Reform is driving an industry redefinition of “value” that challenges traditional healthcare business models. As demand for better outcomes at lower cost continues to grow, healthcare organizations that lack evidence-based value propositions will struggle to compete. In order to adapt to this new environment, healthcare executives will need to move their institutions toward a new value-based orientation.

Several solutions have been proposed, including accountable care organizations, clinical integration, and new payment models like bundled pricing. At the heart of these solutions is the predictive care path. Organizations can use predictive care paths to define high-level processes (not minutia procedures), identifying key steps to take and corresponding decision points. If they are crafted correctly, predictive care paths can account for variability across the complex, non-linear process of caring for patients, while creating general pathways to map each discrete element of care for a particular diagnosis or disease state.