Relentless Health Value

This past March, I was looking forward to giving a keynote at the Arizona Technology Council. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. COVID happened. But in the process of figuring out what I was going to talk about during my keynote, I came up with an idea and I wanted to share it. It’s the idea of how to measure value in health care delivery, because might as well go big or go home, right? The metrics that we use to measure value is critical, and not just because what gets measured gets managed. It’s because American health care is the biggest most impressive display of game theory anyone anywhere has ever seen. I am not easily impressed, and I have to say that I am unfailingly and frequently more than impressed by the cognitive prowess and sheer determination among some parties to game the system and reach as much profit as possible at the expense of patients and taxpayers. So, coming up with the right metrics is paramount. The metrics have to be unimpeachable; they have to be immune to those who have every int