Watch it on YouTube
About 5 Big Ideas
It started with a question: What did we learn from our podcasts in 2021? There were a lot of great discussions around how we can work together to transform health care. We have boiled it down to Five Big Ideas delivered in Five Minutes. (Minus introductions and transitions, of course.)
The Transcript
Big Idea #1
Sarah-Beth Janssen: There isn’t a homerun to be hit out there. If there was, we’d all be doing it and our problems would be solved. It doesn’t exist today, right? So we have to take a look at what are those singles that we can keep batting, whether it’s the prescription medication piece, it’s looking at these high-value providers and creating the right steerage to get the employees in there, right? Nobody wants to sacrifice quality. I mean, we’re not trying to send an employee to get a surgery in a van down by the river, right? We want to make sure that they’re getting really great quality care. But you know, it’s interesting, in healthcare, because so many of the times, the lowest cost providers are also the best, they have the best outcomes, which goes against everything else that you typically think of, right? If you’re in the market for buying a new TV, the biggest, best, most, you know, best technology that’s out there, that one’s more expensive than, you know, the small 20-inch that you’re going to put in your kitchen, right? Just the opposite.
Big Idea #2
Terry Rowinski: I saw way too many employer groups that weren’t acting like health care was really a fiduciary responsibility of their’s. As I talked to CEOs, or CFOs, or CXOs, of organizations, many didn’t even understand that it was one of their top five expenses. They always thought, oh, you know, shipping, and that, you know, materials and of course wages, but they didn’t take into account the cost of their employee benefit program. It was really impacting and what they could do if they tweaked it to make a different when you have self-funding, you know, clients and you have great employee benefit consultants that go out in the marketplace that believe in working with the data, you can create such a differential in your benefit plan that you can actually save substantial money over time while giving better services to the people that you care about. And that’s your employees and their families. And if you can do that, who wouldn’t want to shout that from the mountaintops and the success that’s going on?
Big Idea #3
Curt Kubiak: So let me get this right. Again, for our viewers, I think these numbers are important for them to understand. So when we talking about ordering lab diagnostics, you’re not talking about cost savings that you’re offering your patientsof 10 to 15 to 20 percent, you’re talking about 10x, Right? So literally 10% of what they might be charged through a standard health insurance health system model. Am I understanding that correct?
Dr. Wendy Molaska: So I can give you two examples that are right on the top of my head always so a CBC – complete blood count – I had done with employer-sponsored insurance, I’m on my husband’s insurance at the time, so $80 for the CBC and $33 for the phlebotomy fee, the actual draw fee, so $113 for that. For my patients, through Quest Labs, $3.25.
Big Idea #4
Dr. Tim Bartholow: Many of the insurers of the state put their claims into a central database called WHIO – Wisconsin Health Information Organization – and in that block of information, you can actually see, well, how many potatoes, carrots, rutabaga does it take to make my stew?lets tangible. How much does it, how many resources does it take in order to to make an angioplasty for instance? It might be shocking to some of the listenership to hear me as an employer, frankly, as a as an independent primary caregiver, that there was a lot of variation between what was necessary to produce an angioplasty by one person as compared to another, let’s say, between 40 and 100 percent more to actually produce the same quality event.
Big Idea #5
Traci Tauferner: If Aaron Rodgers gets injured, guess what? He sees his athletic trainer that day. He sees his orthopedic surgeon, that day, if necessary. If he needs physical therapy, he’s getting physical therapy the next day, OK. We’re trying to bring that entire model, or employers should at least think of that model coming out, into their work setting. As the industrial athletes yes, you’re active, you have a physically aggressive job that needs you to do strength and conditioning all day long. So, if you get injured, why can’t you see your athletic trainer that day? Why can’t you see that surgeon or that orthopedic if you have something more musculoskeletal, that day? And why can’t you do physical therapy that day, or you know, as soon as surgery is over, on site at your work environment where you train or play or however you want to look at it work every single day?