Farzad Mostashari Profile picture
Jan 12, 2022 27 tweets 13 min read Read on X
1/ Would you want your employees, your customers, your partners, and government regulators to hear what you tell investors?

It's not done! Different audiences will understand and react to the same thing very differently

I'm going to take that risk today, show you my deck 😱🙏
2/ I'm going to walk through what I presented and said yesterday at the big healthcare investor meeting #JPMHC22

In a normal year, to hear the coveted private company presentations you'd have to be there, investors and executives crammed into small rooms

camera crews outside
3/ What's the problem we're solving?

In the US, we wait until someone has a stroke or heart attack, and will then spare no expense

But we control blood pressure 63% of the time

All the "action" is at the bottom of the waterfall

That's a trillion dollars a year of suffering
4/ As a public health person, this is not just a financial problem, it's a moral catastrophe

When I was @nycHealthy, @DrTomFrieden asked "How can healthcare save the most lives?"

We couldn't even find an attempt to answer the freaking question in the literature-we did the study
5/ Why?

In 2008, we thought that there were 3 problems that had to be solved simultaneously- payment that rewards prevention, information systems oriented to prevention, and practice workflows.

I spent over 10 years focused on the last 2 (reader, it didn't work)
6/ w co-founder @matkendall (& now @ONC_HealthIT Dir. @mickytripathi1) we homed in on moving doctors from paper to electronic health records, adding population health into those (document/billing) systems, and on the hand-on support they would need to convert practice workflows
7/ It didn't work

During my time at @ONC_HealthIT EHR adoption skyrocketed, but blood pressure control didn't budge.

Hearing this @POLITICOPulse podcast recorded w @ddiamond after I left government, I'm struck by how disillusioned I sound.

politico.com/story/2016/05/…
8/ I was looking for some window in American healthcare where preventing a stroke would be more profitable than treating it.

"Accountable Care Organizations" could be it, but I was convinced that physician-led ACOs-and primary care-were the answer, not hospitals & health systems
9/ 10 yrs later, it is now, ironically, conventional wisdom that " "Risk-taking primary care" and "Physician Enablement" are a once-a-generation business opportunity.

We have many "fellow travelers" in this space (FFS is the competition) but we have carved a particular path
10/ Each of these strategic decisions were made deliberately, to maximize the societal reach and scale we could have

Each connects to the others

We would serve exiting practices, with as much of their panel as possible, and stay true to our north star

Not focusing on MA was 🗝️
11/ I learned from @Venrock @BRobertsVC that the power behind @AledadeACO is the creation of incentive alignment

We all prosper if costs go down, the right way.

That's it. That's all of it.

We don't try to make money through (zero-sum) FFS negotiations b/w plans and practices
12/ And to make it easy for practices to join us, we wouldn't charge them (or payers) for technology or coaching or contracts or capital reserves

We aren't "vendors" we're partners

We give them what they need at scale, which means outstanding economics for them (and for payers)
13/ Shedding value means that you make the flywheel spin faster

We also have an awesome virtuous cycle at play:

The more practices we have the easier to get global risk contracts w plans (you need minimum size)

The more contracts, the easier to sign practices

Around🔄Around
14/ When I was just starting Aledade, I used to do a parlor trick.

"Assume you can get 100 primary care docs together

..and they each care for 2,000 patients

...and each patient accounts for $5,000 a year in medical costs

How much spend do they influence?"

(math)
15/ that's right (even if it seems like a crazy number of zeros)

100 PCPs can be a billion dollar business.

If they actually believe that they can manage the total cost and quality of care for their patients

PCPs have been neglected for so long, making that mental leap is hard
16/ But HOW??

It can seem overwhelming, so we shrink it down to what every PCP can agree is just good primary care.

All the results we've accomplished have been based on these Core4™️ advanced primary care practice competencies.

(and yes, we're incubating several Core More)
17/ And yes, building cloud-based software that can be the Operating System for practices' population health work has been key to making these competencies scale

Each data source adds unique value

Actionable Insights >> Data

Workflow is everything

Outcomes are what matters
18/ We are the best engine for accumulating "the opportunity to make a difference" (lives under management) but where we are truly differentiated is in supporting practice behavior change, even (especially) if they don't work for us.

The science and art of aligning 💙,🧠, and🛣️
19/ We launched 100 practices across 5 very different states in 2016- our "reference cohort"

Year after year, they have widened the gap between themselves and their peers in outcomes that matter

More primary care visits
👉 fewer ER visits
👉 fewer hospital admits
👉 lower cost
20/ The Medicare Shared Savings Program has been the most transparent value-based program, saving billions of dollars, even if (excluding Aledade) average savings have been ~2% of total cost of care vs benchmark

Aledade practice cohorts keep getting better, faster 📈
21/ This is how the money works for a mature cohort

We have a budget (benchmark), say $1.5B
Claim payments are deducted
Whats left (10%=$150M) is value we've created

The plan keeps $45M
Our practice partner get $53M
After paying for direct costs ~$47M "platform contribution"
22/ That gross margin goes towards the cost of practice outreach, and building our technology and data platform, plus the regulatory, and legal and finance and all the other overhead expenses.

For years, that was paid for by our investors. But we're now profitable.. and growing
23/ We can now invest more and more into the most important part of our mission- improving care, reducing suffering, and reducing costs.

