WHAT IS VALUEBASED CARE and who is driving the change? By Seth Rubenstein, DPM. What is Value-Based Care? Value-Based Care (VBC) is an umbrella term for various models of reproducible, quantifiable, and quality care for individuals and entire populations. It is a new way for health-care workers to think and work. Value-Based Care is designed to steer provider compensation away from fee-for-service payment models where compensation is proportional to volume of services provided, to a model that incorporates fee-for-service with various bonuses or penalties tied to measures of clinical results. Such measures include quality, equity, and cost of care. The model is said to hold providers accountable for improving patient outcomes while keeping overall costs down. 10 apmanews NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023 Medical educators describe this conversion as a shift from individual care to systems of care and supporting patient health beyond the exam room. This shift includes helping patients access a variety of health-care experts including dietitians and social workers. It also involves teaching doctors to think of themselves as part of a team that improves overall health rather than just delivering technical services.1 There is recognized room for improvement in the United States, which spends more of its gross domestic product on health care than any member country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, yet has among the highest rates of preventable death.2,3 Such statistics