Host Eric Tower is joined this week by Hector Torres and Aaron Newman of FocalPoint Partners, which provides strategic and financial advisory services to health care organizations of all sizes and types. Hector is Managing Director and co-head of Health Care Investment Banking at FocalPoint Partners and Aaron is Vice President of Health Care Banking.
The trio discuss the roadblocks in the United States' health care system that make adopting a population health approach difficult, as many organizations tend to be more focused on profit margins than on patient care. They note that organizations that can think strategically about the future of the industry will have better success with integrating population health into their operations. They additionally speak to how organizations might take the first steps toward integrating pop health capabilities.
On health care in the United States:
Hector Torres: "Health care in the United States is very local. The dynamics are very different market to market and even submarket to submarket so it's really about understanding and appreciating those dynamics and how they affect the ability of organizations to incorporate population health as a core element of long-term strategy. That being said, all health care organizations should be thinking about population health, and being honest in terms of how aligned, or misaligned, their current organizational structure, capabilities and strategic imperatives are in this regard."
On profits vs. patients:
Aaron Newman: "Systems are worried about improving their margins in operating their businesses and providing the best patient care as possible. Having said that, they don't have the time to even think about population health. Most of these organizations are somewhat stuck in a fee-for-service midset. And you know when we look at the other end of the spectrum at large, very well-capitalized systems, only a portion of their revenue is in value-based care."
On various integration systems:
Aaron Newman: "To effectuate population health management effectively, you need attributable lives, right? And that's why you see a lot of these larger health systems going outside their primary and secondary markets in order to increase their access to attributable lives and pursue population health with a more robust patient population from which substantive data and analytics can be extracted."
Read the full transcript here.
Talking Pop Health: Episode guide
Originally published 14 July, 2020
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