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and outcomes for the populations we serve.
This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast, and we are live at the 2024
payer issues roundtable.
I'm joined right now by Mihir Kamdar who
is the chief medical officer at Tuesday Health.
So thank you for being here. We'd love
to have you start off by introducing yourself
and telling us a little bit more about
your role. Thanks, Grace. So my name is,
Mihir Kamdar. I am a palliative care physician
and serve as the chief medical officer for
Tuesday Health. And Tuesday Health is a value
based care, supportive, and palliative care company, and
we really seek to provide comprehensive,
supportive care for patients with serious illness, particularly
in the last 1 to 2 years of
life.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for taking the time,
and let's start our conversation here about
growth goals. So from improving member experience and
expanding value based care to controlling costs, payer
executives have ambitious growth goals for the rest
of the year and as we look into
the new year ahead.
So in your role, what is your top
priority and how are you planning to get
there?
Yeah. It's it's a great question. And, you
know, what we know about patients with serious
illness is this is a really challenging population
for payers.
We know, particularly in that last year of
life, Grace, there's a significant amount of,
challenges with, member experience that can spill over
onto their caregivers
and all of that leads to an exorbitant
amount of cost. Right? The cost of care
in the last year of life are significant.
And so what we're trying to do is
really be able to, get involved earlier in
the course of these patients, you know, 12
to 24 months before patients pass away to
be able to provide evidence based palliative care,
which we know can improve the quality and
that journey for that member and their loved
ones, but also significantly reduce those those exorbitant
costs of care in that last year of
life. And and so, you know, we we
know payers are really struggling with admissions recently.
We know that a lot of those admissions
are gonna be concentrated in that last year
of life. We know that,
you know, patient experience matters a lot. And
so those are all things that we are
in particularly focused on. We're we're a new
company.
We launched,
you know,
clinically just earlier this year. We're fortunate to
announce a $60,000,000
initial raise. And so what we're doing, we're
we're alive now in Ohio, and what we're
really doing is is, delivering
our care and our clinical model. And our
priority for next year is really be able
to to scale from there and create access
to evidence based,
palliative care and forging
even greater,
payer partnerships.
You know, one other thing I think for
payers to keep in mind is we're also
anticipating,
you know, some point in the future that
hospice will be carved back into, Medicare Advantage.
And so, that's another thing I think is
and it really should be on the the
radar,
of payers as we think about growth.
Absolutely.
And going off of that, at an industry
level, how would you describe the biggest barriers
to effectively
serving and engaging members? And what opportunities do
you see for large scale improvements, and how
are you applying this in your current strategy?
Yeah. This is another really important question.
You know, engagement is critical, and it's something
we spend a lot of time focusing in
it, at Tuesday Health. Our our patients with
serious illness are they have a lot of
challenges, and it's not just medical. It can
be psychosocial,
a lot of social determinant challenges. And so
we think about we really think about engagement
in 2 ways. 1 is obviously with the
the patient,
and their loved ones. Their caregivers are critically
important to engage.
As patients get sicker, oftentimes, the caregivers making
the decisions,
you know, are really key moments in their
in their journey for that their loved one,
but also for providers.
And, you know, supportive care study after study
shows it can be incredibly helpful but sometimes
the biggest barrier is some of the stigma
associated with supportive and palliative care. People confuse
it with hospice.
And so, what we'd really try to do
is is go in market and hire both
provider and patient engagement specialists,
to really understand the needs, understand where are
the pain points are, understand where we can
offer value.
As it relates to both providers and patients,
we really aim to solve a problem for
both providers and patients,
within
that, you know, the first, visitor to, so
we can show our value and we find
that as incredibly helpful. We're we're excited because,
we're really seeing high levels of engagement so
far with our clinical deployment.
And switching gears slightly to the leadership side
of things, keeping pace in today's dynamic health
care landscape is challenging.
So what's one piece of advice you'd share
with peer leaders to grow their businesses while
keeping members top of mind?
Yeah. I you know, I think it's a
it's a simple answer. It's exactly what you
said at that end of that question. It's
really how do we keep the the patient?
And I'd also say they're loved when they're
caregiver
at at really as their north star. People
oftentimes forget about really thinking about that dyadic
relationship, which I think is critical in health
care. And I think
I think the challenge for leaders is how
do you actually, live and breathe that as
an organization instead of having it just be
something that kinda sounds like a Hallmark card.
And so for us, we really try to
integrate
keeping the patient and their caregiver first really
into the fabric of our company. We start
every meeting where we're gonna need to make,
important decisions with a patient's story.
And that I think really helps ground and
center us. And I think what's nice in
in palliative and supportive care, we have an
opportunity where the Venn diagrams of doing the
right thing for a patient and their loved
ones also overlaps with, being able to reduce
unwanted medical spend that oftentimes isn't isn't helpful.
So we really try to, you know, keep
that, front and center. We know if we
can deliver for the member and their loved
ones, everything else will fall into place.
And as we are wrapping up our conversation,
I'd love to just visit technology quickly. So
how is tech supporting value based care member
focused initiatives at your organization?
And what's most exciting for you here and
why? Yeah. I love this question. It's a
really interesting question to me because
a lot of people think a lot of
palliative care clinicians, supportive
clinicians,
you know, really see that field really built
over the last 20 years on the humanness
of Medicare, really, that personal touch, really,
being with patients at the bedside in these
in these challenging moments.
And so sometimes thinking about technology can seem
antithetical to that, but we really think about
technology as as something that we can harness
to really pull in
our clinicians at key points,
to be able to optimize care. One of
the challenges that we see in palliative and
supportive care is there's not enough clinicians out
there. There's only about 5,000 to 6000 palliative
care physicians out there. We estimate by 2050,
80 to 90,000,000 people will need some type
of palliative supportive care, and and the needs
are present now. And so we use technology
at several key points, in a patient journey.
One is we have a highly accurate
identification algorithm.
One of the challenges that a lot of
payers experience is how do we really identify
the right patients who could benefit from this
type of care?
And so we start by using, thoughtful predictive
analytics to be able to identify patients.
And then along the care journey, we also
incorporate,
2 2 important things. 1 is telepalliative care.
Members of our team, we were fortunate to
publish an article in JAMA showing that telepalliative
care can be, almost as effective actually as
in person, palliative care. How we use that
is and think about the nuance there is
really important,
but we're excited about our telepalliative care delivery
to reach, you know, to really reach more
patients in need. Another is how we think
about continuous monitoring,
and we actually published a study showing that
we can use continuous monitoring in patients with
serious illness to not only improve their care,
but also reduce hospitalizations.
And then lastly, one challenge for clinicians is
really knowing when someone is getting sicker and
really getting into that end of life phase.
And so we also use technology to better
predict
as patients are getting sicker. So we can
not only leverage greater resources to help with
things like symptom management, keep folks out of
the hospital,
but make sure that we're having those important
conversations that oftentimes don't happen. And in that
way, we can really help folks, you know,
transition to hospice when the time is right,
not too early and not too late, and
really help folks and their loved ones have
a soft landing at the end of life.
So we're really trying to help folks from
the point of identification
all the way through that end of life
journey using technology at key points along the
way.
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for taking
the time to join me today on the
Becker's healthcare podcast. Again, we're live at the
2024
payer issues roundtable.
K. Thank you so much.