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Top Takeaways | Successfully Deploying Digital Health in Value-Based Care

In this session, McDermott Will & Emery Partner Lisa Mazur moderated a panel that explored how digital health tools can support financial and clinical success under value-based care arrangements. Panelists also looked at how digital health companies can successfully demonstrate value within the value-based care framework and make themselves attractive partners to value-based care companies. The panel showcased perspectives from executives at digital health companies and companies participating in value-based care models that have successfully leveraged digital health tools.

Session panelists included:

  • Jessica Beegle, Chief Innovation Officer, LifePoint
  • Jamie Colbert, MD, MBA, Senior Vice President of Care Delivery, Memora Healt
  • Ashul Govil, MD, MBA, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer, Story Health
  • Maulik Majmudar, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder, Biofourmis
  • Kelsey P. Mellard, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Sitka

Top takeaways included:

  1. Behind-the-scenes role. What do many successful digital health companies in the value-based care space have in common? They are operating behind the scenes, facilitating patient’s care with a trusted healthcare provider. The patient does not know they are interacting with a separate brand—rather, the companies position themselves as an extension of the local care team. This allows digital health companies to leverage the trust patients have with their physicians, increasing patient engagement as a result.
  2. Achieving provider buy-in. The panelists discussed several ways to achieve provider buy-in for digital health tools. A key theme was the ability of a digital health tool to integrate with providers’ existing systems and workflows. Clinicians do not want another portal to log into or another widget they are required to use. Rather, successful tools are those that are able to integrate into providers’ existing workflows and that improve those workflows as a result. Such integration requires a deep understanding of a provider’s operations and patient populations; the ability to leverage clinicians’ expertise; and engaging clinicians early during the design process and launch. The most successful digital health companies are those that are seen as a partner to providers, rather than simply being another vendor. Panelists also discussed how digital health companies need to be able to demonstrate value. While there are numerous ideas for digital health tools, successful tools will be those that deliver demonstrable outcomes.
  3. Successfully bridging the current fee-for-service world with value-based care. Successful digital health tools are those that can demonstrate value in both the fee-for-service (FFS) and value-based care models. Digital health companies must understand that for providers, the reality of the current system is organized around FFS. Successful companies are those that can meet providers where their systems are today, and work together towards value-based care. Panelists reflected that this requires a long view, flexible contracting models, and establishing progressive outcomes that can continue to be built upon.
  4. Value-based care: why now. The large penetration of Medicare Advantage (MA) is quickly changing the landscape. It provides digital health companies a large target audience that companies can meet, innovate around and innovate for, allowing companies to test their theses and adjust their models. Other accelerants [...]

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Top Takeaways | Successfully Deploying Digital Health in Value-Based Care

In this session from the Value-Based Care Symposium 2023, McDermott Will & Emery Partner Lisa Mazur moderated a panel that explored how digital health tools can support financial and clinical success under value-based care arrangements. Panelists also looked at how digital health companies can successfully demonstrate value within the value-based care framework and make themselves attractive partners to value-based care companies. The panel showcased perspectives from executives at digital health companies and companies participating in value-based care models that have successfully leveraged digital health tools.

Access the full takeaway here.




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Digital Delivery of Healthcare Services After COVID-19

The idea of keeping people healthy at home has become more relevant than ever during the COVID-19 public health emergency. The expansion of telemedicine during the pandemic is expected to serve as a catalyst that will permanently change the way providers deliver care and patients engage with their health. Joined by leaders from Cricket Health, Livongo and BehaVR, we discussed factors driving the shift towards expanding digital delivery of healthcare services and the challenges – technological, regulatory and cultural – that impact such expansion. Click here to listen to the webinar recording, and read on for highlights from the program.

To learn more about the “Around the Corner” webinar series and attend an upcoming program, click here.

Audience Perspective

This poll shows that 40% of digital health consider regulatory obstacles to be their biggest challenge.

