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This is Laura Dierdo with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by doctor
Robert Groves, executive vice president and chief medical
officer at Banner Aetna. Doctor Groves, it's a
pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
Laura, thank you so much. I'm glad to
be here again.
Now I'm looking forward to our
we learn so much from, from you when
we have a chance to connect. And, really,
the cool things that you're doing at Banner
Aetna, it just sounds like a really amazing
partnership and way to dig deeper into providing
great value for patients and the community. But
before we dive into my questions, can you
tell me a little bit more about yourself
and your background?
Sure. Yeah. Robert Groves. I'm a pulmonary critical
care physician by training, spent
a couple of decades in
the traditional practice of pulmonary and critical care
medicine,
then joined Banner Health on the delivery side
and had various roles in that organization
for about a dozen years that culminated in
vice president of health management.
Got some great experiences there. And then almost
7 years ago now, I joined
a joint venture banner Aetna, which is just
like it sounds. It's a joint venture between
banner of health, the delivery system, and Aetna,
the insurance company.
We're trying to align incentives and change the
way that health care is delivered, at least
in Arizona, and, you know, tossing new stuff
and make it easier for people to access
care and to navigate the system.
Well, that's great to hear, you know, and
what a amazing career journey you've had as
as a clinician and now working with Banner
Aetna to really have a huge impact on
the broader community. Now from your perspective, what
are some of the biggest issues that you're
following in health care this year?
Well, you know,
the perennial issue that everyone is following
is cost. And, you know, patients feel it
when they look at their deductible or their
maximum out of pocket or their co pays.
Insurance companies are feeling the heat as well.
And delivery systems
are challenged
in our current environment. You know, recent changes
to the Medicare rules, for example, have some
folks reeling who have
depended on, different rules in the past. So
I think there's a lot of pressure on
costs that worries me.
And I think there are a lot of
things that we need to do, but it's
gonna take a sea change, I'm afraid, before
we get past that. So in the meantime,
it still is valuable to attack those incremental
challenges that we see each and every day
to try and make this a little bit
more tolerable,
for patients,
for our members at Banner Aetna. Good to
hear. You know, and certainly looking at those
challenges on the cost side as well as
trying to figure out how to, continue to
provide great care, I think is top of
mind for so many different organizations.
When you look at that health care delivery
side of
what do you really see as being exciting
about the future, and what makes you nervous?
Well, I
I I think one of the things that's
exciting about the future, first of all, is
that we're coming out of
the pandemic era
and starting to establish a new baseline. You
know, it's really hard
to predict what might happen,
during the pandemic and immediately after the pandemic.
And everybody is, I think, given the opportunity
now, 2024
has been a reset year. We've seen some
uptick in demand for health care services.
This is not shocking, given what happened during
the pandemic,
but I think we're going to be able
to at least establish a new baseline and
move forward. And that's exciting because
then we can predict what's gonna happen much
better than we could for the last several
years.
Now having said that, I think one of
the other things that is really exciting for
me specifically at Banner Aetna
is we are
changing the way that we think about
care management. And we're really getting back to
those in person type meetings and creating community
with something we call the Banner Aetna Eco.
And to give you an example of what
these programs are like, I'll pull out one
example, the banner Aetna Kitchen. And the way
this works is we take our high risk
diabetics and we offer them an opportunity
to once a week
come into a cooking show like experience. And
so what that means is they come in,
they have their own cook station, they have
their own ingredients,
and they pair off. And with a chef,
and a nutritionist in attendance,
They were able to actually engage in what
it looks like, what it feels like, and
what it tastes like to cook a healthy
meal. It has been very, very successful and
wildly popular,
with our members.
Now the pushback that we've gotten on that,
Laura, as well, it's not scalable.
And I wanna remind people that,
there are several factors that make this scalable
in an old fashioned way. I mean that
by person to person. For example, this is
experiential
learning. That's very different from didactic learning. In
experiential learning, you're gonna retain up to 90%
of what you learn because you're actually doing
it. They'll take those same ingredients home, make
a meal for their families. The second thing
that makes it really important is that creation
of community. We bring people together so they
actually meet. They're able to share experiences,
share tips, provide mutual support.
Really important to create community. And in addition
to that, we're partnering with the city of
Phoenix. We're partnering with, community colleges and establishing
those relationships as well. And then the final
thing that makes it scalable
is there is nothing more powerful than word-of-mouth.
We've had 2 clients come up to us
already and say, can you do a customized
program that we'll pay for just for our
members?
So, I'm excited about that. We added, something
we call banner at the active to get
people out and moving again. And there are
several other programs that we're bringing into what
we call the Vaneretna eco. And I'm incredibly
excited about recreating community post pandemic.
