As healthcare expenditures rise, payers and providers have increasingly recognized the importance of measuring and improving value. Surgical care accounts for a significant percentage of total healthcare expenditures in the United States, and efforts to improve value globally must take into account the unique challenges and opportunities specific to elective surgical care. This situation makes it essential that surgeons have a thorough understanding of surgical value, its measurement, improvement, and incentivization efforts predicated on it. Toward that end, this review (1) explores the fundamental concept of value in healthcare, particularly as applied to surgery, (2) surveys the challenges in measuring surgical cost and quality, (3) describes the framework of value improvement, (4) identifies selected tools to help surgeons improve the value of care provided, and (5) discusses the increasing role that value-based competition is likely to play in the American healthcare industry.
This review contains 5 figures, 3 tables, and 56 references.
Key Words: healthcare costs, quality improvement, surgery, surgical value, value, value-based competition, value improvement