Abby Burns (00:13):
From Advisory Board, we are bringing you a Radio Advisory, your weekly download on how to untangle healthcare's most pressing challenges. I'm Abby Burns.

(00:22):
Everyone working in the healthcare industry agrees with statements like, we need to provide people with better care at lower cost, or we need to improve healthcare access and affordability. Maybe even, we need to make our sick care system into a better healthcare system. These things are true, they are valid. They're also frustratingly hard to do at scale, which is why there are so few examples of health systems that have been doing value-based care at scale successfully over time. Back in May, we released an episode on Radio Advisory where we highlighted one of four successful outlier examples that our advisory work team found in their research. Today, we're bringing you another.

(01:03):
Ochsner Health is a 46-hospital, not-for-profit health system based in New Orleans and serving patients across Louisiana and Mississippi. Ochsner is what you might call an OG when it comes to value-based care. They started their own health plan back in 1985. In 2016, they brought together five CINs in their market, including their own, to form Ochsner Health Network. The largest physician-led CIN in the Gulf South and Ochsner's core VBC engine.

(01:27):
Now, if you're up on your national health rankings, you will have already noticed, Ochsner's service area is made up of the states that rank number 49 and number 50 in America's health rankings. Still, Ochsner's driving savings more than $56 million for the CIN in 2024 alone, and their improving quality. Their Medicare ACO ranks in the top 11% in the country on quality. Not every system operates in the Gulf South, not every system is dealing with a 70% government payer mix, but I'm confident that every system can stand to learn something from what Ochsner is doing.

(02:00):
So today, I'm talking with Ochsner Health Network's CEO, Eric Gallagher, and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beau Raymond, about how they've built the engine they have in place today, and importantly, the ways that they are continuing to push the envelope.

(02:14):
Hi, guys. Welcome to Radio Advisory.

Eric Gallagher (02:17):
Thank you so much.

Dr. Beau Raymond (02:18):
Thank you.

Abby Burns (02:21):
Eric, Beau, to start us off, can you both introduce yourselves and give us a sense for where VBC sits within the broader Ochsner organization?

Eric Gallagher (02:32):
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Abby. Eric Gallagher, I'm the Chief Executive Officer of the Ochsner Health Network, which includes Ochsner Health's Population Health Management division of our organization.

(02:44):
And part of what I would say describing our population health strategy and value-based care, the lay of the land today, is that we're really pretty contract selective and simultaneously condition-focused. So we prioritize, we focus, we scale where the terms and the partnership supports what we would consider is real care transformation, reimbursement transformation. And then more recently with a bigger emphasis is really that concept of condition-focused, where we're taking our clinical and care management playbooks and running that across payers so that our care teams can deliver really what we would hope is one or a set of high-value pathways for every eligible patient, not just our value-based contract patients.

Dr. Beau Raymond (03:41):
So Abby, I'll chime in now. So, Beau Raymond, Chief Medical Officer for Ochsner Health Network. So, Eric and I are [inaudible 00:03:48] partners of course in all that we do here.

(03:50):
So, one of the things that we're doing right now is we're going through a whole care redesign effort, and for a couple of disease states, so chronic kidney disease and congestive heart failure, two areas that we know are a significant opportunity for us. So we're looking at it from a, how do we prevent somebody from getting those diseases in the first place, to how do we slow progression? Once they have it, how do we make sure we're doing everything we can while they're in their hospital and making sure that we're getting the right follow up afterwards? And also, including abiding by their end-of-life wishes and asking those questions earlier on. So, it's a complete redesign of the entire care process.

(04:27):
And with that, more standardized order sets, more standardized care pathways to ensure that we're doing all the right things all the time, as opposed to it being more happenstance. And the reason behind that is because it's just good care. So, why limit it, any interaction just on people that are in a risk-based contract? So it's a little bit different approach that we're taking. That kicked off late last year and has created a whole lot of work this year and we'll be going on from here.

