Value Based Health Care (VBH) Outcomes Workshop: A Health Systems Approach
22.10.18
Join us on 15 November 2018 in London for the workshop Value Based Health Care (VBH) Outcomes Workshop: A Health Systems ApproachThe need of healthcare system actors to work more in collaboration and to remove silos – that was some of the common threads discussed during an event on “Implementing outcomes-based healthcare – how measuring outcomes leads to better patient health and sustainable health systems” held on 18 October in Brussels. The event was organised by EFPIA in collaboration with ICHOM (the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement) and pharma.be, and was the third seminar we are organising around Europe on value-based healthcare and the importance of measuring health outcomes. We started in Finland a little bit more than a month ago, continued in Spain and throughout 2018 and during the first months of 2019 we will have three more events in the UK, Italy and Portugal.
These workshops focus on the measurement of standardised health outcomes as a step towards creating more patient-centred and outcomes-based healthcare systems, and the need to launch discussions between all stakeholders on how to make this vision reality. We believe that an outcomes-based approach will not only benefit patients, but all stakeholders in the system including healthcare professionals, providers, payers and the industry, and also help reducing waste and making the health systems more sustainable.
We know that health outcomes vary dramatically between and within countries in the EU. For instance, only in Sweden there is a 20-time variation in mortality after colon surgery. We also know that major variations exist in heart failure, across European countries, particularly in terms of mortality and hospital re-admission rates. Mortality can, comparatively, be three-time higher in some countries and this cannot be explained only by risk factors, such as age and lifestyle. Measuring outcomes, sharing best practices and implementing them will help reduce these health inequalities, enable value-based healthcare models and hence more efficient and effective healthcare systems for patients, payers, hospitals, and providers.
At EFPIA, we have been highlighting the importance of value-based, outcomes-driven, sustainable healthcare for several years already. We believe that more flexible, value-based and outcomes-focused models offer a way forward, as they set the right incentives, offering a greater reward for those technologies and interventions, including prevention, that deliver most value for patients and the system. We also believe that tying incentives and payment to outcomes is not just appropriate for some medicines and therapy areas, but for healthcare services in general.
It is great to see this agenda moving forward and more and more stakeholders engaging in the discussion. Earlier this week, value-based was discussed in a very active and constructive session at the World Health Summit, which celebrated its 10th year anniversary in Berlin. In times of high pressure on European health systems and on patients and their families, we see that the role of the EU in health and health policy is hotly debated, with some questioning the added value in addressing health issues above country. This is why at the end of November, EFPIA and 27 other organisations, working on health policy at the EU level, are getting together and organising the first-ever EU Health Summit, with the objective of presenting policy recommendations to the new European institutions. Measuring outcomes and the role of more outcomes-based models will certainly be part of those discussions.
As the next stop on this journey, we are looking forward to joining ABPI on 15 November 15 to organise the “Value Based Healthcare (VBH) Outcomes Workshop: A Health Systems Approach” workshop in the UK (London). We will discuss the basic building-blocks of value-based healthcare and why measuring outcomes is important, as well as great examples from The Martini Klinik in Germany and on outcomes measuring and implementation in breast and lung cancer, among others. Please join the discussion and register for the event here.
See you in London!
