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This is Haley Rudger with the Becker's Payer
Podcast, and we are recording live at the
Becker's third annual spring payer issues roundtable.
Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Courtney
Whitten, area vice president of enterprise population health
at Advocate Health.
Courtney, thank you so much for joining me
today. Can you go ahead and get us
started by telling us a little bit about
yourself and your background?
Sure. Thank you for having me.
I am the, area vice president
for population health for our Wisconsin division at
Advocate Health. I've been with Advocate over a
decade in several different roles
and, helped build our value based care infrastructure
for the state of Wisconsin
and have recently taken on an expanded role
as a managing network partner
for enterprise population health. Well, congratulations
on that new role. Now to start our
conversation off, I'd like to talk about balancing
affordability and quality. So how is your organization
innovating to manage the cost of care while
maintaining or improving member outcomes?
So quality and affordability
are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, many of our strategies
to
look at cost reduction
revolve around prevention and wellness for our patients.
And building a relationship with our patients in
ambulatory clinic
is key.
We can then help identify which patients have
chronic conditions
or other factors that put them at higher
risk for adverse health events.
So when we get to know our patients
in a more regular
setting, then we can start to predict who
will be at risk
for adverse health events
and start to proactively set them up with
resources
and support programs to try and help maintain
their highest level of health.
This should in turn lead to fewer
emergency room,
hospital stays, skilled nursing facility stays, and, really,
you know, demonstrates the
strong quality of care for our patients.
Well, I'd like to go off of that
on the quality of care. So what best
practices or tools does your organization rely on
to keep quality of care at the forefront?
So it's important to stay on top of
new quality programs and regulations as they're coming
out. Especially nowadays, it feels like things are
changing very rapidly.
But quality is still key, and building a
relationship with our patients
is the most important part of that.
We do use technology. So we have, patient
lists. We identify care gaps, and we use
technology partners that can help,
proactive outreach to those patients and work on
addressing those care gaps. We've also got some
creative solutions around,
virtual care, remote patient monitoring
services for patients at home who are not
able or not willing to come in
for their care. So meeting the patients where
they are,
to help look at the the data and
metrics, but also really provide that patient centric
care helps us, you know, understand those care
gaps and
then,
help patients maintain their highest level of health.
So on the topic of patient centric care,
member satisfaction is essential to thrive in today's
competitive health care landscape.
So what experience or engagement strategies have proven
effective for your organization, and how are you
measuring that success?
I agree. Patient satisfaction is really important, and
it's a good barometer of the trust
that we have with our patients between,
the clinician,
the patient, and even the communities and caregivers
that we serve. So a big part of
that is managing expectations,
helping patients understand if there are any delays
or issues that we can anticipate in getting
out in front of those,
and then also checking in with patients while
they're at our settings of care to see
if they have additional questions or concerns or
issues.
And that does two things. The first is
it lets patients feel heard
if they have some feedback or questions for
us, and it also enables us to provide
a timely solution,
that we can agree upon with the patients.
And
thinking of treating patients with respect and empathy
is is really important. That does more than
just build your survey results.
It allows us to build relationships with patient.
It goes to patient loyalty.
It goes to
understanding and getting to know our patients so
they will come to us and call us
first
when they need care and allows us to
provide the highest standard of care that we
can.
Absolutely.
And looking ahead, what do you see as
the biggest opportunity for payers to lead the
charge in transforming care delivery and driving better
outcomes for all stakeholders?
Now more than ever, I think we have
an abundance of data.
And
what do we do with that? How we
analyze data, how we learn from it, that
can have a significant impact on
our patients, our communities,
and our teammates.
If we can proactively identify patients who need
additional support and resources
before they have
adverse health events, that's a huge win.
If we can work to streamline our operations
and find some efficiencies using technology,
that can take some of the administrative burden
off of our staff and our clinicians
and allow those folks to spend more time
caring
for our patients.
And
technology can also
offer different access points for care.
So we can consider virtual options,
remote patient monitoring,
in home options for care,
different apps to connect with our patients,
different outreach solutions, and and contact points. So
all of the technology that's out there can
allow us to meet patients where they are,
and this is a really exciting time to
be in health care and to
improve care delivery as we operationalize
some of the technology options that are out
there.
Well, I really enjoyed this conversation with you
today. Again, this is Haley Recker with the
Becker's Payer Podcast,
recording live at the Becker's third annual spring
payer issues roundtable. Courtney, thank you so much.
Thank you.