What is Value's Edge

Since leaving Advocate several months ago, I have been thinking through how I can continue to impact the value of health care.

The interesting thing about value is it means different things to different stakeholders.  Most of us would agree that value can be defined as high quality, safe care at a reasonable cost – but reasonable people could disagree on how to measure those components, so the model breaks down as you get more granular. 

I believe that the operating model, which produces quality and safety, is independent of the business model of how providers get paid.  A provider can produce high quality and safety but not get paid for it and similarly a provider can produce low quality and be paid handsomely for it.  This independence has led to organizations devising alternative payment models that attempt to build some dependence between outcomes of the operating model and the business model.

For this reason, I have co-founded Value’s Edge LLC for the purpose of creating a definitive place where healthcare stakeholders can learn more about value to give them an edge in the market.  Value’s Edge is two things: 

1)      an intelligence and community platform that brings together information on value from numerous organizations, draws strategic conclusions and encourages a dialog amongst stakeholders in the healthcare value chain.  I anticipate launching the MVP site in early February

2)      an organization that provides strategic advising and consulting to providers, health systems, hospitals, physicians, payors, life science companies and investment firms

Looking at value from an strateic lens, most of us learned about the concept of the value chain, i.e. an end-to-end set of activities/processes that business(es) performs to create value for customers and in theory each step of the process creates value. 

As we work on the Value’s Edge platform, I will be using the value chain framework to share my thoughts on value here on LinkedIn.  I expect not everyone will agree with my thoughts and I encourage other points of view to be voiced in the comments – different thoughts make our thinking better.  I look forward to the opportunity to engage in strategic debate!