Subject(s)
Financing, Organized/methods , Health Expenditures/statistics & numerical data , Health Policy/economics , Healthcare Disparities/statistics & numerical data , Primary Health Care/standards , COVID-19/diagnosis , COVID-19/economics , COVID-19/epidemiology , COVID-19/virology , Capital Financing/methods , Chronic Disease/economics , Chronic Disease/epidemiology , Cost of Illness , Delivery of Health Care/legislation & jurisprudence , Healthcare Disparities/trends , Humans , Intersectoral Collaboration , New South Wales/epidemiology , SARS-CoV-2/isolation & purification , Value-Based Health Insurance/economicsABSTRACT
Among the many lessons that have been reinforced by the SARS-COVID-19 pandemic is the failure of our current fee-for-service health care system to either adequately respond to patient needs or offer financial sustainability. This has enhanced bipartisan interest in moving forward with value-based payment reforms. Nurses have a rich history of innovative care models that speak to their potential centrality in delivery system reforms. However, deficits in terms of educational preparation, and in some cases resistance, to considering cost alongside quality, has hindered the profession's contribution to the conversation about value-based payments and their implications for system change. Addressing this deficit will allow nurses to more fully engage in redesigning health care to better serve the physical, emotional, and economic well-being of this nation. It also has the potential to unleash nurses from the tethers of a fee-for-service system where they have been relegated to a labor cost and firmly locate nurses in a value-generating role. Nurse administrators and educators bear the responsibility for preparing nurses for this next chapter of nursing.
Subject(s)
COVID-19/economics , Nurses/psychology , Value-Based Health Insurance , COVID-19/prevention & control , Humans , Nurses/statistics & numerical data , Pandemics/prevention & controlABSTRACT
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemics has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives among the elderly, the patients with chronic conditions and among underserved communities and people in social distress. In addition, the measures that succeeded in containing the epidemic created a profound economic crisis, which real dimension is still unclear. It is clear, however, that most healthcare systems were unprepared. Years of cost containments had eroded the ability of the healthcare sector to cope with the surge in cases. This editorial contends that rebuilding the healthcare systems will require forward thinking, a data-driven approach and avoidance of reactive decision making. The editorial proposes the Value Based Medicine approach as a way to avoid the errors of the past and to align decision making in healthcare with patient health and quality of life (Value). This is an approach that is gaining traction in several systems. It needs a built-in capability to collect and analyse outcome and costing data. Today the necessary informatic and computational capabilities are widely available.