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This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast, and we are live at the 2024
payer issues roundtable.
I'm currently joined by Pankari Sharma, who is
the strategy and operations leader at Humana. So
thank you for being here today. We'd love
to start our conversation by having you introduce
yourself and tell us a little bit more
about your role.
Thanks, Grace. Happy to be here
and, talking to you. I'm Pankari Sharma. I'm,
like you said, the strategy and operations leader
in Humana in their clinical strategy team.
What my work scope includes is
improving the health outcomes for our members
through different initiatives, and that consequently also reduces
our total cost of care. So broad initiatives
under that umbrella.
Well, thank you for being here. And let's
start our conversation today surrounding 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 this year and looking ahead into
2025.
In your role, what is your top priority,
and how are you planning to get there?
Sure.
So I would say, my priority is would,
again, fit under that very broad umbrella of
improving the member
outcomes as well as,
thinking through how to enhance member experience while
doing so as well.
The 2 initiatives that are on top of
my mind this year and would be early
next year are, firstly,
addressing the gaps in care for our members
so that they can proactively
be in charge of their health more, are
able to
have better access to the providers,
to the services that would help them not
worsen their chronic conditions.
So that is one thing that's on top
of my mind.
And the second thing is,
providing
better and more holistic population
health services to our, members and especially
the more vulnerable population.
And going along with 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. I think the
largest barrier that I see personally is the
adoption of preventative care and especially when it
comes to members and their mindsets.
So I think as an industry, we all
have, and by we, I mean, all the
stakeholders, including payers and providers. We understand the
value of preventative care
in ensuring positive outcomes
in a proactive manner.
But, ensuring that members get that and they
do not have reactive,
but proactive mindset
to getting,
preventative care. And we as stakeholders can facilitate
that. So,
ensuring that in terms of affordability,
accessibility to providers, availability
of providers,
and, just building their trust in the health
care industry overall so that they reach out
to us as well when they need such
help. I think that is one of the
barriers or something that we should be working
to improve upon.
And shifting gears slightly toward leadership growth, keeping
pace in today's dynamic health care landscape is
challenging. So what is a piece of advice
you'd like to share for peer leaders to
help grow their businesses while keeping members top
of mind?
Sure. I just had a panel on, harnessing
AI and, dig digital health outcomes for improving
member
health outcome plan. And I would probably I
would just repeat the answer that I gave
there, which
was interoperability,
in terms of,
data is something
I feel would not only help our members
and our outreach to them, which would be
more targeted, more timely, more customized to their
needs,
but also having that kind of interoperability
would help peers
and providers make our back end processes more
efficient.
So I think that's a a bedrock for
a lot of improvement
in terms of how we,
do decision making as well as implement our
decisions.
And as we wrap our conversation up, are
there any closing remarks you'd like to share
on the podcast
today? It was great to be the part
of this conference.
It's it was great to see how
different organizations and stakeholders have same things on
mind. I think,
AI was one,
element that we all are thinking about. We
are making our efforts from our end, but
also
looking at the regulatory
organizations as well. Got it. And,
I'm leaving this conference very optimistic that in
a couple of years, we would be way
ahead of where we are right now.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for taking the time
to be here. Again, we are live at
the 2024
Payer Issues Roundtable.
Thank you for having me.