BOSTON, June 6 (UPI) -- Healthcare is moving from increased volume of care to better outcomes but no U.S. infrastructure is in place for increasing quality, industry analysts said.
Dr. Martin B. Silverstein, a senior partner at The Boston Consulting Group Health Care practice, said no matter what happens with U.S. healthcare reform, the trend is moving away from paying healthcare providers by volume -- serving more patients and providing more services -- to "value-based healthcare," providing patients with better care and paying healthcare providers better for better outcomes.
Silverstein's organization assessed the progress of 12 developed countries in adopting value-based healthcare for national standards and information technology infrastructure, national legal and consent frameworks, the ability to link health outcomes with costs, and high engagement on the part of clinicians and policymakers.
They also assessed the quality of a country's existing disease registries -- tracking health outcomes in a population of patients with the same diagnosis or who have undergone the same medical procedure.
Sweden was the most advanced in implementing value-based healthcare followed by Singapore, Canada and Britain. Germany and Hungary have the furthest to go, said Neil Soderlund, co-author of the report.
"The U.S. health system, which has the highest per capita costs of the 12 nations studied and spends 17.6 percent of the gross domestic product on healthcare, is one of the laggards," Soderlund said in a statement.
The fragmented nature of the U.S. healthcare system seriously limits the collection and use of national health-outcome data, the report said.
The challenge for U.S. healthcare executives and regulators is how to close the gap with the rest of the world, Silverstein said.
