Emancipating Value in Healthcare – ProvenCare, with Glenn Steele MD, Chairman of xG Health Solutions, and former President & CEO of Geisinger Health S

Our guest this week, Glenn Steele MD PhD, is one of the most trailblazing, impactful and enduring healthcare leaders of our time.  He is a distinguished surgeon, researcher and executive.  Dr. Steele served as past Chairman of the American Board of Surgery, past president of the Society of Surgical Oncology, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.  He has been named consecutive times to Modern Healthcare’s Most Powerful Physician Executives in Healthcare, Modern Healthcare’s 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare & Beckers’ Hospital Review 100 non-profit Health System CEO’s to know list.

Dr. Steele, former President & CEO of Geisinger & currently the Chairman of xG Health Solutions; and his colleague, the current President & CEO of Geisinger, David Feinberg MD recently co-authored a book entitled ProvenCare – How to Deliver Value-Based Healthcare the Geisinger Way.  In this interview we will uncover the major components of the ProvenCare model.  It’s a great peak under the hood of one of the best healthcare systems in the world.

What you’ll discover in this interview will include:

  • Dr. Steele’s 3 fundamental approaches to “emancipating value” in healthcare.
  • Geisinger’s ProvenCare Acute – a protocol so reliable that Geisinger offers money-back guarantees on procedures like coronary artery bypass surgery, and hip and knee replacement surgeries.
  • Geisinger’s ProvenCare Chronic – an approach to providing consistently high quality, patient-oriented care for chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma.
  • Geisinger’s  uniquely bold approach to achieving outstanding outcomes in chronic disease management – one example being their ‘all-or-none’ diabetes bundle.
  • Geisinger’s ProvenHealth Navigator – a comprehensive approach that includes Primary Care Redesign, Population Health Management, and Medical Neighborhoods.
  • Geisinger’s ‘sweet spot’ – the integrated vertical alignment of payer/insurer & provider that has allowed them to create a powerful synergistic system for value-based care.

This interview also highlights Dr. Steele’s hard-earned wisdom, which played a critical role in the repeated and sustained successes at Geisinger.  He shares a number of memorable pearls during our dialogue.   One example is his commentary on how “scaling” innovation is, in his experience, much more challenging than creating the innovation itself.  Another related example is, in his own words: “how you do the ‘sociology for change’ is actually even more important than the substance of the change”.  His explanation of these statements have profound implications for anyone interested in or working on the transformation of healthcare.

You’ll also hear about the groundbreaking work Dr. Steele is doing in his newest role as Vice Chairman and clinical leader at the Health Transformation Alliance (HTA), an alliance of over 40 U.S. Corporations composed of over 6 million employees, with an annual healthcare spend of over $25 billion.  In this role, Dr. Steele, and his colleagues at HTA, are demonstrating to employers and employees that they can lower the cost of care by over 25% and decrease the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other end-stage outcomes of chronic disease – by guiding medical care to physicians within the Alliance who are using the ProvenCare model.

The Geisinger ProvenCare story is one of the best in the annals of American Healthcare; and in this interview, it’s told by one of the most proven healthcare leaders.

As always, I hope you get as much out of this interview as I have!

Zeev