Dr. Marc Berg, KPMG in the Netherlands 

Hi, I’m Marc Berg. I’m from the Netherlands. I’m a medical doctor and a health scientist by training. I first had an academic career, becoming a Professor of Health Management and Policy, and from that got a knack for going out into the field, helping doctors and hospitals to improve their care, applying business-like principles to the problems that affected them: waiting lists, not being in control of their outcomes, etc., etc. Became a partner of Plexus after being a professor for several years. Plexus is a consultancy company in the Netherlands that really worked at the cross lines of business-like mode of operandi, health care knowledge, and fundamental knowledge.

The consultancy company was bought half a year ago by KPMG, and we’re now part of the global effort to put healthcare on the agenda, to drive forward our mission of providing high quality healthcare at a low cost.

The most important thing is that we know what it means when we say value. The core issue that’s playing out is that we’re paying way too much money, and actually we’re paying a lot of money for things that actually destroy value, in the sense of quality for people. In many different countries that plays out in a different way. But we’re over diagnosing, we’re over treating, we are spending the wrong money in the wrong place. Even in developing countries we’re investing in the wrong things and we’re stimulating the wrong developments. So once we know how to measure value, and once we can demonstrate to payers, governments, public providers, how to move from being lower value to high value, you know, once you’ve got that in place you’ve got a common language to discuss, and you’ve got a common denominator and an agenda to pursue. So for me that’s the crucial nugget of gold that we’re going to have to find the common [PH] decennium.