Well, that's amazing to hear. And that community
element certainly is so important. I appreciate you
talking about the investment of being able to
have a scalable and sustainable,
program, you know, like this that really brings
people together. It might not be a a
traditional,
program, but really is something that makes, a
big difference for the community and and people
who are a part of it. From your
perspective, you know, when you look at kind
of the downstream
results
of people being able to just learn how
to,
be
eat healthier and cook even for their families.
What how do you think about that and
measure that and then package that to those,
you know, folks who are wondering, what is
this investment? Is it really worth it in
continuing on with this type of program?
Yeah. Well, you know, to go back to
experiential learning, I I I want people to
think about it this way. When we're giving
nutrition
lectures or we're providing,
information to patients that, you know, they can
self learn,
and we're doing it digitally.
The retention on that is not really high.
I mean, we've all been there. You sit
through a lecture,
you go home a couple of days later,
you you try to remember, what did I
learn? But if somebody actually goes through
the body
engagement in cooking a meal,
we're not just creating students. We're creating teachers.
They go home. They tell their family about
it. They tell their friends. We are actually
creating teachers that go back out into the
community and say, this is not as hard
as I thought. And what's amazed me is
how many people
in that group
of, of, high risk metabolic syndromes and diseases,
didn't know how to do this stuff. They
literally
had not been exposed
to these ideas and these concepts
in a way that they could retain
previously. So we're really
excited about that. But something is true of
bringing people together to do activities. So, you
know, the banner active, they'll go out, visit
museums,
visit parks, visit,
visit fitness gyms, and learn what it's like
to get back out in the community to
meet people and to do physical activities that
are
tailored to their level of initial fitness. Obviously,
we have their docs approved this, and, we're
excited about that aspect of it too. And
then we have another program called know your
numbers that just encourages them to come in.
You know, if you haven't had that hemoglobin
a one c drawn or you haven't had
that blood pressure checked in a while, let
us help you do that in a setting
that's fun, that is catered, and it has,
you know, peers that you can share stories
with. You'll you'll be surrounded by those kinds
of people.
We've had folks that,
really love this so much that they volunteer
to continue,
in the program afterwards to help guide other
members. So I think it has legs. And
by the way, if you wanna give it,
an electronic,
spin on the back end, we're, toying with
the idea of creating,
an app or a web page where people
can go and share recipes and share,
you know, stories and
access their,
providers,
etcetera. So there are ways to make this
scalable, if you will, in the in the,
what has now become the electronic sense. But
I think it's really important to bring people
back together
in person and start to create that sense
of community.
And that really makes a lot so much,
doctor. Oh, and by the way, Laura, we
are tracking outcomes in this program. So, we
know from self reporting from the initial
pilot phase of the study, which has been
about a year and a half, 2 years
now,
on the kitchen,
that hemoglobin A1Cs
drop, that blood pressure drops and that weight
drops. And those are the three fundamental
measures of quality,
and it happens in a way that, that
members really enjoy. They don't feel like it's
a burden, and they're excited about it.
That's amazing to hear. You know? And great,
as you mentioned, great results on the number
side as well as, the anecdotal side of
just, you know, having people really buy into
it.
Now before we wrap up here, I'm wondering
if you could talk
given some of these changes and how
being, the needs from patients in the community,
the most effective health care leaders need in
order
for the next 2 to 3 years or
so.
Yeah. You know,
this question comes up a lot. And
in my view, it is flexibility.
Health care leaders need to be able to
drive teams. There's no doubt they need to
be good collaborators.
This is a team sport. No matter which
level you want to look at, whether it's
the patient level, the delivery level or even
the administrative level. It is a team sport
now. There's so much information out there. I
think it's prudent for folks to keep up
with what's what our developments in artificial intelligence
for a variety of reasons. I know that
we, you know, at least it feels like
we're at the top of a hype cycle
here, with AI. And and there are probably
some folks out there saying, where's the delivery
on this? You know, what's it gonna be?
But I'll take you back to 1997.
There was the same sort of feeling about
webs and the Internet and,
web services in the Internet. Everybody was saying,
well, that's great. You know, you can talk
to your friends, but where's the the real
juice here? Now we all know that it
has become a source of
revenue for a variety of businesses, and it's
critically important to our current economy.
I think we're at that same place in
AI. Yes. There's gonna be a fall off.
There's gonna be a delay until people figure
out how to really implement it in a
way that brings value to the health care
market. And in particular, the health care market
can be kinda slow, and it can be
difficult,
to get off the ground. But I think
leaders need to keep up with, what's going
on in AI, learn about it. Now is
the time to learn and help develop those
tools that will, in the future, become the
standard,
by which, everything else is judged.
That makes a lot of sense. And, you
know, really, it's been fascinating to see how
AI and other technology has advanced the field
a lot over the last couple years. Doctor
Grove
joined us on the podcast today. This has
been just a really,
fun conversation, and I look forward to connecting
with you again soon.
Laura, thanks to you. Thanks to Becker's. It's
always a pleasure to interact with you guys.
I enjoyed a great deal.