Among keynoters at Chilmark Research conference on payer-provider convergence is veteran health IT exec John Glaser Cerner population health senior VP and former Siemens CEO.
Cerner population health chief John Glaser said Cerner is looking at ways to reinvent itself as value-based care becomes reality and healthcare providers and insurance payers inch closer together.
Glaser, Cerner population health senior vice president, and former Siemens CEO noted that the giant Kansas City, Mo. EHR vendor has evolved dramatically from its roots as a lab information system developer and that it could keep changing.
To assess the direction of change, Glaser said, his company is asking searching questions: “In addition to population health, which we have to do, should we get into claims processing? Should we get into managing networks of doctors? Should we get into actuarial services? Should we be getting into bringing in people to do your care management for you?”
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“A lot of the providers will say, ‘I’ve never done that stuff before, can you guys help me?'” Glaser said. “What we’re doing is trying to sort through the technologies and services that would traditionally have been done by a payer, but are now being done by one of our customers.”
The Cerner population health chief is headlining a slate of keynoters at the Chilmark Research health IT consulting firm’s Convergence 2017 conference Oct. 4 to 6 in Boston. SearchHealthIT’s publisher, TechTarget, is a media sponsor.
The conference is spotlighting the fast-growing trend that has providers becoming their own payers, providers buying health plans, providers and payers forming alliances, and other models in which the long sparring sectors cooperate more than clash.
“The world is evolving into value-based care in all its forms, and we have to evolve with that,” Glaser said. “Yes, we do EHRs and always will, but we now also have to have this series of solutions and services that help people respond to this shift in business model and the shift in care.”
Future of payer-provider convergence
Meanwhile, Chilmark CEO and founder John Moore said the intent of the independent research and consulting firm’s inaugural conference is to air ideas about how insurers and providers can work together to help the people they serve.
One notable subtrend of the coming together that Chilmark research has noted in recent years is the “payvider” phenomenon, in which healthcare providers become their own payers.
However, Moore said he doesn’t think that approach is sustainable because most providers don’t have the ability to scale big enough.
“We think the model that will succeed is one in which providers and payers work more collaboratively while using their core competencies,” Moore said. “You have to have a certain amount of parity.”
Employers keep payers in check
Among these kinds of models are joint ventures, direct-to-employer insurance plans and providers acquiring payers, Moore said.
As healthcare transitions to value-based care, providers will increasingly be responsible for the entire continuum of care, from prevention to rehab.
Ultimately, employers will demand more from both providers and payers in order to keep workers healthy, well and productive, Moore said.
And employers can help check spiraling healthcare costs while pushing providers to keep providing high-quality care by using their market leverage.
“The employer can always go to a different payer,” Moore said.
In addition to Moore and Glaser, the Convergence 2017 speaker lineup includes:
- Paul Black, CEO of Allscripts
- John Bulger, D.O., chief medical officer of population health at Geisinger Health System
- Aashima Gupta, global head of healthcare solutions at Google Cloud Platform
- John Halamka, M.D., CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
- Denise Harr, senior medical director of Capital BlueCross
- Sachin Jain, president, and CEO of CareMore Health system
- Joel Jones, clinical lead of population health initiatives at Epic Systems Corp.
- Laurie McGraw, senior vice president of health solutions at American Medical Association
- Jessica Zeaske, director of healthcare investments at GE Ventures and
- Chilmark analysts and executives Brian Eastwood, Brian Murphy, Ken Kleinberg and Janice Young.
Panel sessions feature provider, payer and employer executives sharing their experiences with payer-provider convergence; technologies for data sharing and application development for payer-provider collaboration; care management strategies; the role of health consumers; and innovation opportunities.
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Date: Sep 21, 2017