Top HEOR Trends

Aligning health system incentives to value

Health systems around the world are under increasing pressure to deliver better outcomes in the face of constrained budgets and capacity limitations. As these pressures intensify, aligning incentives around value, rather than service volume, has become increasingly important for system sustainability and resilience. Value-based healthcare (VBHC) is a care delivery approach that focuses on improving patient outcomes while managing costs. Rather than rewarding volume of services, VBHC emphasizes value, to drive practice that optimizes outcomes at the lowest cost.

What drives the need for value-based healthcare?

Health systems are increasingly turning to VBHC to address:

• Financial pressure and sustainability challenges
• Labor shortages and capacity constraints
• The need to deliver better outcomes with limited resources

What is the role of HEOR in value-based healthcare?

HEOR plays a critical role in enabling VBHC by providing the evidence needed to assess the clinical, economic, and humanistic outcomes of medical interventions, such as:

• Measuring outcomes that matter to patients — Including clinical outcomes, quality of life, costs, and patient-reported outcomes
• Assessing value across the care pathway — Evaluating benefits, costs, and trade-offs associated with treatments and technologies
• Informing reimbursement and adoption decisions — Supporting decisions that link payment to outcomes rather than service volume
• Supporting implementation in real-world settings — Helping health systems understand how interventions and innovations affect workflows, staffing, and resource use

By quantifying the trade-offs between health outcomes and costs, HEOR helps translate the principles of value-based healthcare into actionable decisions.