The 1 Word Defining Healthcare’s Future

July 15, 2026 | By: Francesca Mathewes | Article produced and published by Becker's Healthcare

Dan Tasset stepped back into the CEO role at Leawood, Kan.-based NueHealth this month, several years after stepping away from managing the company he founded in 1997 to spend time studying where healthcare was headed. He came back to NueHealth convinced he’d found the answer, and said it comes down to a single word.

“I’m absolutely convinced that the future of healthcare will be defined by one word, and that is ‘value,’” Mr. Tasset told Becker’s.

While Mr. Tasset acknowledged that this isn’t a new concept in healthcare, he argues that he now has a way to make the term mean something specific rather than function as a catchall.

“I know value-based care is often overused, and it often doesn’t have a definition,” he said. “I think there is a definition. In fact, I think there’s a real formula, and I think there’ll be a real grading system by using this formula.”

The formula he described defines value as clinical quality, or clinical outcomes, plus patient satisfaction, divided by cost.

“So you have a numerator and a denominator, and I think the future of healthcare is going to be defined by that value,” Mr. Tasset said.

The framework isn’t a new position for Mr. Tasset. In January, NueHealth added four ASC partnerships across Missouri and New Jersey. His return to the CEO seat, and the formula he’s brought back with him, reads as the next step in a journey to build a network of practices that make “value” measurable.

Mr. Tasset said his priority now is making sure NueHealth is built — operationally, financially, technologically and clinically — for a market where providers take on substantial downside risk in exchange for guaranteeing their results.

“I’m convinced that substantial, real downside risk is coming across healthcare, and I think surgical care is going to lead that transformation,” he said.

Getting there, in his telling, is a chain reaction that starts with data most ASCs aren’t yet collecting — details as granular as how long a tourniquet stays on during surgery or how quickly a patient ambulates on day two of recovery.

“This is really more than anything about the data that you’re able to collect, and so it’s really about technology,” he said. “Technology enables you to collect the data. The data enables you to underwrite the risk. Being able to underwrite the risk enables you to take real, substantial downside risk. And that’s where healthcare is going.”

Mr. Tasset pointed to CMS’ Ambulatory Specialty Model as an early version of the grading system he described, noting the program is already ranking roughly 8,600 physicians on outcomes for lower back pain or heart conditions — a scale he expects to expand, with commercial payers following CMS’ lead. For ASCs that don’t adapt, he said the risk isn’t falling behind. It’s disappearing from the delivery system altogether.

“I’m not talking about being at risk,” he said. “They’re just going to be left out of the delivery system. So they’re going to have to get on board with this. There is no doubt in my mind.”

Mr. Tasset said he expects surgical and procedural care to keep setting the pace for the rest of the industry as that shift plays out.

“I truly believe that this transformation is underway, and I believe that surgical care, procedural care, is going to set the example for the rest of healthcare,” he said. “It already is, and it’s moving in that direction.”