Videos
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A cross disciplinary look: how do you measure quality?
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ALEC 2017 with Christina Åkerman
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World Health Summit 2015: Value Based Healthcare
Learn More About Christina Åkerman, MD
The global health care industry faces a glaring contradiction: rising costs that do not amount to better quality care. The Value-Based Health Care movement seeks to address this problem by changing what we measure – from processes to the outcomes that matter the most to the patient. But which metrics amount to successful measurement of value in health care? Dr. Christina Åkerman, M.D. is the world’s leading expert on developing a common global set of measurements for determining the success of care. Dr. Åkerman’s metrics help organizations throughout the world, from hospitals to insurance and pharmaceutical companies, measure value in a universal language – and transform health care as we know it.
Senior institute associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness (ISC) at Harvard Business School, Dr. Åkerman focuses on devising a global methodology that can drive improvements in patient well-being while overcoming barriers to convergence on best practices. In addition to her work on harmonizing global standards, Dr. Åkerman shows health care organizations how they can improve quality through cross-functional collaboration to treat patients holistically. She also equips medical educators with a new framework for integrating outcomes-based measurement into clinician training, enabling future providers to move away from an overly process-based approach.
Now chair of the 5612 Group AB, Dr. Åkerman was formerly president of the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM), a non-profit organization with the goal to transform health care systems worldwide by measuring and reporting patient outcomes in a standardized way. She previously served as director general for the Medical Products Agency (MPA) in Sweden, a national agency under the aegis of the Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. During this period, she was also a member of the Board of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is responsible for the scientific evaluation of medicines for use in the European Union.
Before her position with MPA, Dr. Åkerman served as vice president medical of AstraZeneca Sweden as well as marketing company president of AstraZeneca Philippines. She has also been working chair of start-up companies and on the board of Fouriertransform, a Swedish state-owned venture capital company.
Dr. Åkerman received her medical degree from the University of Linköping. She wrote her doctoral thesis in Clinical Physiology and is a specialist in Clinical Pharmacology. She has an Executive MBA in General Management from the Stockholm School of Economics.
Christina Åkerman is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group®.
Measuring Outcomes in Health Care: Developing a Common Global Language
One of the biggest barriers to effectively measuring patient outcomes rather than medical processes in health care is that metrics and standards vary widely throughout the world. As president of ICHOM, Dr. Christina Åkerman was instrumental in helping to standardize global measurement and reporting for patient outcomes. As a keynote speaker, Dr. Åkerman now equips organizations throughout the world with the metrics they need to measure to increase the quality of care – and the tools they need to do so. In this presentation, Dr. Åkerman explains the need for a common global system of health care measurement and reveals what putting the patient at the center looks like in practice.
Getting What You Pay For: A New Perspective on Payer Priorities
The costs of health care continue to spiral upward, and yet the quality of care remains roughly the same. One reason is that payers – whether individual patients, governments, businesses or insurance companies – reward the most expensive processes rather than those that are cost-effective and get results. This is in large part a failure of measurement: payers determine “value” based on how much money was spent rather than on how well things turned out for the patient. In this presentation, focused on health care payers, Dr. Christina Åkerman offers concrete examples of how payers have changed the incentives for health care providers by linking compensation to patient outcomes. In doing so, Dr. Åkerman shows a way forward for a world that increasingly sees little value for money when it comes to the most fundamental of services.
Changing the Perspective for Future Clinicians
A major obstacle to realization of the Value-Based Health Care framework is that medical schools still prioritize processes rather than measuring outcome. So much time is spent learning about treatments, and not enough about following up with patients to find out if those treatments actually worked in the long term. In this presentation, Dr. Christina Åkerman shows medical educators how they can change the way their students think about the goals of health care. Rather than seeing patients as one-time charges, they need to understand their deeper needs and determine how best to support patients in reaching the goals that matters most to them.
Working Across Boundaries Within Medical Organizations
One problem facing the Value-Based Health Care framework is the variances in what different countries measure. But there is also an internal barrier within organizations: that of professional function. Clinicians tend to treat patients within their own specialty and fail to follow up with their colleagues or with the patients themselves, leaving an imperfect picture of where care has gone right or wrong. In this presentation, Dr. Christina Åkerman shows medical organizations how they can work collaboratively in teams to treat patients more holistically.
