. In markets like the United States of America, value-based arrangements tie payment amounts to the results that are delivered – such as quality, equity, cost of care, and patient outcomes.
Better patient outcomes are a shared goal at all levels of the health system. Value-based care is designed to empower healthcare systems to deliver high-value care. It does this by aligning incentives and payments and is proposed to result in more evidence-based, preventative, and equitable holistic care. The delivery of this high-value care is also a driver of clinician satisfaction and a contributor to well-being.
Defining high-value care
High-value or high-quality care can be defined using the STEEEP model. The STEEEP model is the six health system goals of the National Academy of Medicine, and is widely accepted in this application.
STEEEP
S: safe
T: timely
E: effective
E: efficient
E: equitable
P: patient-centred
How is value-based
care achieved?
Internationally stakeholders use the quadruple aim model as a guide for actions and strategies to provide high-value care that reaches the STEEEP standard. Under the quadruple aim model, value-based care delivery systems are designed to improve patient care, lower costs, and produce better outcomes.
McKinsey & Co. estimates that 90 million lives will be in value-based care (VBC) models by 2027, up 109% from 2022. This is indicative of the growing trend in adopting VBC as an alternative. Experts acknowledge that VBC provides more continuous care, better population health – healthcare providers are rewarded for patients who live longer, healthier lives.
Fee-for-service models which reward for volume are being shown to not only not produce the desired result, but also to be unsustainable financially for healthcare providers. Value-based care programs are being shown to change this, allowing healthcare providers to deliver high quality care, delivering better health outcomes, while also keeping costs down.
Studies of value-based care programs have so far shown that they can reduce costs and improve quality of care.
What do experts say about value-based care?
We found that there is a strong alignment between the new value-based model and our own approach to transforming how community pharmacies in New Zealand deliver care. At the core of our business philosophy is this transformative approach to care delivery.
At Zoom Health our mission is to enhance the positive impact medication can have on a person’s quality of life. We’ve spent the last 7 years developing transformative software solutions. Our software enables community pharmacies to deliver high-quality patient-centric care sustainably within the challenging realities of the New Zealand healthcare sector.
We’ve designed our SaaS solutions to empower pharmacies and revolutionise patient care. To do this we have adapted the quadruple aim for the New Zealand community pharmacy context. Our software solutions embody these principles:
Adapting value-based care for pharmacies New Zealand
Enhance Patient Care
Our software solutions place patients at the centre of care and ensuring they receive care that is not only clinically effective, but also convenient, affordable, proactive, and responsive to their needs.
Better Outcomes
We focus on achieving this through making it easy for pharmacists to provide high value care. Empowering pharmacists to shift from dispensers to trusted clinical care providers improves pharmacist satisfaction and patient health outcomes.
Optimise Efficiencies
Software solutions are a powerful tool to ensure that your pharmacy maximize resource utilization while improving the quality of care delivered. Streamlining and automating appropriate workflows creates the capacity for your team to make timely data driven decisions and enhance clinical care.
Enhance Pharmacist Well-Being
We make it easy for pharmacists to apply the full breadth of their knowledge and expertise. Improve job satisfaction, reduce burnout, and enable pharmacists to provide better care to their patients. Every day becomes fulfilling when it’s easy to provide high-quality clinical care which benefits patients.
Advance Health Equity
We believe that it is critical to reduce health inequities in New Zealand. Improving the quality, accessibility, affordability and outcomes of pharmacy services in your community. Affordable, sustainable, and accessible medicines delivery services are critical for addressing barriers faced by disadvantage populations in New Zealand.
Our principles
Assessment of community pharmacy stakeholders in New Zealand have found that there is the feeling the incentives created by current business and funding models impedes their ability to improve equity of outcomes.
For many community pharmacies across New Zealand, the opportunity that innovative systems like value-based care presents is out of reach. There is the feeling that within the current funding model, pharmacies must prioritise dispensing over clinical services to remain viable.
Therefore, the road to innovative new systems like value-based care, and the opportunity they present can be challenging or inaccessible to many stakeholders. Zoom Health believes that community pharmacies are a critical component of the NZ health system, and they should be able to offer innovative high-quality care that improves outcomes for themselves and their patients.
The transition to value-based care can be simplified with a comprehensive software solution. Software solutions like Zoom’s MedSimply are designed to enhance patient care, optimise efficiencies, and improve outcomes for patients and providers within the current business and funding models.
Advancing the adoption of value-based pharmacy care
The shift from volume-based to value-based healthcare is widely acknowledged as a matter of not if, but when. Although this trend is happening slowly in some countries, there are elements of value-based care gradually being integrated. In the New Zealand Health Workforce Plan December 2024, there is an acknowledgement that we must change how we deliver care. It states the following:
"Change how we deliver care, shifting to new models of care and service deliver approaches, shaped by clinical leaders with patients at the centre. These will make better use of technology and our workforces to modernise care, improve quality and sustainability, and unsure more New Zealanders get care closer to home."
While Health New Zealand acknowledges the need for this change, they have not offered pharmacies any support to achieve it. Therefore, we must look internally for solutions, this is why Zoom Health is proud to now offer MedSimply to community pharmacies across New Zealand – to enable you to provide transformational value-based care within the resource constraints we find ourselves with.
Why pharmacies must take the lead
MedSimply
Take back control, trial MedSimply today and enjoy more time tomorrow. Achieve significant operational efficiencies, take the stress out of your pharmacy, and improve patient outcomes.