Hello, I'm Elizabeth Koff. I am the Secretary for NSW Health.
I'm delighted to have the opportunity to have a chat to you today about better value care, because better value care is one of the key strategic priorities for our NSW health system going forward.
Value-based healthcare is a contemporary model of care where health systems put the patient experience at the centre of the care we deliver. Not only is it the patient experience, it's also the measurement of those clinical outcomes that are so critical.
Health systems traditionally measure inputs and outputs and are not so good at measuring outcomes sometimes. Value-based care is about measuring the outcome and the outcome that matters to the patient. In understanding the outcome we achieve, we have to know the expenditure associated with that episode of care and what we then want to do, is explore how do we get the best outcomes for the most efficient and effective price.
Value-based care is not about saving money and that's the furthest thing from our mind. It probably has its genesis in health systems where cost-cutting was being driven. In the UK there's a growing movement behind value-based healthcare, as in many other European communities. And at the heart of that is making sure that we're delivering the right care also. It's not about cost-cutting. It's about appropriate care, It's about not doing unnecessary procedures. It's about doing the right things that achieve the best outcomes for the patients.
From my perspective, our focus on the patient experience and measurement of that outcome has been the missing piece in the puzzle. So better value care brings those components together with the patient experience and the patient outcome at the center to enable us to assess that we are doing the best we can for the patients.
Better value care is an integrated part of our other priorities - it has to be - we can't do things in isolation and the collective effect of our strategic priorities will deliver better value care. So high quality care does represent better value care. If we don't have any hospital complications such as falls, infection rates etc. good quality care is better value care.
