In this week's episode, we sit down with Michele Sasso, Director of Clinical Programs and Technology and Rebekah Diamond, Director of Policy and Business Relations for the Department of Accountable Care and Clinical Integration at Boston Children's Hospital. They speak about the challenges and intricacies of running a pediatric ACO program and how their newly formed department seeks to put patient needs first.

The New England Quality Care Alliance (NEQCA) is a partnership of community and academic physicians dedicated to providing comprehensive, innovative, high quality and affordable health care. As Chief Financial Officer, Nate Gagne is accountable for the performance of NEQCA’s accounting, finance and information technology departments. Nate explains his role and how his team strives to provide better care, better health, lower cost and higher clinician satisfaction.

Yvonne LeBlanc, Manager of Pharmacy Operations for New

England Quality Care Alliance (NEQCA), discusses the role

of pharmacists in accountable care. This episode explores

how clinical pharmacists are underutilized despite what we

now know about their ability to help contain total cost of

care for patients and ensure high quality of care – and how

ACOs can better leverage pharmacy resources to impact

their populations."

In this episode, we hear from Mike Cannella, Assistant General Counsel for the Massachusetts Health Connector. Prior to his current role, Cannella served as the Legislative Director and Counsel for Massachusetts State Senator James T. Welch. This episode is packed with interesting insights into Massachusetts’ legislative efforts to restructure the state’s Medicaid program.

Fred Goldstein, President & Founder of Accountable Health, shares his thoughts about giving communities a mechanism to create interventions to improve their own health. In the value-based world, health care providers are trying to keep people healthy and are incentivized to do so, but what if we shift some of that responsibility and those incentive dollars to the communities themselves?

Clay Farris, Practice Lead of Mostly Medicaid, joins us to talk about the national Medicaid landscape. He discusses value-based care in Medicaid, how to succeed as a Medicaid ACO, and what to expect moving forward.

Dr. John Sargent, Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center, discusses the importance of behavioral health care as an integrated component of primary care and his role as a pediatric psychiatry consultant to primary care physicians and care teams in a Medicaid Accountable Care Organization. We dive into how an ACO can ensure that patients are receiving the right level of behavioral health care at the right time.

Learn about the role community based organizations play in serving patients with high needs and the imperative for these community partners and ACOs to partner to provide care coordination and care management for patients with severe mental illness. Our own, Lisette Roman sits down with Mary Takach from Boston Healthcare for the Homeless to learn about their efforts to care for the homeless population in a risk-based environment.

Hear Dr. Corey Waller, a national addiction expert, discuss what the health care system can be doing better to treat substance use disorders, why ACOs should be focusing on addiction, and how addiction can be successfully treated as a chronic disease.

Interdisciplinary case management can not only lower total cost of care, but also improve patients' lives. Our own Sarah Matousek sits down with a case management team to learn about how the MassHealth Medicaid program is allowing them to use meaningful interventions.