Health:Further

Nancy Everitt is the Founder and CEO of HEOPS. Our conversation focused on the new Medicare supplemental benefits program and how even things like pest control could be covered under the new rules - talk about innovation! Also, we talk about the healthcare infrastructure necessary for providers to take advantage of the new rules. Note that "healthcare infrastructure" isn't necessarily server farms and broadband internet, but provider credentialing more.

Dr. Art Papier is the CEO of VisualDx, which is a visual clinical decision support system specialized in medical image recognition and analysis. The company’s tagline is “quality care begins with an accurate diagnosis,” which to me is so perfect, it almost comes across as a little ironic or tongue-in-cheek. Because of course, good care requires a good diagnosis, right? And yet, that misdiagnosis is a real problem in our healthcare system today. So we’re going to get into that and what it means for both individual patients and the healthcare system as a whole.

Dr. Jordan Asher is Chief Clinical Officer of Ascension Care Management. A few weeks ago, posted his perspective on how physician practice consolidation is driving changes in how providers deliver care. Here, we follow up with him to talk about that and more. He says, "As we talk about ‘consolidation’ or ‘expansion,’ it's not a new concept. At the end of the day, there are lots of reasons why people come together to form larger communities.” Consolidation in healthcare happens because clinicians want to focus more on time with patients than the business of healthcare. It happens because hospitals can deliver more effective value-based care when physicians are employees. It also has drawbacks, which Dr. Asher discusses during the conversation.

Despite what you might have heard, artificial intelligence and blockchain weren’t the biggest topics at HIMSS ’18. They were big, along with cybersecurity and healthcare innovation in general. But according to Linda Stotsky, the biggest splash came at the very beginning of the conference when patients walked in the door. Stotsky has over two decades of experience in health and healthcare, with particular expertise on systems and services. She started as a practice administrator, then moved into the electronic medical record (EMR) world for several years. Today she is a consultant with an emphasis on marketing. With all that, Stotsky is deeply embedded in the health IT world, and joined us on The Future of Health to talk about what’s going on in that world based on the events at HIMSS ’18.

As patients move out of an acute care setting (e.g., an ICU) into a post-acute setting (skilled nursing facility, rehabilitation facility, or even home), there is a challenging handoff that must occur to ensure their safe transition and ongoing recovery. Caregivers must be able to take all of the patient’s information and complex medical situation and build a care plan that will allow them to regain their health and hopefully avoid future problems. This handoff is one of the areas of healthcare that can represent a chokepoint. Clay Richards is CEO of NaviHealth, a Cardinal Health company that helps healthcare organizations create and manage those care transitions. They help “manage patients, improve clinical and financial outcomes, and share risk with payors and providers.” Richards joined us on The Future of Health to explain the problem of care transitions and NaviHealth’s solution.

A couple of weeks ago we profiled Health:Further Chief Medical Development Officer Mario Ramirez’s career and how his experiences brought him to his current role as a clinician entrepreneur. This week we spoke with Greg Goodman, another clinician entrepreneur and founder of the Physician Entrepreneur Summit (PES), about why he took an unconventional path to his medical career and how he hopes to help other clinicians get into healthcare innovation.

Dan Kirkpatrick, Founder and Managing Partner of Partners in Improvement, works with physician practices, particularly emergency medicine groups, to improve their operational efficiency, financial standing and leadership. We discuss a range of topics including the foundation of a successful medical practice, deficits in clinician training in terms of healthcare business expertise, MedPAC and MIPS, and the future of the hospital.

AndPlus is a mobile and web app development shop located in Boston. The team specializes in healthcare applications, working on everything from medical devices to patient-facing products. Marketing Director Abdul Dremali says that their expertise lies in taking complex products like a medical device, and building a user interface and user experience (UI/UX) that is so good, so simple, that "you don't need a manual." Dremali explains how they do it, and along the way offers ideas for anyone trying to create a more efficient user experience.

Austin Madison is Senior Vice President of The Crichton Group. He runs the employer benefits side of the firm, working with companies to build appropriate health insurance plans, along with keeping track of regulatory and compliance issues. Like all of us in healthcare, Madison is watching significant changes in the industry, leading to realignment in relationships among the many stakeholders, as well as new mechanisms for consumers to take more control of their interaction with the entire medical system. Our interview covered disruption and shifts among three groups: employers, payers and consumers.

Everyone has a health story. If you haven’t been a patient, someone close to you has. Each situation is different, a unique combination of factors ranging from a single genetic variation to the social, cultural and physical environment. At the same time, many of the processes and technologies used to prevent these situations - and treat them when they occur - are standardized. And in most cases, we only get to see part of the story. Even when we’re the patient, there are pieces of the process that remain unclear. We only get parts of the history of our disease; the genetic basis for our condition is confusing and often obscure; we don’t get a clear look at the people and companies working on new treatment options. With Contributing Factors, Health:Further is pulling back that curtain. We’ll be talking to clinicians, historians, economists, biomedical researchers, entrepreneurs, sociologists, investors and, most importantly, patients. Contributing Factors, Season 1: Depression, launches March 1. Join us as we explore the (whole) story of health. Sign up at healthfurther.com/contributing-factors for updates on the launch and access to bonus content