The Four Habits of High-Value Health Care Organizations

Health care organizations considered among the nation's highest performers often have unique personalities, structures, resources, and local environments. Yet they often have remarkably similar approaches to care management, common habits that may be transferrable. Recent attention to the question of value in health care — the ratio of outcomes to long-term costs — has focused on problems of definition and measurement: what outcomes and which costs? Less attention has been given to an equally difficult but important issue: how do health care delivery organizations reliably deliver higher value? It would certainly simplify health care reform if we could show the superiority of a dominant delivery model (e.g., the accountable care organization or the medical home) and roll it out nationwide, developing and proving new approaches to creating value only once. However, experience suggests that . . .