2018 was an exciting year for the Avant-garde Health family. Our team contributed to a number of journal publications, and our customers were featured in national media, making headlines for our joint efforts to champion value-based care. Join us in looking back at some highlights from 2018, through the following news and thought leadership publications.

Defining, Measuring, and Improving Value in Spine Care

Commonly used outcome metrics, such as readmission and complication rates, are actually process and quality metrics. Similarly, existing cost measurements of spine care do not accurately track resources. This journal article from Seminars in Spine Surgery documents how standardization and Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) can help improve the value of spine care without adverse effects.

Hospital Budget Systems Are Holding Back Innovation

75% of senior hospital executives have endorsed the importance of digital innovation, yet health systems remain notoriously slow adopters. This Harvard Business Review article examines just how much of the blame can be attributed to misaligned budgeting and incentive systems, and how to overcome barriers to embrace innovation and provide more effective and efficient care. Healthcare IT News also featured the piece.

Boosting Revenue by Seeing More—or Fewer—Patients

Though we most commonly correlate patient volume with revenue, medical practices participating in a value-based payment model can be incentivized to spend more time with fewer patients, more effectively managing patient care. Renal & Urology News explored how more time upfront can translate into major savings.

What Does Knee Surgery Cost? Few Know, and That’s a Problem

Equipped with better insight into their costs and outcomes, Gundersen Health System dramatically improved how they performed knee replacements. Learn more about our work to transform health care from the Wall Street Journal.

Great Minds Don’t Always Think Alike

MD Anderson Cancer Center, Harvard Business School, and our CEO Derek Haas set out to determine the effectiveness of multidisciplinary team meetings. Learn more about the impact via NEJM Catalyst.

How Gundersen Harnessed Data to Reduce Orthopedic Costs

Gundersen Health System has embraced solutions that have reduced the cost of knee replacements by almost 20%. Read more about our collective efforts to harness data and improve value from HealthLeaders.

Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing to Identify Patients Incurring High Inpatient Cost for Total Shoulder Arthroplasty

As payment models shift to focus more heavily on value, the pressure is on providers to grasp a more accurate understanding of their costs. Learn how we worked with New England Baptist Hospital to explore the inpatient cost of total shoulder arthroplasty and identify preoperative characteristics of high-cost patients, as featured in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.