Abby Burns (04:55):
I love that, because to look across the patient journey is hard enough, but what you're really saying is we're actually looking across the patient life cycle, and how do we manage care throughout that? I also know that underlying a lot of this work, you have quite a substantial and a growing risk profile. Can you give us a sense for what that looks like today and maybe how it's grown over time?

Eric Gallagher (05:16):
Structurally, we support over 4,000 physicians across Louisiana and Mississippi primarily, where most of our owned assets and market presence are. But more recently, extending into Alabama, into northeast Texas, and actually recent participation in extensions into both Florida and South Carolina. So, and that comes through a number of different vehicles. We have Ochsner Health Network, which is our clinically integrated network. We operate two MSSP ACOs, Ochsner Accountable Care Network and Ochsner Senior Care Clinic. And the reason for that and having these multiple vehicles is just over time we've found that with a growing regional presence, we're trying to support a increasingly heterogeneous group of physician practices and meet them where they are, and have the right contracting vehicle and glide path and risk profile options, and also so that we can graduate groups from one ACO to the next risk profile to the next.

Abby Burns (06:24):
Yeah, I'm hearing a lot of breadth, as well as a lot of depth. You've got different lines of business, you also have different types of contracts.

Eric Gallagher (06:30):
Exactly, and that breadth and depth on the contracts has now extended to about 600,000 lives in value-based agreements. That spans everything from commercial, Medicaid, Medicare, and MA, runs the full gamut from upside only, pay-for-performance, to shared savings and shared risk, and hand-strike ACO to full capitation-

Abby Burns (06:53):
Wow.

Eric Gallagher (06:53):
... on Medicare Advantage.

Abby Burns (06:56):
There are plenty of philosophical reasons that might keep Ochsner investing in value-based care, but in your case, these investments are also driving really meaningful outcomes, and frankly, financial returns. What are some of the outcomes that especially in recent years has led your organization, your board in particular, to decide that yes, the strategy is working, we want to continue to bet on value-based care?

Dr. Beau Raymond (07:22):
I'll start with talking about a commercial program. So, we partnered with Blue Cross, and years ago they started Quality Blue Primary Care Program, and with that one there's different tiers that you could get to, tier five being the highest. And so, we put the right things in place to make sure that our primary carers were successful and we got all the way up to tier five. And so with that, there are care management fees associated with that program that was helping fuel a lot of the other work that we were doing beyond just the Blue Cross contract, because we put things in place that might not have been specific for Blue Cross and help us in other ways as well.

(07:56):
More recently, they changed the program a little bit. It's not just adult primary care, it actually includes pediatrics too. And so, we were able to get to the highest level we could within that program, which again, creates a significant amount of care management fees that come our way. And so, being successful in the commercial world, that is fuel for us to say, "Okay, let's go ahead and get into these other spaces."

(08:18):
Most recently, like the MSSP results that just came out, I mean, we did really well. We ended up with a score of greater than 91.

Abby Burns (08:25):
Wow.

Dr. Beau Raymond (08:26):
We had blood pressure control at 90%, fall risk screenings were 94%. We were actually the number three ACO out of all of them in care coordination, and the number 10 ACO in access to timely care and information. So, and it can be commercial or Medicare or MA. We're utilizing that same framework to make sure we're successful across the board.

Abby Burns (08:49):
When you say number three ACO, number 10 ACO, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, there are more than 450 ACOs in the country. Is that right?

Eric Gallagher (08:56):
I think there's 476 ACOs in the country.

Abby Burns (09:00):
That is wildly impressive. And to your point with the care management fees, it is using investments in quality to drive sustainability.

Dr. Beau Raymond (09:08):
Correct. It allows us to help put the infrastructure in place to be successful going forward. And there are things that you may do that's focused on an individual contract to make sure you're successful in that contract, but there are a lot of broad activities regarding cancer screenings and blood pressure control and diabetes control, that that is paragonostic as to how we approach that.

