September 1, 2017 – Curant Health Director of Clinical Services, Vickie Andros, PharmD, and Senior Director of Commercial Strategy & Performance, Jake Caines, in Becker’s Hospital Review:
Part 2 – Building the ACO MSSP framework: Getting and keeping the team onboard
After carefully selecting your ACO track and the associated metrics by which your success (and shared savings) will be measured, the next most important determination an ACO can make involves your clinic partners. As we mentioned in part 1 of this series: the right clinical partners are defined more so by remit than role. The vast majority of ACOs are made up of a network of individual clinics which are structured differently. While a job title may be the same from one clinic to the next, the actual day-to-day activities of individuals in that role likely couldn’t be more disparate. Said in another way, ACOs have different clinics with different people working in different ways around a different program towards a shared goal. Unlocking shared savings through the MSSP model will not be easy.
Why is moving to a new healthcare delivery model so hard? Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Shared savings programs introduce a new model requiring a fundamentally different practice approach. While clinicians are not opposed to this new model, they must adapt quickly in order implement and evolve the program so as not to disrupt their current practice. Active collaboration between the ACO and partner clinics to discuss, understand and agree upon program expectations is key to building a successful program. Perhaps more important is making sure that your program starts by engaging the right people at the right clinic sites at the right time. The graphic below is highly applicable to new delivery model rollouts in the healthcare sector. Identifying and engaging innovators and early adopters is crucial during the new program’s rollout. Their support will be needed in order to demonstrate and communicate early success and obtain the requisite buy-in from more pragmatic providers that will be required for long-term program expansion.
You need innovators and early adopters on your team.
Your provider partners most likely to experience initial success demonstrate three key attributes: perspective, persistence and passion. In addition, provider partners likely to act as effective innovators and early adopters are more likely to look beyond their industry and own experiences for inspiration in developing healthcare models to deliver increased value.
Perspective
Maintaining the status quo has already put too many clinics and hospitals out of business. Your primary contact at the clinic level should believe that failure to improve patient outcomes while reducing costs is a very real threat to both their organization and to their patients who would struggle to find, and pay for, care should the clinic cease to exist. Clinical innovators experience short-term gratification in experimentation and an ability to see and positively affect measurable outcomes. This drive to experiment and test new approaches is a critical attribute because the financial reward of unlocking shared savings is not an immediate gratification prospect.
To read the full article, visit Becker’s Hospital Review.
To learn more about partnership opportunities with Curant Health, contact Kristin Lindsey, Senior Marketing Director, at klindsey@curanthealth.com.