Which brings us to the big news yesterday... our acquisition of an amazing company- Iris Healthcare

A perfect mission and culture fit
24/ We worked with them for over 3 years to provide comprehensive advance care planning for the most complex patients in our practices.

They spent hours with patients and their families, explored very difficult scenarios, documented, and followed up

The results were terrific 👇
25/ There may be more opportunities like Iris

There are many terrific "point solutions" that tackle a thorny problem well but face challenges in targeting the right patients, engaging them, and getting paid for the value they create, in fee for service, #BetterTogether w Aledade
26/ It's not often that you find the intersection of

a really huge problem
a disruptive wave that scrambles the status quo
a "product" that really works- at scale
a platform that can be built on
and an incredible team that will not quit.

That defines an "interesting company"
27/ I am so grateful for 2 things:

An alignment between business and mission that makes it possible for our company to speak with the same authentic voice to our practices, business partners, policymakers, employees, and investors.

The incredible team at @AledadeACO (join us!)

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Farzad Mostashari

Farzad Mostashari Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Farzad_MD

Apr 30
1/ When Walmart enters any business you can expect that they will leverage their massive scale to get better economics, create value for customers- and drive out local mom and pop competitors

Thats what many assumed would happen w primary care clinics

but it didn't

why not?
2/ The first thing I have to acknowledge is to rule out "execution"

They aren't perfect (their Athena and Epic EMR travails show that) but Walmart knows how to execute, and they won't scale something until they've figured out how to make it profitable.

They couldn't
3/ To their credit, they tried a lot of permutations over the past 10 years, and strictly as an operator, you have to give them respect that they could be a force

- Third party vendor
- Walmart Health clinics
-Oak St Health
- Own clinics + telehealth

Read 16 tweets
Nov 2, 2023
1/ Final rule for Physician Fee Schedule is out.

let's see how the Medicare Shared Savings Program provisions played out compared to the proposed rule.

(tl;dr mostly as proposed- incremental improvements to the nation's most mature, and most successful value based program)
2/ risk adjustment should be updated to the new "v28" approach for performance and benchmark years.



my only complaint is that it's only applied moving forward- if it's good policy why not allow existing contracts to update?

3/ Fixing the glitch where ACO risk scores and regional risk scores weren't treated equally (ACO gets a cap, now region does too)



(again, why not have a simple single approach for all contracts instead of only applying it moving forward?)

Read 12 tweets
Sep 11, 2023
1/ What are the factors driving the mysterious slowdown in Medicare cost growth?

It's been a longstanding dinner conversation among health policy folks, and I have one idea to add to the mix that I haven't seen discussed yet.. Image
2/ There were lots of theories batted around in the article and the followup from @sangerkatz

My fav: "Talk Therapy Actually Works" (@ZekeEmanuel)

Policymakers setting expectations of cost control inhibit investments and behaviors that drive cost growth
nytimes.com/2023/09/09/ups…
We saw similar unexplained slowdown in healthcare costs during the *ultimately unsuccessful* Clinton health reform efforts.

The slowdown happened almost immediately in 1992, even though nothing had happened yet, other than campaign talk

(@jrovner can prob give history on that) Image
Read 8 tweets
Dec 24, 2022
1/ Warning!

nerdy Medicare payment deep dive

OMNIBUS EDITION

You've read the headlines ("Medicare pay cuts partially averted") but to understand what led us here--and what's to come-- we need to go deeper

Also, some cool tangents on effective/ineffective financial incentives
2/ let's walk through the weeds of

"a temporary patch on an expiring pandemic patch for the unintended consequences of a good-will effort to fix pay imbalance between primary care & specialists, made worse by a failure to predict future inflation, w a sop to value-based pay"
3/ The "failure to predict medical inflation"

remember the annual "doc fix" scramble? it was because the "sustainable growth rate" was indexed to inflation, which was near zero for years. So Congress had to constantly step in to reverse its own past efforts to control costs. 😧
Read 27 tweets
Dec 22, 2022
1/ Medical Debt- a holiday story

A few years ago, I found myself poring over a printout of ED frequent fliers with a PCP in Mississippi.

The office manager knew why they were going to the ED.

“They’re not going to show their faces here. They all owe us money.”
2/ Because of the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, the ED would see them even if they owed money

But thousands more dollars would have been added on top of the prior debts

His bills will climb. His credit score will drop. Collection agencies will start hounding him
3/ When I was in college I got dehydrated at a crew meet and an ambulance took me to the ER. A couple of liters of fluid later I was fine

But I couldn't figure out what to do when the bills started coming

For years I carried the stress and shame of being sent to debt collection
Read 17 tweets
Nov 1, 2022
1/ Let's flip through the Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule just out, w shared savings focus

Here's a little trick to get past all the pesky comments (that people spent 1000's of hours developing and submitting), and right to the meat of the matter:

CTRL-F "we are finalizing"
2/ First up: we want to increase participation!

strong evidence for providing upfront capital, especially to rural, underserved, low income ACOs (see AIM)

Good idea to expand it 👍

Lots of comments about eligibility criteria, repayment, etc etc.

"finalized as proposed"
3/ We want to increase participation!

Let's allow folks to stay in one sided risk for longer, especially lower income (no hospital) ACOs

Makes sense 👍

Lots of comments about who, how, when, etc etc

"finalized as proposed without modification"
Read 23 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(