This is Laura Dierdo with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Chris Wassel, president of marketing and strategic partnerships
at Vantage Healthcare. Chris, it's a pleasure to
have you on the podcast today.
It's great to be here. Now I'm looking
forward to our discussion and really getting into
some of the big things that you're seeing
in health care today,
what you're looking forward to, and what you're
excited about in terms of growth and development
for the next year. But before we dive
into my questions,
can you tell me a little bit more
about yourself and Vantage Healthcare?
Yeah. Sure. So, again, I'm the head of
strategy and development for,
for Vantage. I have over 20 years experience
in health care operations, development,
value based payment, consulting, and network development.
Prior to joining Vantage, I was
a co managing director of
Post Acute Care Planning Services, which is an
organization
that provides
management and consulting services for ACOs,
looking to build
a post acute care provider network.
Also was the cofounder of Accountacare, which is
a health information
technology company that
works
with value based payment
organizations, particularly ACOs and
hospitals that are involved in,
bundled payment,
models.
Vantage Healthcare, just some background on Vantage. So
we're the largest
provider
practice of its type in the northeast. We
operate in the 6 New England states.
We have over a 100 providers,
physicians, nurse practitioners,
care nurse care coordinators.
We operate in over
200
skilled nursing facilities in assisted living communities throughout
New England.
And
we operate
in a couple of some value based payment
programs. So one is
MSSP
ACO.
We plan to
participate in the guide model CMS guide model
for dementia care.
And
you know, we plan to be very involved
into
the new model for
2,020
the team model, so
model for hospitals
as well. So
That's amazing to hear. And, you know, certainly,
just very much on the cutting edge of
how health care seems to be evolving and
cool that you have the opportunity
to participate with the team model and see
where that goes. So,
I'm excited to learn more, as we go
through our conversation here. What are some of
the biggest issues that you're following in health
care right now is and headed into the
new year?
Yeah. So for
for us,
the biggest issues are
around the expansion of our ACO patient
population
expansion. So in 2025,
we plan on adding all of our
assisted living patient population to the ACO. So
in this year as we started our participation,
we've had our skilled nursing facility population
in the ACO and we'll be adding
the assisted living to that. Our top challenges
to
realize better care and cost outcomes
around that
is, first of all, the challenges that skilled
nursing facilities and assisted living communities have around
staffing.
So we, as a practice, depend on facility
staff to identify
patient issues that may result in,
transfer to the emergency department. So, you know,
we're working,
and and those facilities that we depend on
continue to have issues with
staffing.
And so what we're doing is,
trying to beef up our work diligently
on deploying
technology
with our providers,
provider teams to
help them treat and place
and fill some of those gaps on the
skilled nursing facility and assisted living facility side
where
they're having those challenges. So use technology
to
get the information that we need to better
care for the patients where again in the
past we've relied heavily on
the staff that work in those facilities themselves.
So that's
one issue for the coming year and what
we're trying to do to
address that.
2 other issues around that is, one is
just
participation
in the ACO by our skilled nursing facility
and assisted living clients. So
this year
we really didn't get our skilled nursing facilities
involved in participating in the ACO.
And for the coming year, we feel that
that's very important to have
they have the opportunity
to the facilities
on the skilled nursing facility side and assisted
living to participate
and potentially realize shared savings.
We want them to participate and have
so we can better alignment and get them
on board so that we're on the same
page
in the coming year. So
we'll be we have a really solid plan
in place
to, for the next year to
get them on board and get them on
board participating with
the ACO. The other piece of that too
is hospital engagement. So,
our efforts to prevent hospitalizations,
A key piece of that too is to
do a better job of engaging
with each of the hospitals in the markets
that we serve
so that we have better communication with emergency
departments and try to keep patients from being,
admitted inpatient
and get them back to the skilled nursing
facilities and assisted living communities. So
we really believe with the team model rollout,
we have about 70 hospitals in the markets
that we serve that
will,
be mandated to participate in the team model
in 2026
and preparation for that will be happening in
2025,
and we're well positioned
to,
help them,
manage those episodes. So with that engagement, we
will then have an audience with them to
be able to
also have discussions around preventing hospitalizations
for our ACO patients.
And
we hope to, you know, make progress in
that area where it's been challenging this year.
So
and then lastly,
we as a practice to really from a
value based payment perspective
to, again, our main objective is keeping in
place and keeping patients out of the hospital.
We really need better data, better information at
the point of care to address patient needs.
So this year we've spent a lot of
time
with initial assessments of different technology
platforms to use to be able to do
that.
And a challenge to identify technology and systems
to deploy that would effectively
inform our providers,
provide a teams of patient
changes and condition to head off transfers to
the hospital, but
AI and remote patient monitoring are improving dramatically.
So we're really hopeful in the coming year
that we'll make progress in in this area
as well.
Well, that's great to hear. You know? And,
certainly, a lot of moving parts there. I
so I can appreciate,
how challenging I I'm sure it can be
to make sure everyone's aligning in the right
space and then being able to understand how
any challenges or changes can impact the financial
side of how things are doing while also
ensuring, you know, the best quality care possible.
