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.
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
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.
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
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. 😧
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