Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to attend and speak at BioHive’s Life Sciences Summit, held in Salt Lake City (conveniently close to Redstone’s headquarters).

BioHive is a recently formed organization dedicated to supporting the life sciences sector in Utah and in Salt Lake City, in particular (shout out to Mayor Erin Mendenhall).

One of my interests in BioHive as an organization has been to help bring the national conversation of value-based care and related concepts like comparative effectiveness research (CER) to bear on Utah’s rapidly developing life sciences sector. My hope is that as we grow in our innovative capacity, we do so in a way that supports high-value care that is financially accessible to everyone living in this great country. 

In my remarks to those gathered, I discussed

• The story of McAllen, Texas and how average healthcare spending per Medicare beneficiary was more than double its neighbor up the road, El Paso—with no discernible health benefits for patients.

• The research contribution of the Dartmouth Atlas regarding the powerful impact of provider decision making on healthcare spending in the United States.

• The story of Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City and the crucial decision that leadership took to boycott a low-value drug that would have financially devastated patients with no appreciable improvement in life expectancy.

I then connect these three developments to the growing field of comparative effectiveness research and its clear relevance to the life sciences and the evolution of outcomes-based contracting—a growing business imperative given the trajectory of healthcare spending in the US.

My hope is that we are on a path to combine the insights of these three stories for the benefit of U.S. healthcare and finally find a system that is, yes, uniquely American, but truly ensures the health and wellbeing of its citizens. It will take lots of political, intellectual, and moral willpower to make it so, but I know this country is up to it. 

A big thanks to BioHive and their gracious director, Katelin Roberts, for allowing me to pontificate on their stage and be part of something special.

I hope you enjoy my thoughts.