On the latest Vital Signs, Nikhil Krishnan and I sit down with Dr. Vivek Garg, the Chief Medical Officer & SVP, Primary Care at Humana as well as the Chief Medical Officer at both CenterWell and Conviva. He previously also held clinical leadership roles at CareMore, Oscar, and One Medical. Our conversation hits on Vivek’s insights around primary care, value-based care, and more: 🏥 Takeaways from building primary care programs Vivek breaks his primary care experiences into two types: 1) consumer tech-enabled services (e.g., One Medical, Oscar) and 2) full-risk care delivery for complex patient populations (e.g., CareMore, CenterWell). From the former, he recognized the importance of consumer simplification of healthcare – does this make sense for people in their everyday lives? And from the latter, he highlights the need for comprehensive, coordinated, team-based, relationship-focused care to manage complexity in the face of fragmentation. Overall, Vivek emphasizes the importance of thinking about the business model first, for which full-risk models are one solution. 🏥 Where is value-based care headed? Vivek believes that the VBC payment models are just the first step to reorienting the healthcare system towards preventive care, comprehensive general management, and outcomes. Going forward, he expects greater focus on rethinking specialty and hospital care, as those are the places where most healthcare spend resides. With this, there remains an unfilled gap for consistent quality metrics for specialty care. 🏥 Approaching partnerships for value-based care At Humana, there’s a strong focus on the evaluation of partnerships, which leads to the identification of improvement opportunities. In thinking about the partner vs. build question, Vivek asks himself, “Is there going to be enough of this thing that I think is needed in healthcare, even with all the partners I’m working with?”. If the answer is no (e.g., senior primary care), then it makes sense to also build internally while still maintaining partnerships. Additionally, Humana aims towards risk-based engagement with all of its partners, enabling it to work with everybody while delivering consistent care across all the patients it serves. An insightful conversation with a leader who’s seen so much of the primary care landscape. Listen to the full episode below: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3z5JjgP Apple: https://apple.co/3VIP0Kx
Vivek Garg, MD, MBA
10mo
Thank you Jacob Effron & Nikhil Krishnan for sharing some of that #thinkboi energy! I’m glad to see two intelligent, kind, and funny people early in their journeys creating meaningful conversations about #healthcare, and for the chance to share some of Humana & CenterWell’s work on #VitalSigns.
Ali Khan, MD, MPP
10mo
Fantastic pod!
Content at Redpoint Ventures
10moAwesome episode!