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Who Are We?

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A National Action Plan for Value Based Healthcare (VBHC) set out a three-year programme to embed the VBHC approach as part of making the Prudent Healthcare philosophy a reality. CTMUHB’s aim is to be at the forefront of the VBHC agenda in Wales and on an international basis and, in 2021, set up the CTMUHB VBHC Team. It sits within the iCTM Directorate and supports the funding and management of VBHC projects throughout the Health Board.

The CTMUHB VBHC Team is a Multidisciplinary Team headed up by Denise Lowry, with representation from Finance (Simon Barrell), Procurement (Esther Price) and the iCTM Change Hub (Samantha Connell).

VBHC is a person-centred approach which enables us to understand and act upon the things that matter most to patients. This information will help clinical teams work with patients to make shared decisions about their care and health outcomes and will help CTMUHB to provide high value care, and to use our resources efficiently to provide the care which has the best outcomes for our citizens.

THE CTMUHB VBHC Team are working collaboratively across the Health Board and partners to deploy VBHC across the whole health system, embedding its philosophy and methodology into our day to day operations and work. Our ambition to improve patient centred outcomes, population health and effective utilisation of our resources will be achieved by working in partnership with our patients and identifying with them the interventions that provide high value care and outcomes.

Currently, ‘value’ in the context of healthcare is often described as “health outcomes relative to monetized inputs”, aiming at increasing cost-effectiveness. This interpretation of ‘value’ was perceived by the European Commission Expert Panel as too narrow and the notion of ‘Value Based Healthcare’ seems more suitable in conveying the guiding principles underlying solidarity-based healthcare systems.

This necessitates that a more comprehensive utilisation of ‘value’ must be adopted based along the following principles based on four value pillars:

  • Allocative Value: ensuring that all available resources are taken into account and distributed in an equitable fashion
  • Technical Value: ensuring that the allocated resources are used optimally (no waste)
  • Personal Value: ensuring that each individual patient´s values are used as a basis for decision-making in a way that will optimise the benefits for them
  • Societal Value: ensuring that the intervention in healthcare contributes to connectedness, social cohesion, solidarity, mutual respect, openness to diversity, wellness, wellbeing and flourishing. It also includes wider determinants of health, wellness and wellbeing including environmental impact, energy and waste management, implications for circular economy and creating vibrant and resilient communities

It is only when all four of these components are described and addressed do we approach the definition of VBHC as a comprehensive concept built on four value-pillars: appropriate care to achieve patients’ personal goals (personal value), achievement of best possible outcomes with available resources (technical value), equitable resource distribution across all patient groups (allocative value) and contribution of healthcare to social participation and connectedness (societal value).