This is Laura D with the Becker Healthcare
care podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Doctor
Edward J, Chief Q Officer at Inland Empire
Health Plan. Doctor. Jonas is a pleasure to
have you on the podcast today.
Well, thanks so much for having me.
Now I'm really looking forward to our discussion
and learning more about what you're doing it
in inland impact higher, But before we dive
in, could you tell me a little bit
more about yourself in your background?
Sure. So I've served as I fees chief
quality officer since 20 21. I'm also an
internal medicine physician and prior to joining I
hp. I have the blessed operative team to
serve in various roles at different organizations.
I guess I say that for the past
10 to 15 years, I've been sitting at
the intersection of clinical care,
data innovations technology and public health. An Ash
chief Quality officer, my job is to drive
our commitment to providing the highest quality of
care, And we do that by innovating in
all areas across our health plan from giving
payment incentives to our network doctors who have
higher quality outcomes.
For using data in impactful ways to increase
member engagement,
and the key to making this seamless is
in partnerships. Both of our internal teams and
with our external community partners.
Well, it's great to hear. And definitely a
lot can be gained by those strategic partnerships.
Now From your perspective, what are the big
trends and headwind that you're following right now?
Well, whatever we do, it's always about putting
the members at the center of our universe.
A big trend we're following to do this
is by addressing the social drivers of health.
This concept is really about looking at what's
affecting our member's ability to stay healthy.
It includes things like access to food,
transportation, stable housing and more, and we have
teams that are dedicated to helping our members
get these types of resources so that they
can thrive.
There's also been a big trend in ethic
emphasis,
especially over the past few years or so
on leveraging strong partnerships outside the traditional clinical
setting. For example, through our partnerships, We're able
to bring services like mobile health and vaccine
clinics to rural communities.
And as an example, we're also increasing our
programming and efforts that are 3 community wellness
centers
located in San Ad bernardino,
Riverside and Hill, which are free to all
community members
And the benefit is that if you are
an Hp member, you can go to these
centers to meet with a community health worker
for 1 on 1 support.
Address things like care coordination,
enrollment supported more.
And along with these trends are the natural
headwind.
That come with working on something relatively newer
to the healthcare ecosystem as a whole. And
learning how to work better and more seamlessly
and more effectively
with all the stakeholders involved,
especially as we collectively work toward improving how
we deliver and provide high quality care,
Now I'm proud to share that we've taken
a big step towards this as we at
Hp recently received our health equity accreditation through
the National Committee for quality assurance.
And this important designation reflects our ongoing pursuit
of ensuring that all our members
receive culturally appropriate care.
Making sure that we're keeping up with the
best practices when it comes to collecting important
demographic data,
tracking, trending and strat find members in a
non biased way.
Working towards ethical use of data,
analytics and advanced techniques such as
artificial intelligence and machine learning and And again,
we can only accomplish this by working alongside
our providers,
community,
stakeholders and regulators
to ensure that is better together story.
Well, it's great to hear. You know, I
really appreciate you talking through some of these
different points as digital technology transformed as possible
in healthcare care and using data.
To really have have a great perspective on,
you know, the best plan forward and really
help treat patients what... And give them what
they need. Now, you know, from your perspective
too, well, how are you thinking about growth
for the future at Inland?
Well, growth is exciting to me, and it's
1 of the things that brought me. To
Ie fee.
Our bold strategic plan is focused on 3
key areas,
optimal care, fiber and health and organizational strength
and I'll just talk about the first 2
today.
The first 1, optimal care
ensures our members receive the care, they need
to live their best lives. And we hope
to deliver the right care at the right
time in the right setting by the right
provider.
And we hope to accomplish this with a
variety of programs and tactics
whether it's providing meaningful
financial incentives to our members
or if it's physically finding ways to provide
helpful office support to our clinics,
and everything in between, and we're always looking
for ways to innovate. For example, late last
year. We launched our first I p quality
focused innovation challenge, to creatively address some of
the harder challenges we're facing when it comes
to achieving the quality goals in our region.
So that we can transform health in the
communities we serve.
In this challenge, we basically invited industry experts,
healthcare professionals,
innovators
to submit their creative solution on key opportunity
areas, including how to better engage your
populations with their preventive care,
out address family units as a whole when
providing care,
out of leverage data, at a national State
and local level and how to better engage
our members,
and we got some really creative ideas and
solutions some of which we're thinking about piloting
on today.
And as for our second strategy, we're focusing
on vibrant health, which really aims to reinvest
resources back into the Inland empire to increase
support for our members.
For example, we've recently provided funding, for I
foundation, which is a separate 05:01 c 3
to explore the development of blue zones, which
you might have seen on Netflix
these are communities that optimize policy, neighborhood design,
food systems, social networks to provide a complete
community.
Centered all around Wellness,
and we're also looking for ways to address
provider burnout and physician shortages in our region,
For example, the Inland Empire has 1 of
the lowest ratios of primary care and specialty
physicians per 100000
people in California.
We don't have enough specialty and behavioral health
providers to serve a current fast growing population.
So we established. A health scholarship fund to
close the gap on that care ratio. The
scholarship we offer basically removes the financial burden
for students,
and in exchange, they agree to stay in
the Inland empire, a minimum of 5 years
after
graduation to serve our communities
And today I'm pleased to assure that we
currently offer
50 full rights scholarships per year
through 3 medical schools.
Loma Melinda University,
University of California
Riverside, and California University
of science and medicine,
and it's important to call out that more
than 30 of our current scholars grew up
in the region and 50 percent are identified
as first generation medical students who grew up
in a low income housing setting.
And these are just a few ways we're
not only thinking about the future, but also
intentionally investing in it,
I love that. I think that's such a
great example of ways that you've made a
really big difference as a population changes as
things grow and and, you know, really having
that quality focused innovation in mind. Now before
we wrap up here, I was wondering, can
you tell me about a project or initiative
from the last year or so that yielded
the best results?
Well, there could be a few. But 1
that stands out in particular for me is
our pay for performance program, also known as
p for p.
These are basically incentive programs to reward our
I hp network providers who meet key quality
improvement measures.
Where we provide financial rewards based on both
year over year improvements
and achieving top tier quality performance outcomes,
We currently offer 7 different programs under the
structure. And last year, our budget was over
283000000
dollars.
This year, when we're able to increase that
by 5000000 dollars for a total of over
288000000.
Now I know that's a lot of money
but the collective good of this program can't
be fully understood until you know the numbers.
But let me add a little more context.
Through this incentive program, we've engaged nearly 900
primary care locations, 267
Ob,
32 hospitals,
15 independent physician associations and 10 urgent care
centers, all in service as of better supporting,
more than 1500000.0
I member, in our region. And here's the
connection to outcomes as the engagement rate of
our P program has increased versus 2 have
our quality measures. In fact, we saw over
30 quality measures improved last year. These are
measures that have both state and federal regulatory
oversight and impact and is also relates to
member health outcomes, and it really inspires me
personally to see that all of these numbers
boil down to our court purpose
to give our members the highest quality of
care, and there's just no better purpose than
that to
Agreed. That that's amazing to hear in just
really strong strong results. Doctor. John, thank you
so much for joining us on a podcast
today. This has been a really fascinating discussion
and I appreciate your time, I look forward
to connecting with you again soon.
Thanks, for. Appreciate it.
Shin