Program Insights

  • A redoubled focus on preventative care will be key to bring about effective digital health delivery. The current US healthcare delivery system, built mainly on reimbursable, episodic care, is consistently indicted for being a “sick care” system, not a “healthcare” system. Patients, especially patients with chronic healthcare conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, behavioral health and acute kidney disease, need constant, real-time support and guidance, and need their providers to have access to accurate, actionable information to manage these conditions between real-time encounters. Digital health will play a vital role in this effort.
  • New care modalities open the door to structural changes, which will need to keep pace with the healthcare system. How emerging care modalities are integrated into and affect the healthcare system are still in development, and raise a variety of concerns, from staffing and technology needs to privacy safeguards. As the healthcare system adapts to these changes, the regulations that govern care delivery, licensing, and accreditation will need to adjust as well.
  • Positive regulatory changes have been implemented during the pendency of the national pandemic emergency, but those or similar regulatory changes must continue, and gain momentum and reach, for lasting changes to occur. The actions taken by regulators during the COVID-19 public health emergency show that the government can swiftly respond to new ideas and paths to care. However, these actions are temporary, and it will take time to implement lasting change. While there is an appetite to make some common-sense changes permanent, other areas, such as multi-state professional licensing, will likely take more time due to their complexity.
  • Reimbursement models based around episodic care are a major hurdle to the adoption of on-going remote monitoring and other digital health tools. Panelists agreed that when reimbursement structures are aligned with value-based care, such that providers are reimbursed for the outcomes and on-going care management they provide, digital health tools become a critical part of the provider’s toolbox. In [...]

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Around the Corner: The Future Of Telehealth After COVID-19

Prior to the pandemic, health providers and stakeholders were quickly moving to develop and expand existing telehealth programs. Now we are seeing an adoption of telehealth solutions that far surpasses all of the activity we saw in the past five years combined.

Joined by leaders from BDO, Babylon Health, Crossover Health and the Illinois Bone & Joint Institute, we discussed what the future of digital provider/patient engagement may look like after COVID-19 and the legal factors that influence implementation. Telehealth is the new normal and there is no turning back.

Bar graph with poll results.

PROGRAM INSIGHTS

  • There is now recognition that telehealth can, in fact, replace in-person visits in many situations. Patients and healthcare providers have quickly turned to telehealth to provide care for existing and new healthcare conditions during the pandemic. This increase in use has provided additional data demonstrating the value of telehealth. In addition to telehealth visits, patients are looking to patient care navigators and wellness advisors for basic healthcare information that can empower them to manage their healthcare needs before seeking treatment from a licensed healthcare professional.
  • The regulation of telehealth on a state-by-state basis is an ongoing hindrance to telehealth providers in the United States. While the state waivers on professional licensure and care delivery during the COVID-19 public health emergency have temporarily lowered some of these barriers, these waivers have or will soon expire in many states, once again leaving telehealth providers with the burden of developing complex compliance strategies that differ from state to state.
  • For telehealth to achieve its full potential, it needs to be freed from the constraints that apply to in-person episodic care. In doing so, remote monitoring can meaningfully engage patients in real time to actively manage care on an ongoing basis, without interruptions or the need for a pre-scheduled visit.
  • The COVID-19 pandemic is digital health adrenaline – forcing people rapidly and without warning to pivot to telehealth. But when technology works well and effectively, demand will persist well beyond the catalyzing event. If patients receive superior quality care through digital technologies and superior convenience, this improved experience will force the traditional healthcare delivery process to continue its changed approach.
  • The healthcare transactional business model is a challenge that holds back widespread adoption of telehealth. Now that lawmakers have data that demonstrates the value of telehealth, reimbursement codes for different delivery modalities will need to be reevaluated. This reevaluation will future catalyze greater adoption of telehealth by providers as payments will align more appropriately with the services delivered.

For a deeper dive into these topics, please listen to our webinar recording, available here.




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