CHAPcast by CHAP - Community Health Accreditation Partner
Your CHAP on-the-go source for news + policy review, innovation, interviews with thought leaders, and the top trends in community-based care.The views expressed by the authors, hosts, and guests are their own, and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by CHAP employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the organization's view.
CHAPcast by CHAP - Community Health Accreditation Partner
Communicate and Deliver Value your Health Systems Need
Unlock the strategies that can transform your approach to healthcare communication! Join Jennifer Kennedy, CHAP's lead for compliance and quality, and Pat Driscoll, a professor in healthcare administration and chair of CHAP's board, as they reveal how to effectively communicate value and quality in today's fiercely competitive healthcare landscape. This episode is packed with actionable insights on overcoming the challenges faced by post-acute care providers, ensuring continuity of care, and fostering proactive collaboration between hospital systems and community-based providers.
Discover how to elevate your post-acute care value by engaging with key decision-makers early and designing robust programs for managing chronic diseases and high-acuity patients. Pat Driscoll offers expert advice on becoming indispensable partners in the continuum of care, emphasizing the importance of delivering on promises and embracing value-based care models. The episode concludes with a compelling discussion on fostering dynamic partnerships and integrating learnings back into your organization for continuous quality improvement. Don't miss this opportunity to elevate your healthcare practice and improve patient outcomes through effective communication and collaboration.
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Greetings. I'm Jennifer Kennedy, the lead for compliance and quality at CHAP, and welcome to another special edition of CHAPcast. This is the series where we harness the knowledge and experience of our board of directors to help you jumpstart insightful and meaningful discussions within your organization. So the goal of the special podcast is to give you the tools that you need to give you the insight and guidance to excel and push your boundaries of quality in a positive direction. Today I'm really excited about this conversation. We're going to be talking about communicating your value and quality in today's really competitive healthcare environment, and we have a wonderful guest today that's going to give us some great insight about doing that.
Speaker 1:There is a lot of competition on many levels. You know you're out there, you're in the home care space and there's a lot of other people and competitors in that space. So you're competing for partners. You're competing for patients and when you're in the home and servicing your patient, you're competing for satisfaction on the quality of care and the other processes that you bring to that patient and that family. Also, I feel like you're competing for your reputation in the community as well, because if you don't have a good reputation in the community, I don't know that you're going to be surviving in the next year. So, without further ado, I want to introduce our guest today, pat Driscoll. She is a professor in healthcare administration at the Texas Women's University and, even more important, she's CHAP's board of directors chair. So welcome, pat, and is there anything else you'd like to tell us about your experience?
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. It's hard to talk about my experience because, as a person that's been around the block more times than I can imagine, I have had the opportunity to actually involve myself in many, many aspects of healthcare, originally in the acute care space, as a hospital manager, then as a lawyer, a practicing attorney, then as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies about their wellness and health services, and then not finally but very importantly as the CEO of a home health organization. So I believe I've sort of seen it from various and sundry aspects.
Speaker 1:You are. You're like a powerhouse. I've never met anyone who has all of the goods, if you will. You know, you've got the clinical background as a master's prepared nurse. You've got the legal background as a lawyer. You've really you've got it all and you've had such a plethora of experience in different ways. I think you're the right person to have this conversation with today about how to communicate your value as an organization in this really tumultuous healthcare continuum that we have in the US, and particularly in the post-acute space. Particularly in the post-acute space, I think it's important that we do a better job than we have been doing about communicating our value. So maybe that's the first diving board jump off topic here for us today, pat.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things that was really brought home to me this past year I had the opportunity to attend the ACHE Congress, which is really a meeting of predominantly hospital affiliated and associated leaders on everyone's mind today. One thing that kept coming up was the importance of continuity, the fact that our populations are wanting to remain in their homes, be part of the community, and the importance, from a cost containment and patient satisfaction standpoint, how important it is for hospital systems to be able to have that transition into the community management of their populations. So of course, I immediately popped up and said, oh my gosh, the solution is right in front of us. We've got these phenomenal services available through home health and hospice in our community that we are not leveraging. And to my overwhelming distress, the response was that we don't see them as a solution, that when we call they want to cherry pick patients, they don't get out there in time. In other words, they were voicing a lot of the perceptions fair or not that have revolved around post-acute for a long time.
