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The Inevitable Shift to Value
CareCentrix CEO explains why fee for service will soon be a thing of post-acute care’s past.
QS/1 Parent Gets New CEO
HME software maker QS/1’s parent company, J M Smith Corp., has named a new CEO and chairman of the Board following the retirement of long-time CEO and chairman William Cobb. Taking the reins will be A.
Alan Turfe, who will head the healthcare and technology firm.
A onetime factory worker who worked his way into a career in corporate leadership, Turfe comes to the company with experience in the life sciences, medical device, e-commerce and automotive industries.
Alan Turfe comes to the company with experience in the life sciences, medical device, e-commerce and automotive industries.
“In a pool of incredibly qualified candidates,
Alan demonstrated the leadership skills,
business acumen and background best suited to lead J M Smith Corporation into the future,” said board member Terry Cash, who chaired the company’s search committee. “We believe he will both honor the proud history of this organization while leading it through the dynamic times ahead.”
“One of the things that drew me to this opportunity is the longevity of both the employee and customer relationships,” Turfe said. “Long-term relationships such as these are evidence of the quality of the organization, the caliber of its people and of its service. I am proud to be part of that.”
A native of Michigan, Turfe worked his way through college on the second shift of a General Motors assembly line. After graduating with MBA, he worked as a financial analyst for GM, and, moving up the ranks, he eventually ascended into the position of CFO of GM Worldwide Purchasing and Logistics, where he led GM into e-commerce with a joint venture that generated more than $4 billion in shareholder value. That resulted in him being appointed CO-CEO of the joint venture company.
Following a decade with GM, Turfe joined Fisher Scientific in successive leadership roles, including president of the Anatomical Pathology Group. He then joined IDEX Corp. where he served as President of Micropum Inc. Turfe joins J M Smith Corp. from Fresenius Medical Care, where he served as senior vice president and chief procurement officer.
In addition to QS/1, J M Smith’s holdings include Smith Drug Company, Integral Solutions Group, RxMedic Systems, Integra LTC Solutions and Burlington Drug Company.
GlucoMe Names North American EVP, General Manager
GlucoMe Ltd., which makes a digital diabetes management platform (see “Product Profile,” on page 25) has appointed John Erickson as executive vice president and general manager of its North American presence. In this role, Erickson will lead the company’s business development, business management, marketing and sales in the territory.
Erickson previously served as divisional vice president at Abbott Labs, where he was responsible for all diabetes products and strategy. He has also held global commercial responsibilities at Johnson & Johnson as its director of international franchise development and director of business development, where he helped develop the company’s internal, cellular-based, biotechnology artificial pancreas program. Most recently he served as president and CEO at RapidBio Systems Inc.
“I am very excited to join GlucoMe, and look forward to helping doctors and patients across the United States better treat diabetes,” Erickson said. “Diabetes management and care are major concerns for tens of millions of American patients, as well as healthcare payers and professionals. GlucoMe’s digital technology and strategic roadmap are opening up an exciting avenue to enable simpler and more effective diabetes care resulting in better outcomes.”
GlucoMe provides a connected diabetes care platform that simplifies the way patients, caregivers, providers and medical professionals manage the disease. Glucose measurements and insulin intake are automatically recorded on the patient’s smartphone, and saved in a cloud-based management platform. GlucoMe’s proactive treatment approach help caregivers, medical professionals, and patients ensure compliance, improve diabetes management, reduce HbA1c levels, and impact overall quality of life.
“We are thrilled to have John as part of the team,” said Yiftah Ben Aharon, GlucoMe CEO and co-founder. “We have the opportunity to forever change the way diabetes is managed and treated across the country and around the world, and with his proven achievements and experience, John will be an invaluable asset in helping us advance our mission.”
The post-acute care space is in a massive stage of change, and John Driscoll is watching that change very carefully. As CEO of CareCentrix, Driscoll oversees
a company that provides a wide network for the world of post-acute care.
Consider CareCentrix a sort of matchmaker that connects healthcare plans, referral partners, care providers and HME businesses to help ensure that patients enjoy successful outcomes and independent lifestyles in their homes, as opposed to the hospital. The idea is to connect various care entities involved in the homecare setting to help patients transition from hospitals or skilled nursing facilities into the home, and ensure that they have the right care, services and medical equipment in place. The network even offers special- ized “offshoots” for specialized homecare options such as sleep therapy and infusion.
And the statistics are with CareCentrix — and the HME industry. The company cites a number of key data points explain to healthcare plans why it is so important to get patients into successful homecare settings: 75 percent of costly hospital readmissions are preventable; 40 percent of patients discharged to long-term acute care hospitals didn’t need to be. (A full list can be found at bit.ly/2oAWLTI.)
Driscoll’s no stranger to post-acute care, health plans and services, and healthcare technology. He’s racked up more than 25 years’ experience at firms such as healthcare tech- nology company Castlight Health, and $70 billion pharmacy benefit management company Medco. He also founded
and chaired the Surescripts ePrescribing Network, which established the first cross-industry collaborative involving competing retail, PBM, and health plans cooperating to revolutionize e-prescribing. In terms of scale, Surescripts went from servicing under 50 million prescriptions in 2005, to more than 1 billion prescriptions today.
So, suffice it to say that Driscoll not only understands the waves of change in the healthcare marketplace, he’s ridden them like a pro surfer. And like a big wave forming at California’s Mavericks or Hawaii’s Jaws, the next major swell he sees mounting on the horizon is the end of fee for service, and he advises that providers better paddle out ahead of that wave.
“At CareCentrix we’re increasingly seeing with our provider partners a willingness and an interest in partnering in our value-based solutions,” he says. “The fee-for-service world will be increasingly dicey, not just for DMEs, but for all fee-for-service providers, because the one thing that the Republicans and the Democrats appear to agree on is a long- term shift for value. The terms may change, but that wave, it’s likely to be relentless and get bigger and faster.”
That’s why CareCentrix is reaching out to DMEs to be part
of the network of post-acute resources that it is building. “We believe that the shift to value is inevitable and will be helpful,” Driscoll says. “We believe that, CareCentrix’s
approach, while we are the agent of managed care, we want to be a partner to the providers.
“Long-term, value-based solutions are going require some of the things that we do at CareCentrix,” he says. “We need to connect the providers to the time manager or the risk taking entity and to engage the best providers and actually measure yourself against more traditional consumer metrics. So the skills to compete and win in a value-based world may not be well-defined in Washington, but we, but we’re seeing the marketplace today with defined success.”
The big question is how will the value of service and care be defined, if it is no longer based on fee for service. That part of the wave is still taking shape, according to Driscoll.
“I don’t think the picture’s clear, but the ‘contour lines’ are emerging,” he says. “It’s going be based around total medical cost, the data around clinical outcomes, and the data around patient satisfaction.
“... We are investing deeply in a, in a differentiated analytical, machine- learning platform that will allow us
to provide more information to the plan but also to the providers,” he continues. “And allow us to make better deci- sions clinically in the field around which providers to use and which bundles of services are going be more effective to allow people to heal and age in the home.”
Of course, the next step is getting providers involved in CareCentrix’s network, and Driscoll says his company is actively looking to find the right HME partners.
“... We’re spending a lot of time to determine which providers want to participate with us on a performance basis,” he says. “Because ultimately we’re all going to be performance-based providers in a value-based world.” n
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