Hello there! My name is Alya (She/her) and I am currently an NHC member, serving as a Value-based Care Coordinator with the Quality Improvement Team at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. I am from the Central Valley and completed my undergraduate education at UC Berkeley. For one of my gap years before going to medical school in August of 2024, I wanted to do service in a Bay Area community and this position has allowed me to do just that!

Value-based Care (VBC) is not a well-known term, even amongst healthcare providers. It refers to a system for structuring healthcare funding that focuses on increasing the quality for patients through defined healthcare outcomes and improving provider performance. The goal is for patients to take the most value from each visit while limiting the increase in cost. Staff are encouraged to integrate a patient’s medical needs with their socioeconomic needs by screening them for assistance measures such as transportation or food support. A crucial part of the system is requiring providers to track outcomes for their patients and assess where disparities or gaps lie. These aspects are major contributors to Value-based Care’s attention to health equity because the goal is to ensure patients across demographics are obtaining similar healthcare outcomes.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health is a great place for VBC to be implemented. With multiple Primary Care locations across the city and a comprehensive array of specialty care clinics at the Zuckerberg General Hospital, it is a prime set up to monitor individual patient care. Its patient population consists of a majority uninsured or publicly insured population. How does my role play into this system? As a coordinator with the Quality Incentive Pool team, I help analyze and improve performance in health metrics assigned by the state. For example, I am helping the hospital try to increase the percentage of eligible patients who have received their flu vaccine by doing outreach calls and promoting the pop-up vaccine clinic. Other areas I do outreach for are Postpartum care and a Zoster immunization project. The diversity of patients seen at the clinics has been a welcome observation on my part, demonstrated by the many occasions I have used the hospital’s effective interpreter services line.

As an AmeriCorps member, I have the unique opportunity to be involved in creative projects and participate across entities. The UCSF Vaccine Team is researching how clinic workflows and patient perspectives impact their likelihood of receiving vaccines. I have participated in observations, focus groups, and brainstorm sessions with the team in DPH clinics with DPH patients. Access to multiple specialty care clinics, even operating within the same physical location, has proved beneficial for our understanding of the patient experience with vaccines.

Serving in this position has exposed me to the aspects of healthcare that are outside of patient care, but are crucial to patient care’s long-term success. Understanding what goes into making healthcare sustainable, efficient, and equitable for patients will help me in my career as a physician.