Eric Gallagher (09:30):
If I can pull on that thread a little bit more. Those clinical results are showing up for us financially as well, and on the utilization side.

Abby Burns (09:39):
Tell me about that.

Eric Gallagher (09:40):
With those same ACO results that Beau was just talking about, we generated over $44 million in savings for CMS in 2024. That was a 50% increase over the year prior on virtually the same beneficiary count. And so how we did that, our cost per beneficiary trend was half that of the rest of the country. We kept hospital inpatient costs flat when the rest of the country increased. At this time when we're seeing utilization trends off the charts, we were bucking that trend through the outcomes like controlling our patients with chronic disease and high blood pressure, to ensure that they don't have a more acute event. We focus so much on care coordination, so it was really validating to see that come through in the utilization and in the financial metrics.

Abby Burns (10:38):
As you've grown both the scale and the sophistication of your value-based care efforts, I think there are two things that at least from an outsider's perspective, you really kept at the core of the way that you do business. One is, really embodying the spirit of innovation that is inherent in Oschner's DNA. The other is taking a really thoughtful approach to how you engage with other players that are at the table. It's this idea of smart partnerships. What do you need to own? Where can you maybe lean on others? Why has this spirit of innovation and partnership been important for you all as you continue to grow your value-based care engine?

Eric Gallagher (11:19):
I agree. I think innovation is in DNA of Ochsner, and if you look back at the timeline of the clinic and all that we've been through certainly as an organization and as a region here in New Orleans, it's part of the DNA right there with resilience. And I think we're at another sort of inflection point in the healthcare industry where that's going to be important once again. And frankly, I think speed and scale are important and I think speed and scale requires partnerships. Historically, we've made some big moves, we stood up a Super CIN as we called it, no capes, but it was multiple CINs under one umbrella because we understood that the partnerships would be necessary for us to not only as an organization that we were at the time be successful, but for where this organization wanted to go. And quite frankly, for the good of the communities that we are so intrinsically interwoven with, Ochsner is a part of the fabric of Louisiana, of the Gulf South, and that's really important to us and to our identity.

Abby Burns (12:33):
Is there an example that comes to mind of this idea of partnership and change?

Eric Gallagher (12:36):
I mentioned that we launched Ochsner Health Network and the Super CIN in 2016. And the reality is, shortly after we had established the network, we knew that the way we had set it up was going to be too inefficient for us to be successful. So, we'd set a target and a vision to get to that evolution to where we were a single network.

Abby Burns (13:04):
How did you know that it was going to be inefficient?

Eric Gallagher (13:05):
Well, this was back in the days where value-based care, very new territory. And there was some hesitation, I think, from other physician practices and hospital partners to join this thing that we were creating, really just something on a piece of paper. And so, the way we went about it was creating it as a Super CIN. We said, "Hey, let us help you build your own clinically integrated network and population health framework, maybe with the foundation of it being at a partner hospital in a region. And we'll have several region-specific clinically integrated networks that all come under the contracting umbrella of the Ochsner Health Network."

(13:47):
And so, politically, strategically at the time that was palatable and made a lot of sense for people to build up, hey, maybe this thing won't work out and if it doesn't, then we want to have our own capability and not-

Abby Burns (13:59):
Yeah, infrastructure.

Eric Gallagher (13:59):
... be dependent. But to your question about why that was inefficient, being able to make a decision like an investment in a population health analytics platform that would support the Super CIN required from a governance and a decision-making, okay, yes, we want to do this at the Super CIN level, but each CIN underneath that has to approve it. Several of them are funded or founded within a hospital partner, which then has to go back and say, "Well, we have to get this through our health system funding." So just the simple things like that governance wise, made it difficult for us to work as quickly as we knew we would need to be.

Abby Burns (14:49):
So, how did you move forward from that structure?

Eric Gallagher (14:50):
That's where this great question about innovation and partnership comes together. We had to develop the relationships and the trust and credibility around what we were trying to build and what we were doing with our partners, so that we could innovate in a way that positioned the greater network for success longterm. Having had some success allowed us to then go back with our partners and say, "Help us figure out the best way for us to do this."

