Journal of Healthcare Leadership

Digital Healthcare Leadership in an Era of Value-Based Care, Health Equity, and Patient Consumerism

The proliferation of health information technology to support patient care, which gained accelerated momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, has continued unabated in the post-pandemic period, with no sign of waning. The pandemic also served to expose and exacerbate disparities in healthcare and health outcomes both in the United States and globally. In the process, the pandemic served to highlight the potential of value-based payment models to reduce health disparities by encouraging organizations to develop partnerships and invest in infrastructure to address people’s clinical and social needs. Since value-based care requires a concurrent focus on improving outcomes and promoting population health, while keeping costs in check, the success of value-based payment models has been inextricably linked to the use of technology. This in turn has fostered growing recognition of the role of health information technology in reducing health disparities and advancing health equity.