Shaping our Healthcare from Opportunity to Value-based delivery model requires an effort rooted in Individual Realms
Winston S. Churchill once said: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Opportunity plays a vital role in the American dream, and the option, in itself, comes from the founding principles of the nation. These principles American Constitution granted its constituents that make the U.S. a great nation, and because those ideals are neither Republican, Democratic, conservative, liberal, white, or black, everyone gets to benefit equally.
It’s not just the United States; our values serve the foundation of everything we do and live. Values guide our lives, and the same concepts also decide our actions and direction in life. Values give birth to the vision and mission which we undertake as a part of life. Vision and mission apply to big businesses and form the basis of organizational strategies. It’s crucial for any establishment, and that also includes stakeholders of the healthcare industry.
Physician practices, whether large or small, must have a vision and mission. Both base their principles on specifically defined values put forward by the founders, and everyone under the practice should put their best efforts to honor those at all times.
The Position of Value in Medicine
We are the world’s citizens built upon values and principles. The prosperity we enjoy in the current age arises out of values that serve as the foundation of our existence. However, the force behind this prosperity is neither guaranteed nor eternal.
Values cannot be bought merely by spending a large sum of money, and you cannot have it suddenly inculcated in a person. If you’re alive, you probably have your own set of values by which you survive, work and thrive. The values based on experience gathered from life, education, and the social role of others. It is an individual trait, and it’s different for everybody. Your values may miss the mark to be the same as someone else’s, but for you, they are the most important things by which you can live.
The Medical Industry and Its Core Values
The practice of medicine also has its own set of values developed in the same manner. However, it would be unbecoming to take up that you have to always abide by the moral codes established by others. Unfortunately, it’s not the way things are though when it comes to the medical world.
It is a very wrong misconception and quite common that you need to adhere to common medical values.
“Variability of Standard of care is an open-ended opportunity for any administration serving as a weapon of mass manipulation and control against the medical profession.” — Adam Tabriz, MD
Sure, you have to agree that standardization and creating a reference point are required and come as the prerequisite of accountability and efficacy. We never build standards of thin air. Instead, they, themselves, are in an ideal world built upon the specific vision and mission, which sequentially serve as the basis for the set of morals.
It’s also essential to understand that human life comes with its own set of variables. It would neither be fair nor ideal to commit healthcare delivery to a patient based on values created by others such as hospital administrators. Such ethics will only end up driving bylaws that would not align with those of a patient and the physician.
Creating a Vision and Mission
When dealing with a small practice, it is much simpler to develop a vision embodied by everyone in the organization under the physician’s leadership. But for larger organizations such as a managed care system, the task is much challenging with risks of potential pitfalls.
Does this mean that large organizations are not represented to respect “multi-values? “
I believe they can!
The task can be achieved by respecting the physician as a person and an independent professional. The same is true for the patients, who have a more crucial role in molding the fundamental values. The values again vary from person to person. We set them based on the personal, social, educational, economic, and emotional beliefs of the person receiving treatment from a physician or healthcare provider in general.
Every genuine healthcare provider under the system believes in delivering the best possible care to their patients. We must consider the concept of quality based on two factors. That is standard and variable.
Knowledge and skills form a particular service to the patient and serve as the building block of healthcare delivery. They include the standard of patient expectations and morals behind the delivery of service based on the variables. In other words, knowledge and skills stand the building pillars of the tools that we use to deliver medical care. Ethics and values form the precision of delivery of healthcare.
That is why it doesn’t matter what type of technology we use (including artificial intelligence); they may be able to deliver perfectly but can never have precision-driven by the power of human values.
The scope of any organization’s vision and mission must include the respect deserved by the patient’s individuality or any stakeholder within the organization. The concept might seem challenging, but it is not so. We can implement it by ensuring that corporates work for the people’s interest, not the other way around. It can be an intimidating task, considering the organization’s large size, which increases the risk of falling into the trap of bureaucracy and dictatorship.
Empowering and holding the organizations accountable through transparency based on their values is the key. Missions, once established, should be respected by everyone in the organization. Healthcare for all translates to healthcare without borders in a reality where individuals create values and ethical standards for individuals. Both will establish the foundation for genuine quality or, in simple terms, value-based healthcare delivery.
We need to create a system from the best of what our values and community have been built upon, as it is the best solution offered by others.
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