Browsing by Author "Saunders, Robert"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Advancing the future of equitable access to health care: recommendations from international health care leaders.
    (Health affairs scholar, 2024-08) Boyer, Beth; Huber, Katie; Zimlichman, Eyal; Saunders, Robert; McClellan, Mark; Kahn, Charles; Noach, Ryan; Salzberg, Claudia
    Disparities in access to health care are persistent and contribute to poor health outcomes for many populations around the world. Barriers to access are often similar across countries, despite differences in how health systems are structured. Health care leaders can work to address these barriers through bold, evidence-based actions. The Future of Health (FOH), an international community of senior health leaders, collaborated with the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy to identify priority organizational and policy actions needed to improve equitable access to health care through a consensus-building exercise, a targeted literature review, and an expert discussion group. This paper describes four key action areas for health care leaders that FOH members identified as critical to enabling the future of equitable access to health care: ensuring prioritization of and accountability for equitable access to care; establishing comprehensive, organization-wide strategies to address barriers to access; clearly defining and incentivizing improvement on key measures related to reducing disparities in access; and establishing cross-sector partnerships to improve equitable access.
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    Overcoming Barriers to the Implementation of Integrated Musculoskeletal Pain Management Programs: A Multi-Stakeholder Qualitative Study.
    (The journal of pain, 2023-05) Lentz, Trevor A; Gonzalez-Smith, Jonathan; Huber, Katie; Goertz, Christine; Bleser, William K; Saunders, Robert
    Integrated pain management (IPM) programs can help to reduce the substantial population health burden of musculoskeletal pain, but are poorly implemented. Lessons learned from existing programs can inform efforts to expand IPM implementation. This qualitative study describes how health care systems, payers, providers, health policy researchers, and other stakeholders are overcoming barriers to developing and sustaining IPM programs in real-world settings. Primary data were collected February 2020 through September 2021 from a multi-sector expert panel of 25 stakeholders, 53 expert interviews representing 30 distinct IPM programs across the United States, and 4 original case studies of exemplar IPM programs. We use a consensual team-based approach to systematically analyze qualitative findings. We identified 4 major themes around challenges and potential solutions for implementing IPM programs: navigating coverage, payment, and reimbursement; enacting organizational change; making a business case to stakeholders; and overcoming regulatory hurdles. Strategies to address payment challenges included use of group visits, linked visits between billable and nonbillable providers, and development of value-based payment models. Organizational change strategies included engagement of clinical and administrative champions and co-location of services. Business case strategies involved demonstrating the ability to initially break even and potential to reduce downstream costs, while improving nonfinancial outcomes like patient satisfaction and provider burnout. Regulatory hurdles were overcome with innovative credentialing methods by leveraging available waivers and managed care contracting to expand access to IPM services. Lessons from existing programs provide direction on to grow and support such IPM delivery models across a variety of settings. PERSPECTIVE: Integrated pain management (IPM) programs face numerous implementation challenges related to payment, organizational change, care coordination, and regulatory requirements. Drawing on real-world experiences of existing programs and from diverse IPM stakeholders, we outline actionable strategies that health care systems, providers, and payers can use to expand implementation of these programs.
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    The potential for artificial intelligence to transform healthcare: perspectives from international health leaders.
    (NPJ digital medicine, 2024-04) Silcox, Christina; Zimlichmann, Eyal; Huber, Katie; Rowen, Neil; Saunders, Robert; McClellan, Mark; Kahn, Charles N; Salzberg, Claudia A; Bates, David W
    Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform care delivery by improving health outcomes, patient safety, and the affordability and accessibility of high-quality care. AI will be critical to building an infrastructure capable of caring for an increasingly aging population, utilizing an ever-increasing knowledge of disease and options for precision treatments, and combatting workforce shortages and burnout of medical professionals. However, we are not currently on track to create this future. This is in part because the health data needed to train, test, use, and surveil these tools are generally neither standardized nor accessible. There is also universal concern about the ability to monitor health AI tools for changes in performance as they are implemented in new places, used with diverse populations, and over time as health data may change. The Future of Health (FOH), an international community of senior health care leaders, collaborated with the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy to conduct a literature review, expert convening, and consensus-building exercise around this topic. This commentary summarizes the four priority action areas and recommendations for health care organizations and policymakers across the globe that FOH members identified as important for fully realizing AI's potential in health care: improving data quality to power AI, building infrastructure to encourage efficient and trustworthy development and evaluations, sharing data for better AI, and providing incentives to accelerate the progress and impact of AI.
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    Value-Based Care in the COVID-19 Era: Enabling Health Care Response and Resilience
    (2020-06-01) McClellan, Mark; Roiland, Rachel; Japinga, Mark; Singletary, Elizabeth; Sharma, Isha; Gonzalez-Smith, Jonathan; Wang, Gary; Jacobs, Jeremy; Bleser, William; Saunders, Robert