Insight-driven care leads to better value — and when patients thrive, so do global health systems.
Global healthcare costs are skyrocketing. Fragmented health systems focused on volume are buckling under the financial pressure of treating widespread chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancer. Patients don’t always receive the care they need when they need it. And these issues have only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on people, health systems, and communities around the globe.
It’s time for a new model of healthcare, one that uses the power of technology and data insights to deliver better outcomes.
It’s time for value-based healthcare.
At its core, value-based healthcare is about accountability. It's a transformative shift away from fee-for-services to fee-for-value. And how do we define value? It’s simple: Better patient outcomes result in better economic value.
Advances in technology can deliver profound benefits for global health systems. We see firsthand how medical technology is helping patients live healthier lives, creating value across the entire healthcare continuum. And when patients who have chronic, costly conditions like diabetes or hypertension successfully manage their illness, it can help reduce hospital stays and readmissions, allowing health systems to operate more efficiently. Medical devices with the power to analyze continuous streams of healthcare data — such as insulin pumps and certain cardiac devices — can help clinicians devise better treatment plans while helping patients live a healthier life.
Launched in April 2021, our collaboration with Spectrum Health seeks to improve patient outcomes while reducing costs across the health system. The first program initiated in the value-based affiliation is focused on patients who receive a Medtronic cardiac resynchronization therapy device with the AdaptivCRT™ algorithm. The algorithm adjusts the device’s therapy according to minute-by-minute evaluations of a patient’s heart rhythms and has been shown to reduce the likelihood of 30-day heart failure hospital readmissions,1 reduce the risk of atrial fibrillation,2 and improve patient survival.3 Under a financial accountability program, Spectrum Health and Medtronic will work to automate the identification of readmission events in patients who receive the technology.
The transition to value-based healthcare isn’t just wishful thinking; we’re making it a reality. The World Economic Forum named our Diabeter center in the Netherlands a 2021 Global Innovation Hub, holding it up as a model of how to implement value-driven healthcare initiatives. The center — which provides individualized care for adults and children with type 1 diabetes — uses data, research, and the latest in diabetes-management technology to help patients and their care providers reduce complications at a lower cost.
Our technology plays a unique role in the move toward value-based care — and its power is amplified when we work with others. We have partnerships with several large U.S. health systems that focus on improving patient care while driving down costs. Our work with Lehigh Valley Health Network is reducing the number of adverse events related to respiratory compromise among patients receiving opioids for pain management during their hospital stay. We have a similar program to identify at-risk patients at the Medical University of South Carolina and another in progress at Christiana Care. At the Medical University of South Carolina, we’re helping improve the identification of patients at risk for vascular disease and have launched a new in-patient heart failure pathway and dashboard intended to support quality improvement efforts and lower readmissions.
We know the move to a value-based model of healthcare isn’t easy. But through technology and innovation, we can address outcomes, costs, and access. There is no better time than now.
