“Since nothing is really good or bad in itself – it’s all what a person thinks about it”

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2


Understanding Clinical Nuance

There is strong bipartisan consensus that our current level of health care spending does not deliver sufficient value in terms of individual or population health. Since there is more than enough money in the system, our attention should turn from how much we spend to how well we spend our health care dollars. To encourage a shift from volume to value, insurance benefits and payment models must be redesigned with the basic tenets of clinical nuance in mind.

The concept of clinical nuance, implemented using value-based insurance design, is a key innovation already widely implemented in the private and public payers.  It recognizes two important facts about the provision of medical care: 

1) medical services differ in the amount of health produced, and

2) the clinical benefit derived from a medical service depends on who is using it, who is delivering the service, and where it is being delivered
.  Our infographic and video offer a visual guide to the concept of clinical nuance.

The Harvard Business Review Insight Center features a blog post on smarter consumer cost sharing by Dr. John Ayanian (Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation) and Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, Director of the University of Michigan Center for Value-Based Insurance Design (V-BID).


Watch our Clinical Nuance video below: