Reality and Health Value

It’s time to have some real dialogue around the issue of health care value in this country. New information from the Spectrum Health Value Study™ provides a mirror of what the America people value when they are spending their own health care dollars on health care for themselves and their families.

Perhaps this information will help steady the wobbly stool of health care. Although there is plenty of discussion about health care access and quality, the fact is health care is a three-legged, not a two legged, stool. Access and quality must be steadied by value in health care.

Without value, people don’t know what they are buying and/or they fail to understand the relative value of health care services like immunizations, a visit to the doctor or a trip to the emergency room. Today we released the results of a new study on how Americans value health care. The study reports and additional information can be found at our website www.healthvaluestudy.com.

We did this study because we were curious about how Americans value health care services. Our findings include some surprises in areas including – mental health value – preventive health services – nutrition and – access Last week, GE announced a six billion (yes, with a “B”) dollar program to improve health care. GE chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt was quoted as saying, “Health care is an important industry that is challenged by rising costs, inequality of access and persistent quality issues.”

Again, the discussion is around access and quality with no mention of value. When you are preparing to spend six billion dollars, one would think you would be somewhat concerned about value! We want to be that ‘someone’ talking about value. We hope you will join the dialogue.

An X-Prize for Health Value?

 

 

On April 13^th, the X Prize Foundation, famous for encouraging serious tinkering around things like robots that go to the moon and cars that get 100 MPG, announced a $10 million prize for developing a plan for a community that “dramatically improves health value.”

 

But how do we, or the judges of the X Prize, judge health value? How do we measure the current state of health value in a community—or a country—and how do me measure whether or not changes move the needle toward greater health value?

 

This is a question of great interest to me and to Spectrum. We decided over five months ago to begin to address this question. Yesterday we announced the methodology for our  Spectrum of Health Value Study™. Our study will directly ask Americans how they value various health products and services when spending their health care dollars. While the first data release is scheduled for mid-May, the preliminary results are very interesting.

 

The fact is health care is a three-legged stool (although this may imply more stability in the system than actually exists!) One leg is quality of health care. The big debate around quality is the fact that we pay for much more quality than we receive. Furthermore, quality appears to be something that varies a great deal from place to place, as was outlined in testimony by now OMB Director Peter Orszag when he appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on July 17, 2008.

 

Access—another leg on that stool– is also a much discussed topic, however, when most people discuss access to health care products and services they are really discussing Americans’ insurance coverage, or lack thereof.

 

Only recently have policy wonks been batting around the question of health value. In his testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on September 9, 2008, Peter V. Lee, Executive Director for National Health Policy of the Pacific Business Group on Health testified on “Promoting Quality and Value in Health Reform.” 

 

These three legs, access, quality and value will continue to dominate the discussion around health care for the months to come. We hope you stay tuned for this interesting and important dialogue.