From What’s the matter? to What matters to you?

Healthcare needs to make this shift in order to provide the best personalised care for patients, us humans. Let me give you an example of my own treatment:

In 2018 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. When I was told that my treatment was going to include chemo, multiple surgeries, immunotherapy and hormone therapy, I knew that continuing daily activities like sports (gymnastics +/- 4 times a week), socialising, travelling and working was going to be difficult. The question about what mattered the most to me was never asked. At that moment in time, gymnastics was a joyful experience and a great stress reliever for me several days a week. Knowing about the treatment plan ahead, especially the surgeries, I knew that it was going to be difficult to continue with gymnastics, yet not impossible. I plucked up the courage to share how I was feeling, how I saw the treatments ahead and what was important to me. I was lucky enough to be able to openly discuss the options with a multidisciplinary team which finally meant that I had a different kind of surgery, allowing me to continue doing gymnastics until today, and a cold cap treatment to limit hair loss during the chemo, which I also considered important.

Why should I have to be the one to speak up about what is important to me? How can we equip ourselves as patients to make well-argued decisions in discussion with the experts to ensure we get the treatment that suits us best? In order to have the same level of personalised care available to all, I believe we should initiate more and more value-based healthcare (VBHC) initiatives.

But where on earth do you start with creating VBHC initiatives?

In 2021, a group of experts, including myself representing the patient perspective, joined forces with Linnean to work on the LINNEAN model – a guideline for initiating value-based healthcare initiatives.

This guideline covers seven important domains:

• Multidisciplinary teams
• Outcomes and care paths
• Costs and funding
• Chains and networks
• Learning, improving and innovating
• Data and IT
• Culture and leadership

Click here to find out more about the LINNEAN-model 

The following parts of the webcast are available on YouTube (Dutch only):

👉 #WGZ in een notendop en het WGZ-huis
👉 De zeven domeinen van WGZ
👉 Hoe te beginnen met WGZ
👉 Wat is de rol van de #zorgverlener en #patient
👉 Ik kreeg ‘n heel rataplan aan behandelingen waar ik doorheen moest gaan, maar is dat wel wat ík wil?
👉 Wat levert WGZ op?
👉 “We gaan alles anders doen”
👉 Praktische tips aan de WGZ-starter
👉 De verdiepingssessies op de zeven domeinen

Joliene Munier
Patient Advocate Inspire2Live