Podcasts about healthsounds

While shared savings could be several years in the future for fledgling accountable care organizations, there are shortcuts for physician practices in ACOs to generate population health revenue immediately, explains Tim Gronniger, senior vice president of development and strategy for Caravan Health. In this HealthSounds episode, Gronniger outlines the rationale for using three Medicare billing codes--the annual wellness visit (AWV), chronic care management and advanced care planning--to create revenue that offsets ACO infrastructure costs.

As 2017 draws to a close, the recent CVS Health-Aetna merger continues to dominate the healthcare conversation. David Buchanan, president, Buchanan Strategies, weighed in on the non-traditional partnership during Trends Shaping the Healthcare Industry in 2018: A Strategic Planning Session, a December 2017 webinar now available for replay. In this HealthSounds episode, Buchanan predicts the future of mega mergers in healthcare, the impact of the CVS-Aetna alliance on brand awareness, and the real ‘bonanza’ of the $69 billion partnership beyond bringing healthcare closer to home for many consumers.

As patients of Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) began to utilize the features of its newly minted portal, LVHN and its physician providers soon recognized the added benefits of this interactive tool. In this HealthSounds episode, LVHN’s Lindsay Altimare outlines seven ways the LVHN portal, the fastest growing portal on the Epic® platform, improves efficiency and quality for her organization.

How do you engage community residents in their health when many are distrustful of and feel disrespected by the healthcare system? Encourage them to both direct and participate in the initiative, advises Charmaine Ruddock, project director of Bronx Health REACH. In this HealthSounds episode, Ms. Ruddock shares what Bronx Health REACH learned early on in its coalition-building from community focus groups, and how this local feedback informed program development for a community traditionally ranked last in New York in terms of health outcomes and health factors.

How can care teams encourage patients to open up about sensitive social determinant of health (SDOH) factors? By employing motivational interviewing to establish a respectful partnership, advises Cindy Buckels, TAV Health director of population health. In this HealthSounds episode, Ms. Buckels explains why motivational interviewing is more effective than the usual Chunk-Check-Change approach in transforming patient ambivalence and effecting the kind of behavior change that improves health.

How receptive are clinicians to being coached in patient engagement techniques? At PinnacleHealth, provider reaction to rollout of patient engagement coaching has followed a standard bell curve, notes Kathryn Shradley, PinnacleHealth’s director of population health. In this HealthSounds episode, Ms. Shradley outlines the framework underscoring the engagement coach’s supportive and educational role while at providers’ elbows as well as ways the health system earned clinicians’ support for the initiative.

For patients with cancer, palliative care should begin at diagnosis to help them shoulder the disease’s emotional, physical and financial burdens, explains Laura Ostrowsky, director of case management at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). However, for multiple reasons, referrals to hospice frequently happen too late for MSKCC patients to derive full benefit from that service. In this episode of HealthSounds, Ms. Ostrowsky shares some key questions for integrated case managers to ask providers to improve timeliness of hospice referrals, patient and family satisfaction with hospice service, and awareness of end-of-life care. The strategy is one way MSKCC uses integrated case management to validate its worth in a value-based system: providing the best care in a quality-effective manner.

From partnering with non-traditional providers like retail clinics to targeting larger physician practices to achieve savings and boost health outcomes, watch for health plans to continue to reshape primary care delivery over the coming year, predicts Catherine Sreckovich, managing director, healthcare, Navigant. Ms. Sreckovich outlines seven ways in which payors will influence primary care, advocates for big data for both payors and providers, and comments on the longevity of the bundled or episodic payment trend in this HealthSounds interview. Catherine Sreckovich and Steven Valentine, president of The Camden Group, provided a roadmap to the key issues, challenges and opportunities for healthcare providers and payors in 2014 during an October 30, 2013 webinar, "Healthcare Trends and Forecasts in 2014: A Strategic Planning Session."

When healthcare providers and health plan case managers join forces in the physician practice, the end result is "care completion," explains Dr. Randall Krakauer, medical director for Aetna Medicare. In his second HealthSounds interview, Dr. Krakauer describes how the meshing of complementary patient data and knowledge from payor and provider improves the "completion factor" of care that is ordered and provides feedback on the impact of this care. Dr. Krakauer will be presenting during the November 30, 2011 webinar, "Demonstrating the Value of the Embedded Case Manager for the Medicare Population," during which he will share the strategy supporting Aetna's embedded case management initiative, along with results from the program relating to healthcare utilization and member satisfaction.