Business of Healthcare

Carteret County is a coastal North Carolina community of approx 70,000 residents which

swells to 200,000 during the summer beach season.  Carteret had a big overdose problem, ranked in the worst quintile in North Carolina.That's where Consolidated Health and Human Services Director Dr. Randall Williams and Post Overdose Response Team Manager Brook Lane come in.  In only two years, they reduced overdoses by...

Gautam Shrikhande, MD, Chief Executive Officer of Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine and Brian Rath, Partner, Lorient Capital join Business of Healthcare to explore the role of private equity in physician services.

Physicians want to serve patients with the highest value care at the best cost while being fairly compensated.  Growth is a sign of a healthy, well-run practice. Ethical medical groups attract patients and increase revenue p...

Why are marketing tools, techniques and approaches so important to transforming healthcare? In his BOH interview, Zeev Neuwirth, MD says, "The field, in my estimation, that really understands what people want and need is the field of marketing." An Atrium Health clinical executive and author of recently published Reframing healthcare - roadmap for creating disruptive change, Neuwirth describes the 'marketing mindset', stages system...

Can health systems engage consumers digitally to improve quality, cost and satisfaction? According to Mark Jannone, Senior Director, Banner Health's Banner Innovation Group, the answer is a solid, "Yes." He is helping to pilot digital ED triage and chatbot tools. Jannone reports the tools achieve a 35% reduction in inappropriate ED cases with 92% triage accuracy, decrease the time patients are in the ED by about 50% and increase ne...

"No outcome, no income," says Dr. David Nash, Founding Dean Emeritus, Jefferson College of Population Health. JCPH is the nation's first graduate school of population health. Nash describes the emergence of the population health movement, why fixing the US healthcare system is so important for our economy and our society, and concrete interventions such as going at risk with supply chain partners such as pharma.

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Karen L. Smith MD, FAAFP kept discovering opioid addiction in the families she served in her independent, rural primary care practice. With growing need and few referral options, Smith began providing medication-assisted treatment. MAT uses medication, counseling and behavioral therapies to treat substance use disorders and sustain recovery. Smith shares patient stories which led her to take on this challenge and the barriers a phy...

In 2016, Wilmington, NC had the highest concentration of opioid use disorder among US cities. Community leaders including regional health system chief physician executive Philip M. Brown, MD, FACS helped intervene in this public health epidemic. Brown describes the moment a national report triggered awareness of the local opioid epidemic. He and his fellow leaders undertook multi-faceted interventions to change prescribing habits, ...

When a med mal claim emerges from patient injury, we may debate who's liable but we can agree something undesirable happened. Mark Reynolds leads CRICO, the Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions, a captive insurance program. CRICO, in addition to serving its members' medical professional liability insurance and other needs, also provides a comparative database with 30% of U.S. MPL claims. Reynolds shares in...

CHRISTUS chief clinical officer John Gillean, MD, MHA, among his many responsibilities, guides his organization's insurance captive to reduce operating costs and improve patient safety. While supporting the system's core patient care mission, this lowered total system cost of risk from $100 million to $50 million. Now focused on emerging risks such as natural disaster, cyber security, active shooter and pandemic, Gillean is helping...

Larry Smith and Rachel Leyko of MedStar Health explain Early Intervention, their journeys to advocacy and evidence of lowers costs and better outcomes for patients, families and clinicians. 

Medical error resulting in patient injury may lead healthcare personnel to withdraw from patients and withhold information for fear of litigation.  Early Intervention is an alternative approach in which physicians and health system staff quickl...

Becky Gernon, MD of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City and Peggy DeCarlis, recently retired from New Directions Behavioral Health, report on integrating behavioral health into primary care clinics and their recently published results showing 10.8% population health cost savings.

Deployed through Blue KC's Spira Care Clinics, the project also showed reduction in physician burnout which Gernon attributes in part to the integra...

Medical professional liability insurance premiums may rise and cyber security may become a factor.  Leading MPL underwriting expert Nat Cross, Beazley Group's Healthcare Leader, forecasts premium trends and explains the drivers.  Cyber security may be an emerging MPL risk as internet-connected biomedical devices such as infusion pumps become subject to cyber-attacks.  Compliance and information security expert Jon Moore explains th...