Monitoring the birth of an industry
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH At the end of the [business model and strategic positioning] day, it’s all about the intangible but mission critical ‘C’ word, i.e., culture, and whether two traditionally oppositional styles (physician v. hospital) can mash-up and ‘meaningfully integrate’ (clinically, legally & workflow wise) where previous attempts during the 80s and 90s …
Continue reading “Are Institutionally Led ACOs ‘DOA’? I Say Heck Yah!”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH On the broadcast I chat with Charles Saunders MD, CEO of Emerging Businesses at Aetna. Dr. Saunder’s seat in the house of healthcare innovation is a unique perch and his tenure in the business brings both depth and breadth to fundamental questions we face as a collective industry. A fountain …
Continue reading “This Week in Accountable Care with Aetna Strategist Charles Saunders MD”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH We’re only 8 days out from the HiMSS bash in the ‘big easy’ aka ‘NOLA’. We’ve been so engaged in planning the Health Innovation Broadcast Consortium aka @HIBCtv coverage it’s been a challenge to stay on top and share the more worthwhile developments in the ACO space. So lets detail some …
Continue reading “HiMSS 2013 Accountable Care Organization RoundUp: Monday March 3rd”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH We’re only 8 days out from the HiMSS bash in the ‘big easy’ aka ‘NOLA’. We’ve been so engaged in planning the Health Innovation Broadcast Consortium aka @HIBCtv it’s been a challenge to stay on top and share the more worthwhile developments in the ACO space. Perhaps of most immediate interest …
This post originally appeared at HealthHombre. The national health expenditure data released last week showed relatively modest 2011 growth, which promptly provoked a back-and-forth about what the figures truly say and what they portend for holding spending in check going forward. Amid considerable mental gear gnashing, the data have been assessed in light of such potential cost influencers as lingering recessionary effects, clinical v. administrative drivers, and imminent arrival of the full-bore ACA. Occupying several nodes along the public-opinion continuum, headlines ranged from “Spending …
Continue reading “Signal to Noise Challenges in ACO Actuarial Data: Who’s ‘At Greater Risk?’”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Comparing and contrasting healthcare markets or their essential component parts can be a perilous board room exercise if the intent is to make sense of strategy options, that inform enterprise or entity choice, and meaningfully benchmark forward progress. In pursuit of the ‘triple aim’: better experience of care, improved population …
Continue reading “A Tale of Two Cities: The Worst of Times or the Best of Times? L.A. v. San Diego”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH I intended to post updates from Aetna and Cigna next in this series, yet today I received a tweet by Vince Kuraitis, aka @VinceKuraitis, calling attention to Universal American a managed care player I’ve not spent much time on. Yet they present a rather interesting profile and operating footprint some …
Continue reading “Universal American: A ‘Healthy Collaboration?’”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Whether you love em (anyone love their health insurance company?) or hate em, major health plans are in a reasonable position to lead if not steward the needed healthcare transformation. While physicians aka ‘disorganized medicine’ too often circle the wagons and shoot in, and whereas hospital systems present too much …
Continue reading “Strategic Market Tea Leaves: The Health Plan Perspective”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH The 31st annual get together of biotech, pharma and an eclectic litany of publically held healthcare company and many impressive tax exempt health system peeps was my first albeit from a somewhat disadvantaged, i.e., ‘crasher’, status. Yet, in the overall program mix there seemed to be something for everybody from …
Continue reading “JP Morgan Healthcare Conference Unbundled: Something for Everyone?”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Industry watchers have to be impressed by the announcement from CMS today that effectively doubles the ACO count from prior reported totals. Is it just me, or can you can sense the subtle shift in market sentiment from skepticism to loss of first mover opportunity in one’s market. For the list of …
Continue reading “And the Circle Grows! CMS Announces Another Round of ACOs”
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