The value-based score: an opportunity for laboratory medicine in Spain and Europe

Abstract Background Health systems are moving from volume to value, understood as the ratio between the outcomes achieved and the costs incurred. This shift places the clinical laboratory in a strategic position and gives shape to value-based laboratory medicine (VBLM). Content To help turn that principle into practice, the EFLM has developed the value-based score (V-BS), a structured self-assessment and developmental benchmarking tool built around five domains. A European pilot study of twelve laboratories, two of them Spanish, found the tool feasible and easy to apply, and returned one consistent message: laboratories perform well in traceability and in the quality of the information they produce, but their interaction with clinicians is, almost everywhere, the weakest domain. Summary and outlook We suggest that the V-BS offers laboratories in Spain and across Europe a practical framework for improvement – one still to be tested and refined – and that the effort is best focused on clinical interaction, where laboratory expertise most directly influences clinical decisions, patient pathways and outcomes.