When I made my presentation in the first class, I mentioned “the idea” that had brought me there, so afterwards a professor told me that he knew “a certain Michael Porter” and arranged a brief meeting in the Harvard campus library. I took a train from Wellesley Hills to Boston and met Professor Michael Porter. The talk lasted only 10 intense minutes. It was enough to fully absorb his pragmatic vision on #ValueBasedHealthcare (VBH). It’s not the same to read a book as it is to hear its author while looking into his eyes.

Porter smiled complicitly when I told him that “the idea” is called AVE-DIAN because it was the union of the name and surname of AVEdis DonabeDIAN (“the father of quality in healthcare and also a professor at Harvard Business School”). Avedis Donabedian introduced in the 60s the paradigm of “structure > process > outcome” on which, years later, a research group from Yale University led by Thompson and Fetter created the #DRG methodology and algorithms published in 1980.

From then on, DRGs are the tool par excellence for measuring and improving #OUTCOMES IN #HEALTH, forever changing the way medical care is paid for worldwide. At the beginning of the 21st century, Professor Michael Porter introduced the concept of VBH as a management tool focused on outcomes (results) and the #value generated for #patients, #doctors, #hospitals and #payers.

In many of our commercial presentations, we use phrases from Professor Porter such as “healthcare cost crises are usually due to measuring the wrong things in the wrong way”.

Today, we are proud that the “idea” called AVEDIAN is providing value to many clients in the region and is one of the 3 companies in the world with its own DRG algorithms based on the methodology published by Fetter et al.