You see, there is this slowly emerging paradigm in healthcare that many people are starting to talk about, and I am sure that some healthcare providers are starting to move towards. It is this notion of value-based care.

The idea is to treat the patient throughout their life, and for providers to introduce and uphold preventative care for the patient. You know — the difference between reactive care versus proactive care. This may have some side effects that may not be, at-first glance, beneficial to the doctor’s pay, but there is a huge potential for upside for both the doctor and the patient.

For example — the patient can expect a reduced likelihood of onset of a chronic disease if their health is managed correctly. Chronic disease is growing in staggering numbers, and early intervention may be a way to reduce these numbers in America and the world. Also, though there may be more monitoring involved, this back and forth may spur a friendly relationship with their family doctor. For the doctor, if regulation and policy moves towards value-based care, the doctor would be financially incentivized to give value-based care. It could

However, there may also be an unintended consequence with this, or a second-order effect.

To go back in time a little bit — there has been an uptick in medical professions that are specialized. That is, more students are looking to go past residency to enter a niche sub-field. An economic driving force can be attributed to this. There is financial incentive to specialize because there is more money involved. This is a classic consequence of demand but no supply. Demand in this case is the growing amount of chronic disease, and thus, the industry responds. It’s sort of the chicken and the egg scenario though — which came first? Bad incentive structure to cure chronic disease or the rise in chronic diseases? Who knows.