Value-Based Healthcare (VBHC): A game changer for pharma to accelerate patient access
By AmerisourceBergen
On May 30, 2024, industry experts Vesa Komssi and Mark Tolboom shared their insights during our webinar "Value-Based Healthcare (VBHC): A game changer for pharma to accelerate patient access." Vesa Komssi, Executive Vice President of Nordic Healthcare Group with over a decade of VBHC experience across Europe, the US, and Africa, joined forces with Mark Tolboom, Partner at Vintura with more than 20 years in management consulting. They explored how VBHC principles can facilitate partnerships between the pharmaceutical industry and other health ecosystem stakeholders to enhance patient access to innovative therapies and find effective ways to meet the requirements of new regulations.
The transformative power of VBHC
Mark Tolboom articulated that optimizing value in healthcare—focusing on outcomes that matter most to patients relative to the costs—can lower overall costs while fostering powerful partnerships among stakeholders. This approach positions patients as active participants in their care journeys.
Key components of VBHC implementation
The core components of implementing VBHC include:
- Outcome measures: Defining and focusing on outcomes important to patients.
- Care integration: Ensuring seamless connection across all lines of care.
- Enablers: Establishing robust IT infrastructure and aligning financing/payment models.
- Change management: Navigating complex systemic changes requires significant attention to change management.
Vesa Komssi highlighted that despite early skepticism about VBHC’s business case within life sciences, it has become essential due to increasing requirements for post-launch evidence by regulatory bodies like European Medicines Agency (EMA) and national HTA organizations.
Real-world examples
Mark Tolboom shared insights from Germany where G-BA mandates post-launch evidence generation using real-world data—a model illustrating the necessity of starting early in the product life cycle with the right partnerships.
Vesa Komssi underscored the importance of building partnerships with healthcare providers for effective evidence generation. This approach involves leveraging existing Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), hospital-level quality registries, cost accounting systems, diagnostic systems alongside Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs). Such collaborations offer comprehensive data needed for post-launch evidence generation without burdening healthcare providers with double data entry.
In Estonia's national stroke pilot project, comprehensive outcomes dashboards were created encompassing clinical outcomes, PROMs, patient characteristics, treatment variables/costs—all collected in real-time from multiple hospitals using standard measures like International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM) sets. This model showcases how detailed real-world data can drive improvements in patient care pathways while meeting regulatory requirements more efficiently than traditional methods reliant on fragmented national registries.
VBHC partnerships vs traditional approaches
Steps towards successful partnerships
To foster successful value-based partnerships:
- Identify therapeutic areas needing increased future evidence generation.
- Select potential partners such as healthcare providers/payers/tech companies/implementation partners early on
- Initiate outcome measurement initiatives combined with care integration programs well ahead of market entry
- Foster communities among partners for peer learning/best practice sharing/joint research projects
- Utilize collected insights for pre/post-launch evidence needs; continuously refine care pathways based on real-world feedback loops
Embracing VBHC presents tremendous opportunities not only improving patient outcomes but also creating sustainable systemic efficiencies benefiting all stakeholders involved.
This article is intended to communicate Cencora’s capabilities which are backed by the authors’ expertise. However, Cencora strongly encourages readers to review all available information related to the topics discussed in this article and to rely on their own experience and expertise in making decisions related thereto.
