As the shift continues from volume-based to value-based care (VBC)—prioritizing patient outcomes over service quantity—we’re faced with unique challenges and opportunities as healthcare marketers. For services suppliers, technologies, and device manufacturers, understanding how to align effectively with the new objectives of ACOs is critical to future success.
Top three upcoming trends in value-based care
Three shifts are setting the terms for how suppliers, technology companies, and device manufacturers will be evaluated.
Expansion of ACO models
Medicare aims for all beneficiaries to be in an accountable care relationship by 2030, with a significant increase in ACO participation, particularly through the MSSP and ACO REACH models.
Shift towards 100% primary care capitation
Starting in 2025, ACO REACH participants must accept full capitation, reflecting a shift from fee-for-service to value-focused care.
Health equity emphasis
CMS is increasingly prioritizing health equity, introducing bonuses and expanding beneficiary alignment to non-physician practitioners in value-based care models.
What is value-based care and where is it headed?
Value-based care is a framework that incentivizes healthcare providers to deliver optimal health outcomes while minimizing costs. Unlike the traditional fee-for-service model, where providers are paid based on the number of services rendered, VBC rewards quality, efficiency, and patient satisfaction. This approach emphasizes preventive care, coordinated treatment plans, and evidence-based practices.
By 2030, every Medicare beneficiary in the country should be in an accountable care relationship, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Almost 50% of Traditional Medicare lives are now covered by Accountable Care Organizations, compared with less than 30% five years ago. And VBC’s impact is only accelerating. As of 2024, ACO REACH and its 122 participating ACOs covered 2.6 million lives. That’s up 24% over 2023. CMS reported that the GPDC model, a predecessor of ACO REACH, saved Medicare over $371 million.
As this trend continues, marketers need to be in front of the growth to position themselves within the ACO as a useful solution as the managed population continues to grow.
Why ACOs and health plans offering Medicare Advantage
Health plans and the risk-bearing side of ACOs play a pivotal role in the VBC ecosystem. They implement VBC contracts while monitoring provider performance and ensuring that patients receive high-quality care at a lower cost. Successfully marketing to these managers involves demonstrating how your products or services can support their goals of improving patient outcomes while reducing costs.
Strategies for tying solutions to the value-based care model
Not every product can argue every facet of value-based care. The work is to tie the solution to the measure the buyer is actually on the hook for.
Align your messaging with VBC principles
To resonate with health plans, marketing messages must align with VBC principles. That means showcasing how your solutions enhance care quality, improve patient outcomes, and drive cost efficiencies. Use data and case studies to provide credible evidence of impact.
Vatica embeds clinical consultants who become part of the provider’s practice, at the place of care. The combination of technology and clinicians increases member engagement, improves coding accuracy and compliance, and keeps value-based care goals in the visit. That close interaction integrates the solution into clinical and EMR workflows.
A sales sheet can put a stake in the ground around specific results a plan can achieve: 98%+ coding compliance, 60%+ member engagement, and 25%+ risk adjustment revenue. Facts give a buyer a reason to believe. Because the work also improves documentation and can support clinical recommendations, the same story can speak to quality of care, not only revenue.
Leverage technology for better patient outcomes
Plan managers are increasingly using technology to achieve VBC goals. Highlight how the innovation—device, software, or analytics—contributes to better patient outcomes, and be specific about how it fits the system they already run.
Connectivity is part of the claim. A product overview that names the integration path, such as HL7 into the electronic health record, tells an IT and clinical audience that the tool belongs in the workflow rather than beside it.
Collaborate with providers
Building strong relationships with healthcare providers can significantly boost marketing efforts. Providers can be advocates, testifying to the effectiveness of a solution in real-world settings. Collaboration can also facilitate pilot programs or case studies that provide compelling evidence for health plans.
Case studies and testimonials can take a number of forms. A schematic approach works for complex technology, so people can see how the solution works. A warmer, more personal approach works where the story should lean on patient outcomes.
Focus on data and analytics
In the VBC environment, data is how plans decide and how they track performance. Marketing should emphasize the analytics the solution actually provides, and how that analytics helps achieve a value-based goal.
- Enhanced data, analytics, and risk stratification. Identify focus areas for maximum cost and quality impact. Cloud-based analytics can aggregate and filter patient, practice, and plan information for tiered scoring and predictive analysis. Dashboards give a transparent view of quality, clinical, and financial performance.
- Insight-driven care management and coordination. Eliminate barriers imposed by multiple, independent EHRs so a risk-bearing organization can see the populations it is accountable for, and the patients inside those populations who need a different intervention. Secure, evidence-based workflow, rules, and clinical content drive care management and care coordination, and reduce avoidable readmissions.
- Real patient engagement. Apps, shared records, and secure communication with family and caregivers give patients a way to participate. Dashboards and reports provide a transparent view of health stats and support shared decision-making.
Educate and inform
Studies, white papers, webinars, and short videos give a clinical and plan audience a way to inspect the claim before they take a meeting. Cite the method and the source. A trusted reference does more work than an unsupported superlative.
Highlight cost-effectiveness
Demonstrate how the product can help reduce unnecessary spending while maintaining or improving care quality. Provide ROI analyses and cost-benefit comparisons that a plan or ACO can take into a committee.
Labor is one place the argument gets concrete. A productivity story can analyze labor cost against budget, quantify overtime, contract labor, skill mix, and wages, compare worked and paid FTEs to flex targets, and line department scorecards up with the organizational strategy. Nursing hours per patient day, skill mix in the ICU and ED, and staffing against volume are the measures an operator already manages. Tie the product to those measures.
Conclusion
Not every product can argue every facet of value-based care. Marketing inside VBC requires a strategic approach that focuses on one or all of the measures of quality, efficiency, and patient outcomes:
- Align messaging with VBC principles
- Leverage technology benefits
- Collaborate with providers
- Emphasize analytics
- Educate the audience
- Highlight cost-effectiveness
That is how a supplier, technology company, or device manufacturer markets to ACOs and health plans. It positions the brand as a participant in the trend, and as a trusted advisor on patient care and the business of delivering it.