Welcome everyone to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I'm Mariah Muhammad, writer and moderator with Becker's
Healthcare, and I'm thrilled to have with me
today Chris Wassel, president of marketing and strategic
partnerships at Advantage Healthcare. Chris, welcome to the
podcast. We're very excited to have you, join
us yet again.
To get us started, would you mind please
introducing yourself and telling us a bit about
your background and or, organization?
Yeah. Sure. Glad to be here. So,
yes, again, my name is Chris Wassel. I'm
the
president of marketing and strategic partnerships for Vantage
Healthcare.
Vantage is the largest physician practice of its
type in New England, providing services to
skilled nursing facilities
and assisted living communities.
My background, I have over twenty years experience
in health care operations,
development, value based payment consulting and network
development, and
technology
development as well.
Prior to Vantage, I was co managing partner
for post acute care planning services.
It was an organization that provided
post acute care management and consulting services to
ACOs
seeking to build
and operate post acute care provider networks.
And I was also a cofounder of Accounticare,
an information technology company that
provides systems and services to physician practices
and various organizations
participating
in value based payment arrangements
around
the care of older
adult,
patient populations.
Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that
background with us. So, Chris, so what are
some of the biggest issues you're following in
health care,
for 2025?
Yeah. So 2025 is a busy year for
us, I'm sure, for a lot of other
organizations.
But at Vantage,
we're
launching several
initiatives this year,
and there's really four initiatives that we're working
on
that are major undertakings for us this year.
So the first is,
we're participating
in a new
MSSP
ACO, sound physicians
ACO,
and that ACO so we're expanding our patient
population that we're covering. We in the past,
we participated in an ACO that
covered our skilled nursing facility patient population
and now we've added our assisted living population
to that. So we have well over 4,000
patients in the ACO. So that's
a big undertaking.
Secondly,
we are preparing
for
CMS'
new
model rollout, which is the team episode
model.
In our market,
most of the hospitals in the markets that
we serve
will be mandated to participate.
And so
given
we have an extensive network across
New England,
we're very well positioned to
help those hospitals,
manage those
episodes
as patients
mile the hospital on the post acute care
side.
So
we're targeting
those hospitals
to work with them in the coming year
on that initiative and also
working with other
network partners, home care agencies and
rehab groups
and such.
And then there's a couple of other CMS
programs that we're starting this year,
one being the
CMS Guide program, which is focused on
dementia patients and in our case, dementia patients
that reside
at home in assisted living communities.
So we have a partner that we're launching
that with,
so that's exciting as well. And then lastly,
CMS
in the last year announced
the new advanced primary care management
program,
which and, kind of replaces chronic care management,
which we
have launched on a limited basis. And so
we're going
to launch that this year as well
in both the skilled nursing facility and assisted
living
environment. So
with all that going on, I think
for us,
with any of these initiatives, but with so
many
going on this year,
I'd say our number one challenge is,
with all these programs is collaboration
with
our skilled nursing facility and assisted living partners
and home care groups and rehab groups, trying
to bring
all those stakeholders together,
bring them up to speed,
bring them on board,
and develop
and integrate with them. So it's a pretty
major undertaking.
So I think I feel really
I think we feel very comfortable
managing these different programs.
But again,
I think
the probably the thing that we are most
concerned about is making sure that
all of the rest of
key players and stakeholders
that we're able to
get them on board and all working,
you know, together
towards the same same goal. So it's a
it's a pretty,
you know, major challenge for us, but I'm
I'm sure we'll we'll get there.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Thank you so much for
giving us that that background. Is there anything
that you're,
seeing in the news or anything that you're
doing at Advantage Healthcare,
that's making you a little bit excited for
this year or anything that's making you nervous?
Yeah. I'd say so,
you know, for this this year, we're
we're excited about the greater acceptance and interest
in seeing in the senior living space around
value based care and CMS
programs.
In the past, a lot of the
most part, the ACOs
have focused on patients in the community, not
in long term care.
A lot of
the programs, whether
you talk about chronic care management and so
forth, were developed for
ambulatory care and patients, again, in the community.
But
now
we're launching those programs in
skilled nursing and assisted living. So we're excited
about that. But
that being said,
there are a few things that
do make us nervous.
And
so
stability with CMS
is important in the short term.
If there are any changes to these programs,
the time and effort that we are investing
will be
at risk. So again, we're
investing our time and resources in multiple programs
and there's
obviously with
potential
changes
at CMS and then obviously, there's a lot
going on
politically and so forth where
we have some concerns. So hopefully, things,
in the short term will remain stable
and then we'll continue to move forward as
we invest our time and effort into
launching these programs. So but it makes us
nervous.
In the long term,
we hope that CMS
can
begin to move from voluntary
and pilots to mandatory
programs and models
that are in place for the long term.
We
feel that there have been enough
there's been enough experimentation
around
various
value based payment initiatives and it's
really time to settle permanently on
payment models that will be
that will operate under going forward, so make
the full
shift from fee for service to value based
payment.
These models have been
different models have been
tried out and piloted
and such
now for almost fifteen years.
And so again, the stability is important.
Some of these models are put in place
and they run for five years and then
they sunset and
it would be from our perspective, it would
be
good to
settle in
on certain models and make that ship. So
it's a little concerning that
so it's unclear when that's going to happen.
So that makes us us a little bit
nervous too because it
just you just get concerned around further changes
in the future. Again,
I think all
us and
organizations
in this space
are looking for as much stability as possible.
So we know what the rules are that
we're operating under, so that
all the work that we're putting into this
really has
you know, we're able to run for the
long term.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Thank
you for sharing that. And, Chris, before I
let you go, the last thing I want
to ask you is, in your opinion, what
would the most effective health care leaders need
in order to be successful in the next
two to three years, do you think?
Yeah. I think I think the the thing
that will impact all of us the the
most,
and what I think healthcare leaders
really need to
focus
their attention on
is
this time into understanding how AI will impact
their organizations and how
the right strategy they can gain a competitive
advantage and avoid
falling behind. I think
this is
moving pretty fast.
I think
there may be some folks out there that
underestimate
how this is going to impact things
and may fall behind. And so I think
health care leaders really need
to get on board now,
invest more time in research and looking at
this and how it's going to impact their
organization
and again, how
as an
organization
we can,
really use this to
gain a competitive edge.
So I think that by far is
the number one thing that is out there
that we need to pay attention to.
Yeah. Definitely. I definitely agree there, and thank
you so much for those final thoughts. It's
definitely been very informative. So, again, I wanna
thank you so much for coming back on
Becker's HealthCare.
And I look forward to connecting with you
again soon.
Alright. Thank you. Thank you.