At the 2016 John R. Clarke Keynote Address to the Surgical Outcomes Club, we challenged the audience to begin thinking about implementing precision medicine in routine care. The audience was full of academic surgeons and researchers who seemed to embrace this challenge. However, a path to personalize care to the needs of each individual patient needs to be developed.
The profession of medicine is undergoing an unprecedented transformation from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursement. Medicare is pioneering this effort through bundled payments for orthopedic surgery, cardiology, and oncology, but this practice is sure to become widespread in the near future. While some may view this as an effort to reduce reimbursement, others see this as an opportunity to rethink current practice patterns and redesign health care delivery to improve patients’ experiences and outcomes while lowering costs.