Value-Based Purchasing Strategy for Finance, IT, and Purchasing
This paper presents a three-year organizational strategy for advancing value-based purchasing (VBP) compliance in a healthcare setting, with a focus on three non-clinical departments: Finance, Purchasing, and Information Technology. Drawing on CMS guidelines and health IT research, the paper assesses the organization's current VBP engagement, defines department-specific goals, addresses ethical obligations around quality of care and fraud prevention, and outlines an educational and communication plan to sustain organization-wide buy-in. The strategy emphasizes that cost control and high-quality care are complementary rather than competing objectives.
- Executive Summary: Three-year VBP plan across key departments
- Organization's Current VBP Status: Current VBP engagement and Medicare focus
- Departments Impacting VBP: Finance, Purchasing, and IT roles in VBP
- Goals for Each Department: Department-specific targets and metrics
- Ethics and Key Staff Principles: Quality-first ethics and fraud prevention
- Educational Events and Timeline: Training plan and three-year rollout
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What makes this paper effective
- Clearly scopes a broad organizational strategy around three specific non-clinical departments, giving the argument a focused and manageable structure.
- Balances high-level strategic framing with practical, department-level goal-setting, making the plan both visionary and actionable.
- Integrates an ethics section that preemptively addresses potential trade-offs between cost reduction and quality of care, strengthening the paper's credibility.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied strategic planning within a healthcare administration context. It uses CMS program criteria as an external framework and maps internal departmental functions onto those criteria — a classic alignment technique in healthcare management writing that shows how organizational resources can be systematically directed toward regulatory and financial objectives.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an executive summary, followed by an assessment of the organization's current VBP posture. It then identifies three key departments and explains each one's role in VBP success. A dedicated goals section follows, with targets tailored to each department. Separate sections cover ethical guidelines, staff education, and a continuous three-year timeline with quarterly review cycles.
Executive Summary
My organization has a fairly high commitment to value-based purchasing (VBP), and I believe that with a clear plan it can become even more engaged with VBP over the next three years. While one might naturally think that those who deliver medical services are the most important — and they are very important — I would like to focus on the roles that the Finance, Purchasing, and IT departments play in achieving the balance between high-quality service delivery and cost control. By engaging all relevant stakeholders and making VBP a central focus with consistent messaging over the course of three years, it is believed that the organization can set and achieve fairly aggressive goals with respect to VBP objectives.
All three departments will need to prepare by reviewing how the VBP program works and understanding how their specific functions contribute to these objectives. Each department will then need to outline the specific steps it will take to influence the achievement of VBP targets. The first steps must be outlined clearly, but this is a continuous process, and one of the most important elements will be ensuring sustained commitment to these objectives throughout the three-year period.
There will definitely need to be training in order to implement the strategy. The first phase of training will focus on the basics of VBP, providing the groundwork and context for each department and its key managers to understand the roles they will need to play. The next phase of training will be more functional, with managers for each department training their employees on the specific behaviors necessary to succeed.
References
Agha, L. (2015). The effects of health information technology on the costs and quality of medical care. Journal of Health Economics, 34, 19–30.
CMS (2017). Hospital value-based purchasing. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Retrieved June 4, 2018, from https://www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Medicare-Learning-Network-MLN/MLNProducts/downloads/Hospital_VBPurchasing_Fact_Sheet_ICN907664.pdf
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