How AI Can Make Value-Based Care a Reality
- ocaa34
- Sep 2
- 2 min read
A fundamental problem with our current fee-for-service healthcare system is that it remains mired in a payment model based on inputs, not outcomes. Under this model, providers are paid for the services they provide regardless of whether those services work. As I wrote in the "Artificial Intelligence Helps Make Value-Based Care Work at Scale" article, this often leads to bad practices, including the overuse of unnecessary, costly, and ineffective procedures that may bolster a provider’s bottom line without improving care.
Value-based care (VBC) promises to address those issues by allocating payments based on patient outcomes. Unfortunately, implementation of VBC has been uneven, and progress has been incremental at best. One key reason for this less-than-stellar progress on VBC is that healthcare systems have lacked interoperability, which made access to timely, comprehensive data difficult and actionable insights required to effectively manage the care of a patient population impossible.
AI as a Catalyst for Success
To truly change the status quo, we need to reorient the entire system towards patient-centric care. This means that patient records and important data must be accessible across the system. It also means providers get paid to keep people healthy, thereby reducing the need for expensive, reactive services to address avoidable health issues in the future. Effective use of AI will be critical to achieving success while wringing costs out of the system.
At Oracle Health and Life Sciences, we are embedding artificial intelligence (AI) into our modern electronic health records (EHR) system. And, we are designing AI agents that can rapidly analyze mountains of patient, treatment, and other data and feed analysis into the complex care management processes to inform clinicians’ thinking and flag patient-related concerns before they become major issues.
Our AI-enabled automation will help providers manage care better without massive hiring. And, as I have stated in the “Why Healthcare Providers Deserve Better EHR Systems” article, it will alleviate clinician burnout by offloading rote tasks.
AI, paired with human experts, will help enable alignment of financial and clinical outcomes to deliver better care at lower costs – the true measure of VBC.