Does value-based healthcare support patient-centred care? A scoping review of the evidence

Standardisation of outcome measures is integral to value-based healthcare (VBHC), which may conflict with patient-centred care, focusing on personalisation.

We aimed to provide an overview of measures used to assess the effect of VBHC implementation and to examine to what extent the evidence indicates that VBHC supports patient-centred care.

A scoping review guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology.

We searched the following databases on 18 February 2021: Cochrane Library, EMBASE, MEDLINE and Web of Science.

We included empirical papers assessing the effect of the implementation of VBHC, published after introduction of VBHC in 2006.

Two independent reviewers double-screened papers and data were extracted by one reviewer and checked by the other. We classified the study measures used in included papers into six categories: process indicator, cost measure, clinical outcome, patient-reported outcome, patient-reported experience or clinician-reported experience. We then assessed the patient-centredness of the study measures used.

We included 39 studies using 94 unique study measures. The most frequently used study measures (n=72) were process indicators, cost measures and clinical outcomes, which rarely were patient-centred. The less frequently used (n=20) patient-reported outcome and experience measures often measured a dimension of patient-centred care.

Our study shows that the evidence on VBHC supporting patient-centred care is limited, exposing a knowledge gap in VBHC research. The most frequently used study measures in VBHC research are not patient-centred. The major focus seems to be on measures of quality of care defined from a provider, institution or payer perspective.