An effective value-based care model shouldn’t cost $75,000 extra per year, says Marta J. Van Beek, M.D., M.P.H.

Dermatology is moving toward outcome-based measurement, but the systems to capture patient outcomes (especially through EHRs or mobile tools) are still difficult and costly to implement, according to Marta J. Van Beek, M.D., M.P.H., a dermatologic surgeon at University of Iowa Health Care and a clinical professor at the university’s Carver College of Medicine.

She recently attended the 2026 American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting in Denver, where she spoke at several sessions, including ‘Data-Driven Dermatology: Mastering MIPS and Improving Practice Quality’ and Advocacy in Dermatology with the Experts: Intersections to Safeguard the Specialty.’

Van Beek met with Managed Healthcare Executive before the conference to talk about healthcare finance reform.

During this part of the conversation, Van Beek discusses the potential changes and improvements to performance measures for dermatologists.

She said there are currently metrics physicians can give to patients to allow patient-reported outcomes to be reported, but that there is a catch:

“We have to actually develop and streamline the way we deliver those, because it's not in our current regular delivery of care,” Van Beek said during her Managed Healthcare Executive interview. “We have to figure out how it works in the electronic medical record. Does it go to a patient's cell phone? How is it implemented back?”

She continued by explaining one of the biggest challenges to this is that CMS won’t let providers do a performance measure; it must be an outcome measure.

“A value-based care model should allow me to deliver care that's meaningful, that's cost-effective, that's gonna have the highest impact on my patient but shouldn't cost me $75,000 extra per year that I have to pay my EHR to record them, or that I have to have another full-time employee that makes sure the quality measures get uploaded on a quarterly basis,” she said.

As for specific fixes, Van Beek offered up several solutions, which include streamlining the mechanics of reporting, making sure physicians can see their data in real time and making sure value-based care accounts for the severity of disease.