Speaker 1:So that's interesting that you, you know that they view us, as you know, not being responsive and I think you know, having been in the community-based, home-based care space for a long time. I think there are a lot of variables when you're talking about responsiveness. And can we take a patient, particularly in the hospice space? I know hospitals right now. They have patients that are on the brink of death. They want them out, they want them off their mortality stats. They call hospice in. This patient is going to die in an ambulance if we try to take them home, and they're not necessarily in an acute state where we can justify a higher level of care.
Speaker 1:It's these kinds of situations, you know that I think not to get us off the topic of value, but these things are happening in the healthcare continuum and it's really regulatory Right, driven right. But I think a value for a hospice in that situation is okay. Well, what can we do to help this patient in the family? You know, can we negotiate a different type of contractual agreement you know that isn't a higher level of care so that we can take care of this patient.
Speaker 2:So what do you think about distinguishing yourselves from other competitors in the space of post-acute Well, I think you're very, very on target, jennifer, because I think one of the problems is that we have, in the post-acute space, been reactive rather than proactive. In other words, are we having those conversations early with the appropriate decision makers where we can essentially come up with shared solutions to problems such as the one you described of hospitals? Not, and I think a part of it is, they're not recognizing the value they don't think of goodness. If we transition and work with the care of this patient at a much earlier stage, it's better for us, it frees up the beds, it's so much better for the patient and then, as us, as community providers, it of course doesn't put us in that position where, one, we can't deliver because it's too late, or two. That then tarnishes our reputation as a meaningful partner. So I think it's so important that, basically, we are thinking about what value proposition do we bring and then being able to communicate that effectively.
Speaker 1:So you use the word deliver. You know and I think that's an important word when you're partnering with various referral sources, talking about what you can deliver, how you do it, timeframes and all that, can we talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Well, it doesn't do any good to say we're of great value if we actually don't deliver when we get the opportunity. So I think that it's very, very important to design programs that are workable for us. And gosh, there is so much that we can do in order to manage chronic diseases in the community, for example, so that we can manage that transition from acute to home. But we one have to be able to do it, so we have to be part of the process. We can't be sitting there, you know, waiting by the phone for that referral at the last minute. We have to be part of the entire enterprise, and so that's why I think it's so important number one to get in front of and sit down and have those conversations with the actual decision makers. I think for a long time and I'm guilty of this myself as a post-acute provider and that was being so focused on the referral source at the organization. And, yes, those case managers are stressed. Those case managers are trying to just their mission is get that patient onto the next right step, and they're being inundated by all of us saying, oh, pick me, pick me, but oh, excuse me, only pick me for the patients that I want to take. So, for a lot of reasons, I'm not sure that that's the appropriate place to begin to solidify the relationships that make up the necessary partnerships for us to be part of this whole continuum. I think one of the other things that we don't do a really great job of is when we are having these important conversations that we are essentially attributing and communicating. Excuse me, I need to start over that. When we're having these important conversations with decision makers that number one we know and I've identified what their pain points are and how we can contribute to solving them.
Speaker 2:More and more, as we see, acos become a part of and bundle payments and value-based care become part of the fabric of healthcare and particularly acute care. We have to be that important piece that helps to essentially make them successful, to essentially make them successful. I think the other thing that we sometimes overlook is that we have other potential clients and that is in the area of managed care and pay biters I guess is the appropriate term who are very, very focused on trying to affect the overall cost of care, and so we have enormous ability to contribute to making those things more workable. We can provide great ROI to all of those groups in terms of meaningful programs to manage those natty, challenging chronic diseases, because those are the frequent flyers that drive the cost of care, both for systems and for managed care. We are in a unique position as a provider.
Speaker 2:I can remember making a huge difference in becoming a partner with our local ACO simply by saying give me your biggest problems, those frequent flyers that nobody wants and nobody could deal with, and if I can basically show you that I can manage those effectively, then this is what I want in return. I want a contract that carves out, you know, and then we could start talking about right how we can enhance and change that relationship. It was interesting to me because all of a sudden I got a call one day and said what happened to Mr Jones? Did he expire? And I said what do you mean? Did he expire?