Dr. Beau Raymond (15:18):
With the new framework, we're able to say, "Let's pilot this, let's test it out and then let's spread it from there." I'll share one of the latest ones that we've done, and that's the virtual ED. And basically what we did, we already had in place, a 24/7 nurse triage line.

Abby Burns (15:33):
And that's cornerstone of population health management, right?

Dr. Beau Raymond (15:36):
Yep. 24/7 nurse triage line uses the protocol that virtually every nurse triage line uses, which basically whenever there's anything that's questionable, if you can't get in with somebody right now, refer to the ED. Most of those did not need to actually be seen by an ED doc. And so, we put in place another layer, a virtual ED, where we have an ED doc who's able to look at the chart, understand what's going on with the patient, could do a virtual visit with the patient, might be helping get them to wherever they need to be, might actually even order some stuff.

(16:11):
So, we actually had a patient who had a swollen leg and actually got evaluated with an ultrasound, found out they had a DVT, got started on treatment, and was seen the following day as an outpatient. Never went to the ED the entire time.

Abby Burns (16:24):
Wow.

Dr. Beau Raymond (16:24):
And so, it was safely taken care of in that manner. There's a lot of patients that were going through this process of that group that were told, go into to the ED, and now going through this Ochsner virtual ED, 70% of those people either got treated in place, they got set up with a primary care visit, or they got an urgent care visit. And the big thing with it, if they go into a clinic site, that information was then handed over to that doctor who was going to be taking care of that patient when they went. So, it's a huge patient satisfier. I don't know if you've been to the ED lately, it's not exactly the most delightful of experiences in general, because you're probably going to be waiting if you're low acuity.

Abby Burns (17:05):
Yep. I mean, we know that ED volumes are up in a lot of places and ED wait times are really long. The throughput is really, really challenging.

Dr. Beau Raymond (17:14):
The amazing thing about this is the reason why it was successful is because the ED docs were active participants in making this happen. Right? Without their engagement and involvement, then this really wouldn't make sense. So, buy-in is done once you have the doctors who are going to be most affected by us as part of the solution.

Abby Burns (17:35):
Though I have to ask about the financial impact that you've been able to measure from this virtual ED program, because certainly from a patient experience standpoint, from an ED throughput standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. But there is also a tension here between reducing volumes means potentially missed revenue opportunities. How have you been measuring that?

Dr. Beau Raymond (17:55):
It's a little bit of a challenge, I'll say, to measure the full financial impact on it. And I say that because you don't know exactly how many of these people would've definitely have gone to the ED themselves.

Abby Burns (18:06):
Sure.

Dr. Beau Raymond (18:06):
The ones that you've redirected. So, it's hard to quantify that a bit. It is interesting because the people who are most engaged with this service, number one is commercial, and then following that, it tends to be Medicare aged patients.

Abby Burns (18:22):
And on the commercial side, we know that health systems right now are looking for pretty much any commercial volume they can get.

Dr. Beau Raymond (18:27):
Correct. Now, here's the thing though. When you have overcrowded emergency rooms and you have full hospitals, making sure that you're having the right people get those services is worthwhile for everyone involved, because if you think about people that leave without being seen, it's best to go ahead and make sure that you're seeing the right people. I mean, we knew we had a high avoidable or preventable ED utilization. We knew that existed and the ER docs knew it existed.

Abby Burns (18:57):
Maybe better than anybody else.

Dr. Beau Raymond (18:59):
Completely, and so it was interesting because we were at a meeting and I raised my hand and said, "Do y'all know that half the people I go into the ED are considered preventable?" And the ED doc who is sitting at the table with me said, "Thank you for saying that, because we need that to be stated." So, that's why they're on board with doing this sort of effort because they want to make sure they're taking care of the right patients every time.