As you think through what change or transformation
has to occur as you're bringing in additional,
SNF and skilled nursing participation into the ACO,
what are you doing on your side to
prepare for that? Or, you know, how do
you really engage in those conversations to meaningfully,
move things in the direction that you'd like
to see them?
So we're for the coming year, we're
we're partnering
really closely with our ACO. We're actually making
a change from
the ACO that we've partnered with
this year to a new ACO that we
think will
better align with
our goals to, you know, that I just
discussed.
And,
with that change,
we feel that they have the resources and
the commitments. We've got their commitment to work
with us to essentially market to our own
clients and really educate them
on,
participating in the ACO, what it means for
them, get their
financial people involved too in the conversation.
And I think that
combination of
kind of teaming up to approach
our,
SNF and Assisted Living clients together
will really,
you know, impact their decisions and get them
to,
see the benefits of participating and getting them
on board.
That's great to hear. You know, and I
really appreciate you digging a little bit deeper
in there. Now knowing, you know, what,
great opportunities are ahead of you, what are
you most excited about or what makes you
nervous?
I'd say we're
most excited about how
AI and remote patient monitoring is driving
innovation
and especially around
more accurate diagnostics
and timely data
and streamlining operations as well. So
that on vital signs and other data will
allow
a more coordinated,
efficient and
cost effective
care. So in 2025,
as I stated previously,
we all see that technology is developing
quickly, improving quickly.
That will be the case in 2025.
And we need to determine appropriate use cases
for
these technologies
and ensure that
using them does not further
distract providers
during the patient visits, but improves things and
fits with their workflow.
So we're hopeful that technology will help providers
with task shifting and better allow them to
participate
at the top of their license,
and
that'll help us too to retain providers and
recruit other providers because it's, you know, you
know, again, like everyone's experiencing
staffing issues,
the same
is challenging in the with provider space as
well.
So
technology innovations have the potential to improve
clinical workflow
too within
EMR that we use,
including the use of AI to automate
doc,
automate documentation, make it easier to search for
information. So
being able to make all that easier for
providers, we hope will obviously have a positive
impact on care and cost and also help
us, you know, with provider satisfaction, which is
really important to our practice.
I'd say the item that we're kind of
nervous about is it's, you know, it's kind
of unclear
what direction it's going in. I think in
general,
the value based
payment challenges, first of all,
CMS has created
a large volume, a large number of value
based care models, which is
challenging because you have a lot of
overlap models that are starting and then ending.
And, yeah, there's a lot of time and
effort that's put into
developing
systems to be able to operate within these
models. So we continue to
see that,
and it's challenging. Secondly,
there's a challenge
around
documentation
requirements to demonstrate value. So there are several
components to quality and providers need to report
on
the performance metrics
and to show
CMS
that we are delivering high
value care. And this creates a significant
administrative burden
adding cost to the system
and essentially leading providers with fewer resources
for patient care. And then lastly,
related to all this is
the continued
dependency on fee for service.
So,
you know, we know that CMS's goal is
to have
every
beneficiary
under a value based
payment model
by
2,030.
But
we'd like to see less dependency on fee
for service, so we'd like to see kind
of a well, first of all, pairing down
of
these models and really
consolidation
and then a change a little change in
approach and give accountable organizations,
the ones that are taking on the risk
or
flexibility to decide
how organizations
in
the networks
that we've formed to manage these patients,
how they're compensated so they're not continue to
be re relying on fee for service that
are tied in with
the,
the value based payment model and more invested
in it.
That's great to hear. And I can imagine,
you know, as you mentioned, some of those
benefits, but also challenges with, you know, just
being part of the value based care models
and seeing how, additional providers are brought into
that space,
and really where things are headed over the
next few years. It'll just be interesting to
to watch all of that. Now in knowing
how,
how much complexities in the health care space,
but also, you know, really the the way
that things are evolving,
What do you think most effective
health care leaders will need in order to
be successful over the next 2 to 3
years or so?
Oh, it's,
you know, it's impossible
to
you know, on the value based payment
to operate
in a silo and be successful.
So
healthcare organizations that are
most likely to succeed
under value based payment models
have sophisticated
strategy to build partnerships
and networks and leverage
but those networks and partnerships
leverage
shared technologies and systems
and build trust to drive efficiencies
and reduce costs across the network. So,
yeah, choosing the right strategy, the right partners,
and being able to, again, get everyone
as much as possible
on shared systems
is key to all of this. So that's,
you know, definitely a,
you know, different skill set than, you know,
what
health care leaders in the past have
relied upon. So,
you know, so that's what we're dealing with
and trying to work through that. And it's,
you know, it's complicated,
but,
you know, the more
better strategy you have and being able
to drive that strategy and implement it and
stick to a plan and
rely on that plan is is really
important and more important than ever.
A 100% agree. Thank you so much for
joining us on the podcast today, Chris. I
I really appreciate your time and perspective, and
I look forward to connecting with you again
soon.
Thank you. Appreciate it.