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In my experience, health care can be a jargon rich environment that can isolate outsiders through the use of terminology and language which does not always readily lend itself to open inspection. To be fair, health care is the epitome of complex subject matter with people’s lives at stake, so oversimplification can be dangerous. Acknowledging that, I still do have to point out that many of the principles of how health care is delivered and paid for are like any other defined process: there are inputs, in this case, people with a variety of health needs from the minimal to the acute and there are activities that hopefully add value, i.e., the absence of illness that lets people live the lives they deserve, and all those who add value (doctors, hospitals, manufacturers) should benefit.
In the spirit of helping the lay reader understand some of this, I will be taking a selected industry trend and hopefully making it less opaque. Some of my peers may find this rudimentary and tedious; on the other hand, some may be secretly relieved to find a simple explanation for a concept which it is sometimes assumed everyone knows already. Plus, it helps me distill my reading and interest into a less amorphous whole. So, with that out of the way, I give you the first in a series of primers in health care with an explanation of value based payment, starting with bundled payments. Look for it tomorrow.
The Health Impact 