Eric Gallagher (19:22):
And can I just add, that this may be somewhat of an unfortunate reality for us in the part of the country that we're in, but Louisiana is the only state in the Southeast that is losing population. Like everywhere else in the country, we have an aging population. 70% of our payer mix is government payers. We don't have large employers. We are actually the largest private employer in the state of Louisiana and we're self-insured. That's a challenge for this region and for this state from one perspective, but it's also an aligning factor for us in these initiatives.

(19:59):
The financial success of our organization over the next 10 years is not going to come on the backs of commercial volume through our emergency room. And I think that's a realization and an aligning factor that we have within our organization where maybe in some other places the tension is higher because there're in a market where there still is a huge revenue opportunity and market share play for these high-reimbursement commercial lot.

Abby Burns (21:15):
One group we actually haven't talked that much about in depth, Beau, you talked a little bit earlier about your work with Blue Cross Louisiana. I want to talk about payer partnerships, because at least on the payment side, VBC really is by definition a payer-provider partnership, and yet we've seen tensions between payers and providers really escalating over the past several years. As you all have grown in both the depth and the breadth of your VBC risk portfolio, what have you learned about what to look for in payer partners?

Eric Gallagher (21:48):
One of my favorite past times is hearing Beau talk about what doesn't work and what an unsuccessful payer partnership looks like, so I can't wait to pass it to him. But on the side of success, it really starts with something that's maybe a little bit less concrete. It's really about trust. Are we aligned on objectives? How do we communicate with each other as provider and payer? How do we look forward and look back at the end of the year? And just that part around the relationship and trust that is sometimes hard to measure but easy to feel. So, success starts with the data liquidity and model transparency. We have to have a shared source of truth, emphasis on the shared source of truth there. Timely rosters and attribution and claims, complete claims, and then things like clear math for risk adjustment, for benchmarks, for settlement.

Abby Burns (22:56):
Eric, is that hard to come by?

Eric Gallagher (22:57):
This is where I think the Medicare space has an advantage, and as I mentioned at the outset, our contract focus is where we feel like we have these strong partnerships or at least the clarity. Right? So, there is a lot more clarity around the MSSP model and around most Medicare Advantage. Certainly, if you're at global risk, Medicare Advantage. On the commercial side is where it does get harder to come by, which is what leads me to the second point, which is really consistency over customization. So, the more we can align to standard measure sets year-over-year, the less waste that we have, the less whiplash that we have for our teams and for the care teams who we are trying to engage with.

Abby Burns (23:44):
Yeah, which is very important, particularly because we know that payers are trying to do a lot of this standardization work on their end as well. So the more that those processes can come together, it certainly makes sense why that would be important when we're talking about risk-based relationships.

Eric Gallagher (23:58):
Well, they say that they are.

Dr. Beau Raymond (24:00):
For example, we have a payer that recently is proposed changing the program using very customized measures which are not standard. And so, how do I build this out to even measure my own performance? Because we do that a lot. We want to know what we're doing well ahead of time, as opposed to waiting for the payers to give us information which may be months delayed. Right? So we put lots of processes in place for that aspect.

(24:26):
So when a payer is talking about, let's create this new innovative measure, it's challenging for us because there's no benchmarking, there's nothing to be able to balance that against and have an idea as to how reliable is this. That also creates a bit of an issue regarding transparency, right? Because if we can't see how they're calculating our performance, then trust goes out the window, and that's basically what all this boils down to again, is the different ways you lose trust.

Abby Burns (24:53):
Yeah, and I know something that is very important to your value-based care operation is doing a lot of your own data and analytics in-house, preventing, we don't want to get ourselves into a situation where we've got a black box problem. Are there other examples that come to mind that have made you reevaluate some of the partnerships that you've had?

