The most Valuable course!!

Rodolfo Reyes, MD

Geriatric Fellow at MGH

PGY-4

01/27/2020

The Value-Based Healthcare Delivery course was an eye-opening experience. I was amazed that despite the magnitude of the size of our health system, we are still unaware of the real cost of providing care. I came to the realization that our fee-per-service model is the main contributors to this phenomenon.

Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing by Robert
S. Kaplan who gave a lecture in the course. 

This model does not incentivize savings (thus actual cost is not relevant); therefore, profit is prioritized in the form of more medical visits, studies, and interventions.

All physicians and trainees must be taught the principles of patient-related outcomes (PROM), cost, and value to raise awareness of our current health system and incentivize more rapid changes.

I was so delighted by participating in this course at Harvard Business School that I bought the Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) book (Image 1). It is imperative to understand in more detail this powerful formula, which improves value by reducing overall cost; this is possible by making processes more efficient and calculating capacity utilization.

Currently, I cannot see healthcare the same way as before. I start to analyze every step needed to provide care in minutes units. I believe that if every practitioner has this approach (especially thus in administration and leadership positions), we can significantly reduce the overall cost of healthcare.

After finishing the book, I will read the Balanced Scorecard to supplement my knowledge. I will use all these concepts learned in my future positions to increase the value provided (of course, I will also focus on improving patient outcomes, which is the most crucial aspect of the value equation).

Overall this course provided great value as my experience (outcome) was phenomenal in such a short time (cost).