Emblem Health Value Initiative

The Emblem Health Value Initiative is a partnership between Emblem Health Inc. and the Global Healthcare Innovation Management Center at Fordham. It seeks to provide research, multi-stakeholder dialog and public awareness to help develop a common understanding of the value of health that goes beyond the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare delivery. There is urgency to this work as the changes initiated by the Affordable Care Act, requiring among other things a patient centered approach, implies the creation and development of new outcome measures. Traditional measures of healthcare delivery efficiency and effectiveness may not be sufficient. Neither are the measures of disease burdens. What is needed is to change the focus from healthcare delivery to increasing the overall health. Determining the “value of health” is complicated by a number of socio-economic, cultural, informal network and individual factors. And yet, it is when innovations, interventions and changes are evaluated with this prism that the quality of care can increase while costs are kept under control.

The health value initiative involves:

1. Original research and synthesis of other works,
2. Development of measures,
3. Multi-stakeholder workshops based on the research leading to white papers,
4. Communication of results at conferences, through working papers and blogs, and
5. Public event to raise awareness and communicate results. Impact of our work on policy and best practices will be an indicator of the success of our initiative