# The business case for quality: estimating lives saved and harms avoided in a value-based purchasing model

## TL;DR

The paper estimates how many lives could be saved and harms avoided if health plans improve performance on blood pressure control and colorectal cancer screening.

## Contribution

It introduces a value-based purchasing model to quantify health benefits from quality improvements in healthcare.

## Key findings

- Improving health plan performance to the 66th percentile could reduce hypertension deaths by 7%.
- Such improvements could also cut colorectal cancer deaths by 2%.
- The study emphasizes the importance of performance accountability in healthcare.

## Abstract

Ever-increasing concern about the cost and burden of quality measurement and reporting raises the question: How much do patients benefit from provider arrangements that incentivize performance improvements? We used national performance data to estimate the benefits in terms of lives saved and harms avoided if US health plans improved performance on 2 widely used quality measures: blood pressure control and colorectal cancer screening. We modeled potential results both in California Marketplace plans, where a value-based purchasing initiative incentivizes improvement, and for the US population across 4 market segments (Medicare, Medicaid, Marketplace, commercial). The results indicate that if the lower-performing health plans improve to 66th percentile benchmark scores, it would decrease annual hypertension and colorectal cancer deaths by approximately 7% and 2%, respectively. These analyses highlight the value of assessing performance accountability initiatives for their potential lives saved and harms avoided, as well as their costs and efforts.