Most of our healthcare system still can’t answer a basic question:
“What value do you deliver?”
Not mission statements. Not vague claims about “quality of care.” Not actors in white coats pushing pills—then whispering 53 side effects at warp speed.
We’re talking about actual, measurable value: the outcomes that matter most to patients, divided by the cost to achieve them.
That’s the formula. That’s the benchmark. And frankly, that’s where most organizations fall short.
The Hard Truth: Most Health Systems Are Flying Blind
Despite all the dashboards, EHR upgrades, and Six Sigma process improvements, most healthcare organizations are still stuck in volume-mode thinking.
They track volume. They track cost. Maybe patient satisfaction.
But they don’t track value.
And that’s a serious problem—because CMS, payers, and patients are no longer buying what you’re selling unless you can prove it delivers outcomes.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
And you can’t improve what you don’t link to clinical, financial, and operational performance.
What Is a Value Management Office (VMO)?
The smartest healthcare organizations have already figured this out. They’re not guessing. They’re building systems that define, measure, and manage value across the enterprise.
At the center of it all? A Value Management Office (VMO)—or a team explicitly responsible for:
- Defining measurable outcomes by condition or care pathway
- Linking outcomes to cost, technology, and operations
- Ensuring investments are tied to strategic, patient-centered results
Even within federal agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs, implementing value management has delivered tangible results:
- Better alignment between IT investments and patient outcomes
- Faster insight into which programs are delivering ROI—and which aren’t
- Real traction on bundled payments, condition-level outcomes, and integrated care pathways
And yet, most health systems still think they need… another dashboard.
What they really need is a system to define success before chasing metrics.
If You’re Still Using Project Charters to Track Value, You’re Already Behind
Too many orgs still rely on project charters, outdated PMO templates, and siloed initiatives to track impact.
But value is cross-functional. It cuts across clinical care, financial operations, technology platforms, and patient experience. If you’re not tying all of it together, you’re not telling the full story—and certainly not proving it to your stakeholders.
Worse? Some leaders think AI will magically fix this.
Let’s be clear: AI amplifies what you already measure. If you’re measuring the wrong things (or nothing at all), AI just gets you lost faster.
So, Time to Upgrade: Three Steps
- Define outcomes that matter. Start with the patient. What clinical and functional outcomes do they actually care about? Build backward from there.
- Link them to cost and operational levers. Connect the outcomes to financial and system performance. Understand what’s driving (or blocking) value.
- Tell your value story—with data, not buzzwords. Dashboards are only useful if they connect strategy to action. Report on what matters, and report it well.
Value Isn’t a Buzzword. It’s a Standard.
If you’re serious about transforming healthcare delivery, don’t ask what’s trending. Ask:
What outcomes are we truly accountable for—and are we delivering them?
Ask any patient who’s been through the system. If the outcome changed their life, they won’t mention your branding or press releases.
They’ll tell you one thing: value mattered more than anything else.
If this sounds familiar, it should. These are the same principles I laid out in Value Management in Healthcare —a playbook for leaders serious about delivering outcomes, not just optics.
Let’s raise the standard.
Final note: Outcomes in healthcare matter a great deal to me personally. It inspired me to write a book, now in its 2nd Edition (Available on Amazon HERE) and to write blogs like this one Our Children Des erve Transparency in Healthcare