Healthcare Unbound_Dr. Anil Singh: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Intro/Outro:
Welcome to Healthcare Unbound, a podcast powered by Clarify Health, where healthcare's changemakers discuss ways to advance care outcomes, cost, and affordability.
Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! This is Saul Marquez. And welcome back to the Healthcare Unbound podcast. We're hosting it today from the HLTH 2023 event in Las Vegas. Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Dr. Anil Singh. He's the senior vice president and executive medical director for population and curated health at Highmark Health. $26 billion blended health organization that includes one of America's largest Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurers, and a growing regional hospital and physician network. Dr. Singh understands that taking care of a person encompasses holistic approach, including physical, mental, and social aspects of care, and I'm excited to have him here on the podcast. Dr. Singh, welcome.
Dr. Anil Singh:
Thank you so much, pleasure to be here.
Saul Marquez:
It's a pleasure to have you here. And look, the energy of the event is very exciting, and the work that you do is fascinating to all of us. Can you tell us what got you started in healthcare innovation?
Dr. Anil Singh:
Yeah, I think this is my 18th year of practicing medicine, so I think it's just wired in our DNA to continuously innovate to make care for patients. Better. To do that in a hospital setting is one thing, to do it where you can impact almost 6 million members is a whole different thing. So it's very important that we always constantly try to move the needle forward with innovation and scale and really for the betterment of everyone's health.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, it's really an opportunity to do it in a larger scale way, and scale seems to be a theme at this event. And what's the most unique way you think your organization adds value to health systems and patients?
Dr. Anil Singh:
I think it's the fact that we, or part of our Living Health strategy is that we feel like it's important to improve the outcomes of a population of patients that we serve, but it's through the experience of both the patient and the provider, which then leads to affordability. So it is super important for us to work with providers because we believe that's the conduit for engagement of the patients that they, that we serve. Ways of trying to make their lives easier, ways of giving them data when they need it, becoming transparent with what we know about the patients that they're taking care of, all of those ways are really important for us working with providers and provider systems.
Saul Marquez:
Thank you, Dr. Singh. And so, tell us a little bit more about the Living Health model. You launched it in 2020, explain to us what it is.
Dr. Anil Singh:
It's really, the concept, as I said earlier, it's really about starting with taking care of the health of health outcomes of a patient population, because if you improve health, then everything else falls into place. But we really believe, to do that, it is through the experience of both the patient and the provider, all of that then leads to affordability, which then we can reinvest back into our members. We also know that it needs to, we have to have better insurance products that are clinically minded, and we also have to redesign the delivery system for better economics for those providers, so doing all of that is part of our living health strategy.
Saul Marquez:
Thank you for sharing that. And how's Highmark Health working with Clarify Health in improving the healthcare experience for consumers?
Dr. Anil Singh:
Yeah, I think with our partners that are like-minded with us and share the same mission and vision, leveraging those data and analytics really allow us to reach to that scale. It allows us to work better with providers, understanding and getting the best personalization for our members to those providers that are the highest quality out there.
Saul Marquez:
Thank you for that. And really, it's a very consumer-focused experience that keeps the provider at the center of it. In your experience, how has it been working out? Is it, are you seeing the results that you intended to see?
Dr. Anil Singh:
I think so, I mean, you know, we're still in this crawl, walk, run phase. And what I would say is that, yeah, the things that we're doing now integrating within health systems, electronic medical records, for example, at the point of care where we can actually display, based on the patient's insurance, what they have, what the benefits are, and really allowing the physicians to enroll them into the programs that we think are best for them with that same tenant of improving their health. We think that's just unique and something that's pretty awesome for an insurance company to be working with a payer, with a provider to do.
Saul Marquez:
I would agree. And thinking about the quadruple aim, right? We really are looking for ways to help our providers do better. Can you speak to what this program has done for the clinician experience?
Dr. Anil Singh:
Yeah, I think it, part of it is, again, understanding like where the data comes from, right? Understanding that the data that is provided by both the insurer and the provider, merging those together, really then allows us to help the providers take the best care of their patients because you're giving them their data, right? It's not just a point in time where you're, maybe within 15 minutes, you got the ability to share all of that data, and all of that analytics available to them, allows us to really give the providers what they need for them to take best care of their patients.
Saul Marquez:
That's fantastic. Yeah, that visibility is something that's been missing for a very long time. It sounds like the Living Health model gives these clinicians a window to be able to have visibility to these very valuable data points, and so it sounds like you have some nice proof points that this model is working. Can you share about maybe how you plan to use data and analytics to help scale it?
Dr. Anil Singh:
Yeah. Again, it's the ability to allow us to collect that data, allows us to go into newer markets, for example, in southeastern Pennsylvania, where we'll be leveraging all of our payers and payer work and providers to go into a new area. So allowing, having that data and analytics support allows us to go into newer areas as we move forward.
Saul Marquez:
That's great. Doctor Singh, I really appreciate the opportunity you've given us to learn more about this. What closing thought would you share with the listeners?
Dr. Anil Singh:
Other than I think that it's the benefit of a payer and provider coming together for the betterment of health of the entire population is really where I think the future of healthcare is going to be, and it's improving health outcomes that needs to stay at the focus of it all.
Saul Marquez:
Love the vision and how simply you put it. I've talked to a lot of leaders in the healthcare space, and it's those like you, that know how to state the vision clearly and get after it, that make the biggest difference. So super excited to hear about the progress thus far and the work ahead. Thank you so much for making time today.
Dr. Anil Singh:
Thank you.
Intro/Outro:
Thank you for listening to Healthcare Unbound. We hope today's episode was insightful. If you want more information on how Clarify Health can help you, please visit ClarifyHealth.com.
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