Listening In (With Permission): Conversations About Today's Pressing Health Care Topics

Why is America's most common health care challenge the one we are least likely to talk openly about? Ryan Olmstead discusses mental health challenges with Mary Kay O'Neill, MD, MBA, senior clinical consultant with Mercer.

ON MAY 1... Hear from Mary Kay directly during CPR's Virtual Forum featuring employers, experts, and innovators discussing mental health.

Register here: https://www.catalyze.org/event/employers-demand-better-mental-health-care/

Listen in as Suzanne shares an intimate conversation with a health policy expert who has survived an opioid addiction. Though anonymous, her story shines a bright and personal light on what it is like to live with pain and seek treatment, giving employers and purchasers a new perspective on how to better manage substance use in their employee population.

CPR's Director of Member Services, Ryan Olmstead, chats with Andreas Mang, Chief Operating Officer at Equity Healthcare (EH). Learn how EH broke new ground in streamlining care navigation, and which innovators they're bringing to the table at their 2018 summit. You'll also hear Andreas' key channels for staying up-to-date on health care news, including the perks that come with serving as an access point for health care start ups wanting to reach Blackstone's portfolio of companies.

Are we really transitioning away from fee-for-service? Suzanne calls Bob Berenson, MD, Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute, to discuss the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, why it's flawed and why it's so important we fix it as we move to pay providers based on value.

Listen in to CPR's Director of Member Services, Ryan Olmstead, catch up with Lynn Quincy, Director of the Altarum Healthcare Value Hub. They discuss Lynn's favorite issue brief (http://www.healthcarevaluehub.org/advocate-resources/rethinking-consumerism-healthcare/), the pitfalls around Consumer Director Health Plans, and alternatives employers can take to lower health care costs without simply cost-shifting to consumers. You'll also hear the latest news on the upcoming pilot for Altarum's newest benefit design innovation: Medical Episode Spending Allowance (MESA)https://altarum.org/our-work/mesa-an-innovative-new-value-based-health-insurance-plan.

Suzanne dials up Farzad Mostashari, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aledade, an innovative organization with the mission to support primary care providers (PCPs) in the shift to value-based payment. Farzad explains why independent PCPs are set up to run and succeed as accountable care organizations (ACOs).

Why is it so important that employers pay close attention to their formularies? Emily Roesing calls Lauren Vela, Senior Director of Member Value at the Pacific Business Group on Health, to learn about the headaches and waste caused for employers, patients, and providers from our current method of pharmacy benefit management and how employers may be able to join forces to improve it.

Suzanne chats with Larry Levitt, Senior VP for Health Reform at the Kaiser Family Foundation, about employers' role in health care coverage given the passage of the recent tax law.

Roz Murray, CPR's Senior Project and Research Manager, called Jeff Rideout and his team, Lindsay Erickson and Ginamarie Gianandrea, to learn about the Integrated Healthcare Association's (IHA) effort to standardize quality measurement for accountable care organizations (ACOs). Roz learns why they took on this endeavor and their plans to obtain broader use of the measure set.

Suzanne is curious to learn from Michael Chernew, Health Economist and Professor at the Harvard Medical School, about employers' role in demanding and participating in evaluations of payment and delivery reform programs and what they need to know when launching a new program to ensure it can be subject to rigorous evaluation.