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

Listen in to Brooks Daverman, Deputy Director of TennCare,-Tennessee's Medicaid program, debate Catalyst for Payment Reform's Suzanne Delbanco on the need for standard bundled payment definitions and how to scale the payment method nationwide. Brooks Daverman has helped lead the implementation of 48 different episodes-of-care with over 2,000 different provider organizations, from small rural practices to large health systems, covering everything from maternity care to behavioral health conditions.

Listen in as Suzanne Delbanco calls Cheryl DeMars, President & CEO of The Alliance - a cooperative of 240 self-funded employers pooling their purchasing power to control costs and improve quality. The Alliance contracts directly with health care systems to provide health care for over 90K employees and their families in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois. Find out why the Alliance was formed in the early 90's and how it continues to deliver strong results in present day through innovative strategies, like Quality Path and high-value primary care.

Listen in as Trent Haywood, MD, JD, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, outlines key initiatives and goals for addressing social determinants of health, also referred to as addressing social risk factors or community barriers. Learn more about BCBSA's innovative partnerships, either nationally with Lyft for transportation services or locally with healthy meal delivery organizations. This episode is for all those who are already on the Social Determinants of Health bandwagon, as well as those more skeptical who want to understand the concrete goals such programs can bring forth.

Suzanne Delbanco chats with Frank Opelka, MD, FACS, Medical Director for Quality and Health Policy with the American College of Surgeons, to understand how surgeons across the United States view bundled or episode-based payment. Frank describes the questions and concerns surgeons hold about moving away from fee-for-service payments, as well as the benefits to bundled payments from a surgeon's point of view. There's evidence that bundled payments can improve care and efficiency, yet uptake continues to be in the single digits of total health care spending. What are the ingredients necessary to help bundled payments take off successfully?

Suzanne Delbanco calls Rachel Brodie, Director of the Performance Information programs at Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) to discuss patient-reported outcomes (PROs). Listen in to learn how PROs work and why employers are paying attention to this new area of quality measurement.

Listen in to Kaveh Safavi, MD, JD, Senior Managing Director, Head of Global Health Practice at Accenture, as he discusses recent research on the associated costs of the United State's health care system's complexity with Catalyst for Payment Reform's Suzanne Delbanco. There are so many confusing terms when it comes to accessing health insurance coverage: deductibles, co-pays, in-network, etc. What associated costs does this complexity generate? And what's the best solution toward improving health system literacy? Kaveh Safavi brings a unique perspective informed by his experience working internationally with other countries facing high health care expenditures.

Suzanne Delbanco catches up with Sam Arsenault, Director of National Treatment Quality Initiatives for Shatterproof, on the latest milestones in the work to bring provider quality ratings into the substance use disorder space. Sam goes over the dimensions that the provider quality ratings will cover, piloting the effort in five states, and how providers are reacting to the initiative. Listen in to learn what it takes to bring a provider rating system into fruition and what the ultimate goal of the project entails.

Listen in as Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School and a hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, chats all things convenient care with Suzanne Delbanco. Between retails clinics, onsite clinics, and telemedicine, there are many new options cropping up for consumers. What do employers need to know about quality and costs when pursuing these options? What can purchasers and consumers expect to see in the future? Listen in to find out!

Listen in as Suzanne Delbanco chats with Gloria Sachdev, PharmD, President and CEO of the Employers’ Forum of Indiana. They discuss one of the hottest studies in health care: the RAND Hospital Prices In Indiana study published by Chapin White. The landmark employer-led study uses claims data from self-insured employers to report hospital prices by health system relative to Medicare. Tune in to find out how the study was born, how the data was produced, and what employers are doing with the results, including a glimpse at a new movement in health care: negotiating contracts on a Medicare+ basis.

Listen in as CPR's Executive Director, Suzanne Delbanco, chats with Google's Healthcare Delivery Benefits Manager, Rob Paczkowski. Just like the HR department of many employers, the benefits team at Google works hard to build awareness among Googlers about in-network, high-value health care options, including telemedicine, on-site clinics, and even home health care. Listen in to hear about the innovative ways Rob Paczkowski and the Google benefits team use the employee communications channels available to them. Spoiler Alert: There are some Cloud solutions brewing!