Document Type : Review Article

Authors

1 Financial Management, Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands

2 Health Services Administration Department, School of Health Professions, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

3 Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands

Abstract

Background 
Value Based Healthcare (VBHC), which can be viewed as a strategy to organize and improve healthcare services, has far-reaching organizational and managerial consequences. It is common managerial practice to support the execution of a strategy by monitoring the ensuing activities. Such monitoring provides feedback and guidance on the execution of these activities to the management of an organization and helps to realize organizational strategies. Monitoring of activities is commonly done by performance management systems (PMS). Given the rising attention in the literature and in practice for VBHC, we ask to what extent VBHC is supported by PMS in practice, and how we can explain what we find to support further successful implementation of VBHC.

Methods 
In our scoping review of financial and performance management at the organization or unit-level of healthcare organizations that apply value-based approaches, we identified 1,267 unique papers in Embase, Medline, OVID, and Web of Science. After the (double-blinded) title and abstract screening, 398 full-text articles were assessed for further
analysis.

Results 
Our review reveals only eleven original papers discussing specifically the integration of VBHC and performance management systems. Almost all the featured applications in these papers focus on a specific project or medical specialty. Only one paper exemplifies how VBHC has been integrated with the PMS of a medical institution, and no paper provides a clear link with strategy execution. We ask why this is the case and propose several explanations by
studying the extant performance management literature. We see these explanations as issues for further reflection for VBHC practitioners and researchers.
 
Conclusion 
We conclude that one of the reasons for the absence of papers integrating VBHC and performance management systems is formed by the tensions that exist between striving for “the best care” or even for providing “all care that is viably possible” and pursuing greater (financial) efficiency. Implementing VBHC as an important organizational strategy and explicating this strategy in the PMS requires that these tensions need to be brought into the fore. When this is not done, we believe that VBHC adoptions that are fully integrated with performance management systems will remain limited in practice.

Keywords