A look at bottlenecks - Outcome-based financing enables care transition

Reimbursement from savings 

Invest-NL's mission is to keep healthcare affordable, accessible, and available. The themed team Life Sciences & Health works on removing funding bottlenecks that hinder preventative and cross-domain care. An alternative funding model can help: results-based financing. “This is already being used in some parts of the Netherlands. In countries like the United Kingdom, more experimentation is underway,” says Louise. “Essentially, it involves identifying who benefits financially from an intervention. That party can then act as the outcome payer, and pays for a prevention programme once the desired result has been achieved. This could be, for example, the health insurer, who can pay the reimbursement from the savings realized on healthcare costs.” 

The intended result can vary: it could be a specific number of participants in a course, but also a medical outcome such as a lower blood pressure among the target group. Sometimes, programmes are rolled out on such a large scale that significant upfront financing is necessary. “Our ambition is for such prefinancing to be carried out by impact investors. When the result is achieved, these investors are repaid their investment with a return by the outcome payers. Of course, this is not the maximum but an ethically responsible return; the goal is also to enable savings in healthcare.”