Dr. Beau Raymond (25:10):
Yeah, so it's interesting you bring up the black box, because I was speaking of quality measures, but the same thing comes from a risk aspect of it. So, another payer calculates the risk portfolio for you as to how sick your patients are, and updates it on a regular basis. Well, those updates don't exactly flow on a regular basis when all of a sudden in the final evaluation, your risk score for your patients dramatically goes up or it goes down, and you've had no idea how you've been doing this entire time. So when it comes from a cost and utilization aspect, you think you're doing horrible all year long, and then all of a sudden, hey, you earned some shared savings. Well, that's great, I'm more than happy for us to have earned some shared savings. However, it makes it very difficult to know what the drivers are of it. That's what degrades the trust that exists between us and the payer that we're working with.

Abby Burns (26:08):
Yeah. I also know that you have, I believe, keep me honest, about 20 different risk contracts with payers. So, you've figured out some productive partnerships. What stands out from those?

Dr. Beau Raymond (26:22):
There's transparency, there's mutually agreed upon desired outcomes is another one. So, we're actively talking with a payer right now saying, "You know what? How about you just tell us what are your areas of opportunity, and let's figure out how we can work together to be successful in that. I know that there are things that you have that bored and whoever else getting together saying, 'We need to get better at X.' Well, what's X? Let's work together and partner on what we can do to make a difference in the communities that we serve."

Abby Burns (26:53):
I think that's such a helpful reframing because it's alignment on goals that lets you work backwards to metrics rather than running straight to, let's align on metrics.

Eric Gallagher (27:01):
Yeah, just to add to that quick example on successful player partnership looks like, and to your point about, what are we trying to accomplish and not straight to the metrics? In discussions with a payer looking at annual wellness visit targets, we all know in the value-based care space, there's a positive correlation between groups that have a high percentage of annual wellness visits completed, and outcomes. But it's still a leading indicator, and this is a discussion that we are having with a payer. What are you trying to accomplish by having more annual wellness visits completed? Is it more accurate capture of clinical conditions so that risk adjustment is appropriate? Is it a certain set of preventative screenings and other outcomes or connections that you're trying to make through the annual wellness visits? And in some cases for us to be able to say, "Hold us accountable to those things because we are 100% aligned on that," in some cases we may have a slightly different strategy for being able to get there.

(28:06):
Our documentation strategy within our health system highly engages specialists. We have made a lot of progress in reducing our dependency on annual wellnesses. We have a robust annual wellness visit program, but we have explicitly focused on reducing our dependency on annual wellness visits and achieving that with the group practice that is core to the fabric of Ochsner, and has so many other different strengths that maybe an independent primary care practice doesn't have. So, we're successful when a payer listens to that, hears that, understands it, and works with us on, oh, you're right, we're aligned on an outcome.

Dr. Beau Raymond (28:47):
When you have access issues, you want to make sure that every face-to-face encounter is a valuable one.

Abby Burns (28:53):
Yep, [inaudible 00:28:54].

Dr. Beau Raymond (28:53):
Again, so, some of these may not be the most valuable ways for us to be interacting with a patient.

Abby Burns (28:59):
Yep. You teased the work that you're doing to engage specialists, and we don't have time to get into it today, but that's absolutely a space that we're watching and we're excited to see the work that you're doing there.

(29:10):
To close out our time today, I'm mindful that this is a tough time for a lot of provider organizations and you're facing down a lot of headwinds as you look into the end of 2025, certainly across 2026 and beyond. I'm curious, what parts of your value-based care strategy do you anticipate dialing up or even dialing down, given what you're seeing in the market today, and given some of those anticipated pressures?

Eric Gallagher (29:36):
Great question. So dialing up, I think AI and automation for scale is something we are definitely focused on.

Abby Burns (29:44):
Yeah, actually I think that's the first time AI has been said in this conversation, which must be some sort of record.

Eric Gallagher (29:49):
I know, right? How did we last so long? But take a program like complex or high-risk case management, we manage probably 700 to 750 patients at any given time through this program. We know and we've had independent studies validate that there's a $1,000 per member per month savings post-enrollment in a program like this.

