The life-saving power of connected, value-based care

America’s health care crisis won’t be solved by doing more, but by designing better care — replacing fragmented, fee-for-service models with coordinated, value-based care that improves health outcomes, wrote Ramin Davidoff, MD, co-CEO of The Permanente Federation, in a recent Becker’s Healthcare commentary. He noted that this approach benefits both patients and the broader system, with experts estimating that it could unlock $1 trillion in annual savings.

High-quality care is not defined by the number of services delivered or the speed of a single appointment, but by how effectively care is connected across time, teams, and settings. The best systems, Dr. Davidoff wrote, are built around prevention, coordination, and a deep understanding of each patient’s needs, creating a continuous care experience rather than a series of disconnected transactions.

“Achieving this requires a value-based care approach that aligns financial incentives across the entire health care system – including care teams, health plans and hospitals – so that all decisions are made with the patient’s best interests at the center,” he wrote.

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The high cost of a system built for volume, not value

Dr. Davidoff contrasts this model with traditional fee-for-service medicine, which rewards volume over value and leaves patients to navigate a maze of specialists, appointments, repeated tests, and separate bills.

In these fragmented systems, data is scattered, communication breaks down, and patients often shoulder the burden of coordinating their own care. The result is not only frustration, but rising costs and lower-quality outcomes. He notes that total U.S. health care spending has climbed from about $3.6 trillion in 2016 to a projected $5.9 trillion in 2026, underscoring the unsustainability of a system designed around more interventions rather than better ones.

To show what value-based care looks like in practice, Dr. Davidoff highlighted Kaiser Permanente’s AI-powered patient portal, the Kaiser Permanente Intelligent Navigator. The tool helped identify a postpartum patient’s chest pain and shortness of breath as a medical emergency, prompting her to seek immediate care rather than schedule a routine visit. She was later diagnosed with a heart attack and treated in time.

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How strengthening relationships improves long-term health

He also emphasizes that value-based care supports stronger, longer patient relationships, which in turn improve prevention and chronic disease management. Because physicians in these models can follow patients over many years, they are better positioned to intervene early, prevent complications, and improve health over time.

Dr. Davidoff points to Kaiser Permanente’s 2025 HEDIS® performance — leading the nation in 71 effectiveness-of-care measures — as evidence that better-designed systems can produce measurably better results. The closest national competitor led in only 30.*

“This is why I am deeply committed to investing in a value-based approach to care,” he added. “To set an example that benefits the patients we care for, the communities we serve, and other health care delivery systems across the country and the world.”

Read the full commentary here.

*Kaiser Permanente 2025 HEDIS® scores. Benchmarks provided by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Quality Compass® and represent all lines of business. Kaiser Permanente combined region scores were provided by the Kaiser Permanente Department of Care and Service Quality. The source for data contained in this publication is Quality Compass 2025 and is used with the permission of NCQA. Quality Compass 2025 includes certain CAHPS data. Any data display, analysis, interpretation, or conclusion based on these data is solely that of the authors, and NCQA specifically disclaims responsibility for any such display, analysis, interpretation, or conclusion. Quality Compass® and HEDIS® are registered trademarks of NCQA. CAHPS® is a registered trademark of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.