The journey towards value-based care and contracting is often challenging, but there are specific actions that healthcare organizations can take to set the stage for their financial and operational success. Performance focus areas typically include reducing process variation, improving patient experience, and improving outcomes that are direct contributors to both claims cost and provider operational expense.

What makes performance improvement daunting is that financial and administrative teams often face several levels of uncertainty: Which process-level improvement opportunities should be focused on? How much performance improvement is realistic in a given period? What evidence is needed to convince clinicians to change behavior? What process-level improvements are necessary to achieve the desired outcome? What’s the expected ROI?