Speaker 2:We haven't seen him in six months in the ER. He was coming in as much as three times a week. And I said absolutely not, he's part of our project and basically he hasn't needed to go in because we have managed him so effectively in his home environment. So it's not just communicating but showing by what we can do that we build a relationship, that we change the perception and that basically, we become a partner in what what's meaningful for all of us in the provider space, as well as, most importantly, we make it better for patients who really want to be at home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with you. But how would you, how would you talk to the home based providers that say you know we don't want the problems we want. You know we want patients that we can take care of, we can bill for, we can collect for and get them on their way? And how do you talk to that provider set where you know they're needing to keep their organization running and they don't necessarily maybe have the staffing or the skill set of the staff to take on patients who are a little more complicated or have a higher acuity? How do you approach those organizations?
Speaker 2:Well, my approach essentially is this and that is, as we're seeing the dynamic changes in the healthcare environment, as we're seeing this huge shift to value-based care, to capitation, to other payment models, that we in post-acute have to be part of the solution Agreed. And if we continue to rely on gosh, I want that Medicare joint, I want to be able to do my X number of therapy, enhance, know, enhance my therapy visits, enhance my payment for Medicare and move on. We're not going to be part of anything, basically Because, in fact, very often, that's why we're not viewed as a solution. That's why it seemed that solution, that's why it seemed that, essentially, we just want that easy patient and we're not going to get that easy patient as others are going to be able to craft more dynamic and creative partnerships with both payers and providers. I think that one of the things that we miss is we're what passive in our approach. Oh, my gosh, we need a Medicare patient because they pay more. Oh, I don't want that darn United patient because they don't pay much.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we need to turn that paradigm on its head. I think we need to sit down and say if, in fact, you want to solve your issue, which include both satisfaction and some quality outcomes, many of which we can have a huge hand in. We can turn the table on patient satisfaction by being that meaningful transition and that partnership for the patient in the community once they're out of the acute care setting, and those are valuable. I will say, as a board member on a large integrated system, we lost in our health plan a half a star. A half a star that meant for us $30 million a year. For us, $30 million a year Really.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And people don't understand that this is big time stuff and therefore a health plan might be more than willing to sit down and say I'm willing to negotiate something with you. If, in fact, you can really provide these things for me, they can help me keep that half a star, and goodness help them. If it's a full star, then that's huge losses. We can step in and really make a difference in those kinds of situations, but we have to be able to craft those kinds of solutions. We have to be able to, as you say, deliver that we can be there, that we can partner, that we can manage that patient, that we have disease programs that we can deal with that congestive heart failure and chronic lung disease and diabetes and all the things that old people are afflicted with trying to live their lives in the community and we can actually show specific ROI and what the next step is. It's only appropriate then that we have an arrangement that reimburses us for our value, to save you right All of this reimbursement that you need in order to be successful.
Speaker 1:Right, I agree with that. We have to show our value first in order to talk reimbursement. So this has been great conversation, pat. If you could think of a call to action to our listeners today, what would that be?
Speaker 2:Well, my first call to action is start thinking in non-traditional ways about how we as part of post-acute community can change the perception, how we can begin talking metrics, how we can begin talking value and substantively providing that kind of information and creating the relationships at various points within the system, past the referral person, to communicate that and to begin moving forward Now. In order to do that, obviously then we have to be able to put together that story, those metrics, that data, and so the second thing I would say to you is we at CHAP are a resource.
Speaker 1:We are.
Speaker 2:One of the things that we are absolutely focused on is being able to compile greater data for our clients and for others. We also have an array of services and folks that are focused on helping our organizations and post-acute to identify and to define our value as partners.
Speaker 1:That, I think, epitomizes the partner in CHAP right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I am absolutely sold on that important aspect, because we, as your partner at CHAP, we as your partner at Shab, hopefully will reflect your partnership then, secondly, with the other external partners that you relate to. But we can all work together to begin articulating what are those points that, most importantly, we can emphasize and communicate more effectively.
Speaker 1:I agree wholeheartedly, and this has been a great conversation with you today, pat. I always love talking with you and I always learn something new when I talk with you, so hopefully, all of you will be able to take something away from this rich conversation and bring back the points to your organization in order for you to push your value proposition and your quality forward. So, without further ado, actually, thanks to all of you for taking time out of your day to plug into this special podcast with our guest, pat Driscoll, and from me and the entire CHAP staff, keep your quality needle surging forward, stay safe and well, and thanks for all you do, thank you.
