Value Based Health Care: Linking Finance and Quality

INTRODUCTION

Unless you have just recently landed on this planet, you are aware that health care in the United States is undergoing dramatic changes. And you probably also realize that health care organizations are failing—clinically, organizationally, and financially—which is precisely why things have to change.

Shockingly, patient care has been defined as “unsafe,” with infections, for example, running rampant through hospitals, causing serious harm to patients, and costing organizations a great deal of money and time to rally the resources necessary to address these hospital acquired infections. Errors—that is, avoidable mistakes, such as giving the wrong dosage of medicine or operating on the wrong part of a patient’s body—are now being ...