Abby Burns (30:17):
Wow.

Eric Gallagher (30:17):
And we need to get that to more patients and we don't have the workforce and the labor force to be able to just expand, expand, expand. So, I think the ways we can leverage automation and AI to build that scale, both for programs like that that are highly specialized and complex, but probably even more so for reaching the masses on lower risk general population type outreach for screenings and for prevention.

Abby Burns (30:44):
That's a great example of something that you look at dialing up. What about dialing down?

Eric Gallagher (30:50):
We're probably not alone in this, as population health enthusiasts, we identify areas of opportunity, vulnerable patient populations, fragmentation in the care continuum, and then we build programs or solutions to solve for those, and we've done that here at Ochsner. But what that has resulted in, to a certain degree, is what I lovingly describe as the Cheesecake Factory menu of population health interventions and programs. It's getting too long and too big, it's overwhelming. We need to be smarter about how we match patients to programs, but we also need to make sure that, do we need this many programs? Let's identify the things that are most impactful and optimize those and scale them. And then things that maybe they're good results but they're just not sustainable from a business model perspective, we make the hard decision to redeploy our resources and focus.

Abby Burns (31:46):
Beau, what would you add?

Dr. Beau Raymond (31:48):
I'd say we're going to focus a lot more on care variation, also known as optimizing treatment. When you have certain disease processes, you want to make sure that everybody's getting all the things they're supposed to get.

(32:02):
So for example, for congestive heart failure, there's guideline drug to medical therapy. Well, the percentage of people that are actually on all the drugs that are supposed to be on is not even close to 100%. For diabetes, is your blood pressure controlled? Is your A1C at goal? Is your cholesterol controlled? Are you on a statin? Are you a non-smoker? We've actually created those scores now within our own habit to say, "Are you getting all of these things done?" We're calling it optimal diabetes, optimal atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, and the like. So, there's going to be a lot more focus on those sorts of disease processes and ensuring that everybody's getting everything they're supposed to get, not just, well, we got three out of the five, that's pretty good, right? Actually, if you get five out of five, it improves the patient's outcomes significantly down the road.

Abby Burns (32:51):
One of the places we started this conversation was talking about how you were taking a more condition-focused approach to population health management. And what I'm hearing in what you're saying, Beau, is it's not narrowly condition-focused. It's, let's look at the various conditions that patients have and recognize that there are overlaps between them. So how can we, to use your word, optimally manage for all of them?

Dr. Beau Raymond (33:11):
We started a focus on chronic kidney disease and congestive heart failure. You want to know what the triggers are for both those diseases. Hypertension, diabetes, obesity, those are three triggers for both of those. So, let's get upstream and let's address those things and try to prevent somebody from having the other complications down the road.

Abby Burns (33:32):
Well, Eric, Beau, thank you for coming on Radio Advisory.

Eric Gallagher (33:37):
Thank you so much.

Dr. Beau Raymond (33:37):
Thank you.

Abby Burns (33:44):
Ochsner's value-based care engine is built in a foundation of innovation and of partnership, and this shows up in so many more ways than we were able to get to in our conversation today. So, I'll be sure and link the case study we have published on Advisory.com in the show notes.

(33:58):
And if your organization is working to engage specialists in value-based care work, this is an area our Advisory Board research team is actively looking into this fall and they'd love to hear from you. You can reach out to us at podcasts@advisory.com, subject line specialists in VBC, and we can connect you with the team. Because remember, as always, we're here to help.

(34:36):
New episodes drop every Tuesday. If you like Radio Advisory, please share it with your networks, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a rating and a review. Radio Advisory is a production of Advisory Board. This episode was produced by me, Abby Burns, as well as Clare Wirth, Rae Woods, Chloe Bakst, and Atticus Raasch. The episode was edited by Katy Anderson, with technical support provided by Dan Tayag, Chris Phelps and Joe Shrum. Additional support was provided by Leanne Elston and Erin Collins. We'll see you next week.