Healthcare value analysis has always been a team sport. No single professional, however skilled, holds all of the clinical, financial, operational, and evidentiary knowledge required to make a sound product or technology decision. Yet many value analysis professionals still treat networking as a social nicety, something reserved for conference receptions and LinkedIn requests. That view sells the discipline short. Deliberate relationship building, both inside the organization and beyond its walls, is one of the most practical tools available for turning the IHI Quintuple Aim from an aspirational framework into daily operating practice.
The Quintuple Aim as a Relationship Problem
The Triple Aim, introduced by Berwick, Nolan, and Whittington in 2008, challenged health systems to simultaneously improve the experience of care, improve population health, and reduce per capita cost.1 Bodenheimer and Sinsky later added workforce well-being,2 and in 2022 Nundy, Cooper, and Mate proposed health equity as the fifth aim.3 Each aim lives in a different part of the organization. Patient experience sits with nursing and quality leaders. Population health sits with ambulatory and community programs. Cost sits with finance and supply chain. Workforce well-being sits with human resources, occupational health, and frontline managers. Equity often sits with a dedicated office or, in smaller facilities, with no one in particular.
Value analysis is one of the few functions whose decisions touch all five at once. A new wound dressing, infusion pump, or surgical device affects outcomes, cost, staff workload, and which patients benefit. The professional who can convene the right voices at the right time is the one who can evaluate a product against all five aims instead of only price and preference. That ability depends on relationships built long before the request lands on the agenda.
Building the Internal Network
Internal networking begins with mapping who holds knowledge and influence for each aim, then investing in those relationships before they are needed. Consider a few priority connections. Infection prevention, quality, and patient safety colleagues hold the outcome data that connect products to harm events. Regular contact with them allows value analysis to anticipate problems and to measure whether a conversion delivered the clinical result that was promised.
Frontline nurses, technicians, and physicians know how products perform in real workflows. Rounding on units, attending staff meetings, and recruiting clinical champions builds trust and surfaces usability concerns that affect workforce well-being. A product that saves a few dollars per unit but adds steps to an already strained shift works against the fourth aim.
Finance, revenue cycle, and contracting partners translate clinical value into total cost of ownership and reimbursement impact. Relationships here help value analysis move the conversation from unit price to value.
Equity, patient experience, and community health leaders are often the most overlooked connections. They can help answer questions that rarely appear on a product request form: Does this device perform equally well across skin tones, body sizes, and age groups? Are patient instructions available in the languages the community speaks? Will the product be available at every site, including rural and safety net locations?
Sociologist Ronald Burt described the advantage held by people who bridge otherwise disconnected groups, noting that those who span these “structural holes” are more likely to generate and recognize good ideas.4 Value analysis professionals occupy exactly that bridging position. Treating it as a core competency, and not an accident of the job description, strengthens every decision the program makes.
Extending the Network Externally
External relationships widen the evidence base and shorten the learning curve. Granovetter’s classic work on the strength of weak ties showed that new information most often arrives through acquaintances outside one’s close circle.5 For value analysis, those ties include peers at other health systems, professional associations such as AHVAP, group purchasing organizations, academic partners, regulators, and industry.
Peer networks allow professionals to ask a simple but powerful question: What happened when you converted to this product? That shared experience can prevent costly missteps and reveal implementation lessons no manufacturer brochure will contain. Professional associations offer structured venues for that exchange through conferences, communities of practice, certification, and publication.
Industry partners deserve particular attention. A transparent, ethically bounded relationship with suppliers gives value analysis earlier access to clinical evidence, education resources, supply continuity information, and data on product performance. The goal is strategic partnership with clear rules of engagement, where both parties understand that evidence and outcomes drive decisions.
Making Networking Operational
Relationships produce results only when they are managed with the same discipline as any other program asset. Several practices help. Build a stakeholder map organized by the five aims and review it annually for gaps. Schedule recurring touchpoints with key partners instead of waiting for a crisis. Add Quintuple Aim criteria, including equity and workforce impact, to the product request and evaluation forms so that the right experts are pulled in by design. Bring something of value to every interaction, whether data, a literature summary, or a connection to another colleague. Finally, share outcomes back with everyone who contributed, because closing the loop is what converts a single interaction into a lasting relationship.
Conclusion
The Quintuple Aim cannot be achieved by any one department, and it cannot be achieved by value analysis professionals working alone at a committee table. It is achieved through connected people who trust one another enough to share evidence, challenge assumptions, and act together. Networking, practiced with intention, is how value analysis professionals build that connective tissue and demonstrate their strategic worth to the organizations and communities they serve. AHVAP, as a professional association, has created a portfolio of tools, resources, and best practices to guide fostering these interprofessional relationships. To learn more and access these tools, visit www.ahvap.org.
References
- Berwick DM, Nolan TW, Whittington J. The Triple Aim: care, health, and cost. Health Aff (Millwood). 2008;27(3):759-769.
- Bodenheimer T, Sinsky C. From triple to quadruple aim: care of the patient requires care of the provider. Ann Fam Med. 2014;12(6):573-576.
- Nundy S, Cooper LA, Mate KS. The Quintuple Aim for health care improvement: a new imperative to advance health equity. JAMA. 2022;327(6):521-522.
- Burt RS. Structural holes and good ideas. Am J Sociol. 2004;110(2):349-399.
- Granovetter MS. The strength of weak ties. Am J Sociol. 1973;78(6):1360-1380.
Article by:
J. Hudson Garrett Jr., Ph.D., MSN, MPH, MBA, FNP-BC, IP-BC, PLNC, VA-BC, BC-MSLcert™, MSL-BC, CPHRM, LTC-CIP, CPPS, CAE, CPHQ, CVAHPTM, CMRP, CPXP, CDIPC, FACDONA, FAAPM, eFACHDM, FNAP, FACHE, FAPIC, FSHEA, FIDSA, FAHVAP
Dr. Garrett is the Executive Director and Executive Vice President for the Association of Healthcare Value Analysis Professionals (AHVAP) and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
Anne Marie Orlando, MBA, BS, RN, RCIS, CVAHP, CMRP, PNAP, FACHE, FACHDM, FAHVAP
Anne Marie is the Vice President of Clinical Services at Yankee Alliance and serves as the President of the Board of Directors for the Association of Healthcare Value Analysis Professionals (AHVAP).
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