HT4M Supports: SOLVE Summit: Accelerating Health Equity
Executive Director Adimika Arthur joined HT4M Expert Council Member (and SOLVE founder) Dr. Urmimala Sarkar at the SOLVE Summit on May 21st, 2019. SOLVE is a health equity accelerator based at UCSF that partners with digital health companies to improve their reach, usability, effectiveness, and sustainability in real-world settings that serve Medicaid and other vulnerable populations. The Summit’s festivities included pitches from six finalists, three of whom, Inquisit Health, Mahmee, and Applied VR Health, were named winners at the end of the evening. During the judges deliberation, Dr. Bob Wachter (UCSF School of Medicine Faculty) provided a key note that kept the audience learning and chuckling. Last but not least, during Dr. Sarkar’s introduction, we were honored to be included in the “collaborative ecosystem” and to share an orbit with so many esteemed organizations.
Medicaid - The Growth Market for Innovation: HT4M at Health Evolution Summit
On April 11th, 2019, HT4M joined forces with the California Health Care Foundation, Avia, and HopeLab to host a breakout session during the annual Health Evolution Summit, held in Laguna Niguel, California. Our session, called "Medicaid - The Growth Market for Innovation," gathered an over-capacity crowd for a candid conversation between Dr. Patrick Conway (CEO, BCBS North Carolina) and Bryan Sivak (VP, the Kaiser Ventures).
The conversation was candid (and often witty), but also full of some very honest truths about the state of Medicaid and our current approach to healthcare in general, and what needs to change to ensure that not just patients but our entire health ecosystem can reach its full potential.
There were too many quotes to transcribe, but below are a few of our favorites from Patrick and Bryan’s conversation.
"How do you innovate at the state level if the Federal level won't act? We're working directly with Medicaid to screen every person in North Carolina for social determinants of health. Our goal is reliable screening, reliable addressing, and same day turn around to meet peoples' needs. We've made food insecurity for the entire state one of our board metrics. It helps reorient us around the bigger picture." -- Patrick Conway, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield in North Carolina & HT4M Expert Council Member
“We use Medicaid as shorthand to refer to a population. I think we need a better word for the population. I’d like for us to think about different ways to think about the population that is most often represented by those enrolled in Medicaid. We use Medicaid as shorthand to refer to a population. I think we need a better word for the population. I’d like for us to think about different ways to think about the population that is most often represented by those enrolled in Medicaid.” --Bryan Sivak, VP for Medicaid Transformation for the Permanente Federation/Managing Partner for Ventures & HT4M Expert Council Member
“We’re still learning on customer experience-- our score is 25, which is ridiculously good for a payer. but what if we were like normal people and people actually liked us? So we keep learning and trying. Our customer service team can now escalate any issues anywhere in the company and a higher level team can take care of it right away. And that's the way healthcare should be.”
-- Patrick Conway, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield in North Carolina & HT4M Expert Council Member
HT4M Supports: Arizona Medicaid Innovation Challenge
Adaptation Health hosted the Arizona Medicaid Innovation Challenge on March 29th, 2019. The event brought in eight companies to present their solution to two common Medicaid barriers: social determinants of health and member engagement.
Four companies were selected to present their solutions for SDOH this year including HT4M member Aunt Bertha, Equality Health in partnership with HT4M member TAVHealth, Finity, and HT4M member Healthify.
- Aunt Bertha gives people who reach out for help the dignity of a response through thoughtful consideration of their journey, from beginning to end. They provide closed loop referrals that connect members with community resources while keeping providers and payers up to date.
- Equality Health and TAVHealth have partnered to turn neighborhoods across the country into collaborative safe-sharing networks which solve for the social determinants of health at scale. Their multi-payer platform is the first-of-its-kind in which providers, care coordination teams, and community-based organizations (CBOs) make, confirm and track outcomes of referrals.
- Finity empowers individuals to make conscious, healthy decisions that improve their health and well-being. Their innovative solution is designed to engage beneficiaries at the right time, with the right activities, incentives, tools, and communication mediums.
- Healthify is "building a world where no one’s health is hindered by their need.” To accomplish this mission, they partner with payers, providers, and community partners to deploy the infrastructure necessary to manage the social determinants of health.
Four companies were also selected to present their solutions for Digital Member Engagement including HT4M member CareAngel, HT4M member ConsejoSano, HT4M member myStrength, and Pyx Health.
- CareAngel’s engagement platform helps providers and payers to close gaps in care by automating care management to help medical staff track patient needs and identify high-risk patients who need personal interventions.
- ConsejoSano provides care management, and patient engagement content consciously tailored to meet members where they’re at both culturally and linguistically. These culturally detailed messages help members get the right preventative care, at the right time, and at the right location.
- myStrength’s resources empower consumers with interactive applications to address depression, anxiety, stress, substance use disorders, chronic pain/opioid management and insomnia. myStrength’s highly secure and scalable web and mobile applications are proven to extend care, improve outcomes, and reduce cost of care delivery.
- Pyx Health is an emotionally intelligent mobile solution built for the Medicaid population. Pyx helps connect Medicaid members to their community and encourages them to engage in their healthcare.
HT4M Supports: HT4M at State HIT Connect
Executive Director Adimika Arthur spoke Tuesday, March 19 at the State Healthcare IT Connect Summit. She spoke during a section titled “Emerging Technologies in Healthcare, Implications for HHS Transformation.” Specifically, she highlighted HT4M’s mission discussed how two HT4M members, Wildflower Health and UniteUs, have successfully partnered with state Medicaid programs (Wyoming and North Carolina, respectively) to create innovative solutions that have positively impacted the lives of Medicaid enrollees.
HT4M Innovators Breakfast / Official Launch
We officially launched HT4M with our Innovators’ Breakfast in November, 2018. Held during the National Association of Medicaid Directors Annual Meeting, a packed room of Medicaid supporters, payers, innovators, providers and decision makers gathered to learn more about HT4M as well as to hear from special guests Calder Lynch, Senior Counselor to the CMS Administrator and Will Brady, Associate Deputy Secretary, US Department of Health and Human Services. A Q&A panel moderated by Expert Council member Dr. Molly Coye, with participation from fellow Expert Council members Dr. Greg Buchert (CEO, Promise Health Plan), Cristal Gary (Principal, Leavitt Partners), and David Bergman (Digital Health Lead, Health Management Associates) concluded the event.