The Center for Professionalism & Value in Health Care

Health care in the United States is going through stormy changes that threaten health professionals’ wellbeing and the public’s trust. The ways in which health care professionals are currently measured and valued often work against the behaviors and relationships that patients want and expect from their providers. The Center for Professionalism & Value in Health Care (CPV) aims to study relationships between professionalism and value, promote their alignment, recommend ways to reduce burden, and better support outcome and quality improvement.

  • Study relationships between professionalism and value

  • Promote the alignment

  • Recommend ways to reduce burden

  • Support outcome and quality improvement

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The Social Contract

The Social Contract for Health Care is a set of commitments between health professions and the public which specifies professions’ obligations in return for the privileges afforded by society.Unfortunately, over the past decade, the Social Contract has begun to fray and the public’s faith in the health professions is waning. At the same time, dozens of state and national medical societies have launched legislative and judicial challenges to the utility of board certification, whose key component, self-regulation, is one of the most important obligations of the Social Contract. Furthermore, most health professionals are now employed by health systems, insurance companies, and even hedge funds, which can confuse or threaten the trusted, healing relationships that patients expect. Due to this environment and the fear of a continual breakdown in the Social Contract, the American Board of Family Medicine and it supporting foundation created the Center for Professionalism & Value in Health Care. The ABFM’s investment in the CPV, and the way in which it has been launched, is designed to open its capacity to address issues of professionalism and value beyond family medicine, and even beyond medicine. When successful, it will have a variety of partners helping to shape both the public’s and the provider’s understanding of the Social Contract as well as policies that better support its success.

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Our Staff Members

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Advisory Board