U.S. Trails in Adopting Value-based Healthcare

"When it comes to implementing value-based healthcare, Sweden is the most advanced country of the 12 we studied, followed by Singapore, Canada, and the U.K.," Soderlund says. "By contrast, Germany and Hungary have the furthest to go."

The U.S. health system, which has the highest per capita costs of the 12 nations studied and spends 17.6% of gross domestic product on healthcare, is also one of the laggards in the group, notes Peter Lawyer, a BCG senior partner and coauthor of the report.

"The U.S. has some successful national disease registries, such as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Patient Registry, the Society for Thoracic Surgeons' STS National Database, and the American College of Cardiology's CathPCI Registry," Lawyer says. "And some integrated players such as Kaiser Permanente have made considerable progress in using clinical outcomes in their own patient populations to identify and disseminate best practices across their centers."

However, the fragmented nature of the U.S. healthcare system has seriously limited the collection and use of national health outcome data, Lawyer says.