Linking costs and quality improvement to clinical outcomes through added valued

A byproduct of outcome measures is the provision of financial benefit to the healthcare providers while ensuring healthcare access and quality to the patient. Consequently, a framework for measuring outcomes must integrate the "customer's perspective" of perceiving value of the services provided, the "provider's perspective" of acting as the patient's fiduciary, and the "business's perspective" of achieving net income. Value-based cost management (VBCM) accomplishes this integration by linking several measures with three financial tools: activity-based costing, value-added analysis, and cost of quality. This article illustrates the use and benefit of VBCM to the laboratory as a partner in the delivery of healthcare services with an example of chest pain triage.