Expert consensus on moving towards a value-based healthcare system in the Netherlands: a Delphi study

A paper describing the outcomes of a Delphi study, used to reach consensus on the most important practices in moving towards a VBHC system.

Although there is great interest in VBHC, uncertainty remains on the most important actions and practices for establishing a VBHC system. Therefore, academics at two Dutch universities conducted a Delphi study with nine members to research expert consensus.

This revealed 32 important actions and practices for moving towards a VBHC system. The top 5, in terms of the perceived importance by the expert panel, are as follows:

• Involving patients in the shared decision-making process (regarding treatment options, etc) as much as possible
• Standardising performance measures for full treatment cycles of medical conditions, rather than for individual treatments/procedures
• Organising delivery of care around full treatment cycles of medical conditions, rather than around individual procedures
• Using patient-reported outcome measures to evaluate the provision of care
• Using dashboards or scorecards to assess and visualise performance

 This provides useful insight into the most important steps to optimise the implementation of VBHC.