Value Management Methodologies implemented in USA

Value Management in Healthcare: Improving Health Outcomes

Success Case of the Implementation of Value Management Methodologies in the Department of Veterans Affairs

Industry Assessment: Rising Demand for Health Care

The healthcare delivery landscape is changing at a rapid pace globally. Stakeholder expectations, changing reimbursement models, technology advancements, and clinical best practices are all evolving as a result of a confluence of health drivers. These changes are leading to increased demand for health care services.

In response to these changes, leading healthcare delivery organizations (HDOs) are transforming operations to emphasize value-based outcomes through the entire healthcare delivery process and for all stakeholders.

A few HDOs on the forefront have already created Value Management Offices (VMOs) to spearhead efforts on delivering value-based outcomes, while others on the lagging end are just beginning discussions on delivering value–based outcomes.

Improve Value Veterans Receive from VA Healthcare Services

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is charged with supporting Veterans in their time after service by providing benefits and support. VA delivers high-quality healthcare, rehabilitation, insurance, education etc. while carefully utilizing the resources of the American taxpayers. In a constantly changing healthcare landscape, dramatically increasing veterans’ homelessness, complexity of providing security, VA must continually streamline and optimize their operations. In order to achieve this, the VA needs to measure effectiveness and efficiency, analyze ways to improve, make appropriately aligned high-value investments, and assess the improvements achieved.

In 2013, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and VA’s Office of Information & Technology (OI&T) launched the VistA Evolution Program (VE).

The program was created to “modernize” VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems & Technology Architecture) along with “allowing VA to transform delivery of health care to be patient centric, team based, and quality driven”, explains Nathan W. Tierney, director of VE Value Management.

Capital expenditures exceeding $1.1 billion in FY14 and FY15 for enhancements to existing VE systems and new system rollouts led Congress to pressure VE Program leaders to demonstrate what value those investments had on critical Veteran issues like expeditious access to care and comprehensive suicide prevention resources.

Facing the risk of Congress freezing program funds and a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on measuring and reporting value, VE program leaders set out to improve their approach for assessing current and future VE program expenditures so that those funds delivered the maximum value to Veterans.

Introduce a Value Management Approach for VA Healthcare Services

VE Program leadership from OI&T and VHA engaged NTTDATA USA and its Value Management team to introduce a value-based approach to assessing VE projects.

Value Management is the discipline of continuously measuring and analyzing the value delivered by an organization in all its different perspectives (clinical, customer satisfaction, process improvement, etc.), and then adapting activities to maintain and increase that value. In the context of healthcare, value is measured by the health
outcomes such as overall survival, recovery or sustainment of health achieved at a given cost, where “cost” is measured in many dimensions and not just financial terms.

To introduce a Value Management approach for VE, NTTDATA USA coordinated with program stakeholders and healthcare subject matter experts to establish a Value Realization Framework (VRF), which aligns organizational strategies with meaningful and actionable key performance indicators designed to yield sought results, and stand up a Value Management Office (VMO) that centralizes the expertise and authority needed to increase value.

Results