Are We Talking About the Same Thing? US Medical Student Definitions of Value-Based Care

Wasteful care is a prevalent, costly problem in the United States. Medical schools are addressing this by teaching about value-based care. However, students still struggle with the application of this concept. We hypothesized that this struggle may be due to students’ uncertainty about how to define value-based care. In this article, we evaluated a novel, interactive, value-based care session for first-year medical students and assessed students’ abilities to define value-based care pre- and post-session. Our curricular session introduced first-year medical students to value-based care principles and included both a lecture and small-group role-play exercise focused on value-based decision-making. Students completed pre- and post-session surveys that assessed how they defined value-based care, from which we identified 11 unique themes. Following the session, students provided more complete definitions. Early instruction using peer-led sessions, application through role-play, and assessment through open-ended responses were associated with improved student ability to conceptualize and define value-based care. Improved definitional clarity may allow students to better apply value-based principles to their clinical practice. However, further research is needed to assess how the ability to conceptualize this concept translates to clinical application.