You’re a physician by training and still practice but what inspired you to transition to working on the vendor side as well?
After ten years dedicated to my clinical career, I needed to diversify both for personal and professional reasons. I ended up running into my old med-school roommate who was the founder of Clinovations. Clinovations was eventually acquired by Advisory Board and through this business deal, I was introduced to Kevin Coloton – founder and CEO of Curation Health.
In my role as chief medical officer at Curation Health, I feel like I get to practice medicine at scale with technology. I also feel like I’m helping my physician colleagues adapt to new technology and to do so in new ways that benefit patients. At the end of the day, we’re all trying to push new levers to get better outcomes at a more effective, better price point, and I am honored to help other physicians do just that without adding additional administrative burdens to their already robust workloads.
Can you explain how the work you are doing at Curation Health is helping drive value in healthcare?
We are laser-focused on improving and simplifying clinician workflow, not on driving adoption of our platform. That may sound cheeky but it’s something our founder, Kevin Coloton, drills home with our leadership team on a consistent basis. It’s also something I believe in wholeheartedly as a practicing clinician who has seen the benefits and challenges related to the advancement of technology in healthcare. Our value as a company and value-based care platform is just that – we take pride in reducing clinician administrative burdens and streamlining clinical workflow, while also ensuring the full capture of patient care that aligns with risk-based contracts and quality measures.
How does Curation help providers and payers in the transition to value-based care?
It’s clear that the tools most of our partners are trying to use today are not in fact value-based care tools – they are fee-for-service tools. Also, as these healthcare organizations look to transition to value over volume, one of the major sources of frustration is that we’re asking clinicians to do something they were never trained to do. We help clinicians face the change to value head-on by providing services and a platform that offers point of care insights on patients – and all within the electronic health record workflow that they are now familiar with. This allows them to capture the level of patient detail needed in shared risk contracting, and to do so without massively overhauling how they work today.
At its simplest, Curation Health makes it easy for providers and payers to document in a way that gets them credit for the complexity of patients they are managing. In the process, we often find ourselves as middleware, aggregating and organizing data across the enterprise and presenting it in a way that is actionable.
What did COVID-19 teach healthcare providers about value-based care?
It taught providers that fee-for-service doesn’t work – especially during a pandemic when patients are putting off care to maintain their own health and safety. COVID-19 was an eye-opener for providers when it comes to value over volume. As a result, I think we’ll see more focus on the transition to value this year from providers and even more willingness for them to collaborate with payers to manage risk together. I wrote about this same topic recently in HIStalk: Without a Subscription Revenue Model, Hospitals and Health Systems Will Cease To Exist
We’ve heard you talk a great deal about the value and importance of telemedicine. Can you explain why telemedicine is a must for providers and payers in a value-based care world
The pandemic has knocked down any remaining barriers for virtual care amongst providers, payers, patients, and regulators. Allowing virtual visits to count towards risk adjustment was a key deregulatory decision made this time last year and will play a big role in the future. Most estimates state that 20-30% of primary care will be virtual and its cost-effectiveness will make it crucial to success in value-based care.
