Employers, make your move: A Q&A with Mike Thompson
Mike Thompson of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Colations reflects on how employers are disrupting the health care supply chain.
The COVID-19 pandemic has rocked nearly every facet of our economy. And while the benefits business hasn’t been immune to these effects, many of the setbacks could be temporary. While stay-at-home orders and economic uncertainty may have dampened the market for acquisitions, many industry professionals expect it will heat back up quickly.
The same is true for the health care industry, where even businesses once immune to the effects of economic recession are now stumbling. But the expectation is those that are able to weather the storm will come back even stronger.
Related: Employer health coalitions chipping away at plan costs
BenefitsPRO reached out to Mike Thompson, president and CEO at the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions, to get his perspective on the market forces shaping our industry now and in the years ahead.
How have employer coalitions impacted the health care landscape?
When you look at major trends in the industry like cost containment, that didn’t start with the health care industry. It started with employers. Managing wellness started with employers, not health insurers. The same with consumerism. All these major trends started with employers banding together around a common view of where the industry needed to go.
Employers are at the top of the supply chain and have been the ones moving the rest of the chain, then influencing the providers and PBMs. But they only lead well when they communicate collectively and are very clear about what they want and how to get there. Employers have found a lot of value in working together, particularly in areas where they don’t compete. They’ve also found that they are able to develop a shared interest in what should be happening in the industry, that they can have a profound impact on moving the industry in that direction.
How is COVID impacting the work the coalitions are doing?
A lot of it is accelerating things that were going to take years, but suddenly could take months if we put our minds to it. Think about delivery reform: We just had a social experiment where people aren’t going to the doctor. How do we rebuild this the way we want it? How do we implement advanced primary care, or move to value-based care with health systems that are ready to talk? We have a shared need to get to the end; let’s move quickly. That mindset is moving the industry at a pace we’ve never seen before.
What do you see the health care industry looking like post-pandemic?
First of all, virtual care is way up. That’s a really big positive. Virtual care is part of the new normal, but we need to deal with the things that can’t be done virtually. There’s more focus on high-value preventive services.
Related to institutional care, we’re not going to go back to the way it was before, even though there’s going to be this urgency among monopolies to move there. They need us to partner with them, and our view of partnering is to shift to more value-based contracting, and that will likely lead to things like episodes of care contracting that are more accountable.
The final area is one where we were starting to tiptoe in: the racial justice movement and racial equity. You’re going to see much more investment in looking at the issue of health equity. Not just the equity in our populations overall, but who within our populations are getting left behind?
What impact do you think proposed regulations will have on health care?
The hospital advocates are extremely powerful, and it’s really hard to get effective regulation out of Washington. Part of what we’ve been doing is mobilizing the business community and coalitions to make the case for why we need to be more aggressive. Invariably, we’ve been disappointed about positive legislation that has been put forward and then gets muted.
Am I optimistic? History would tell me not to be, but I do think we’re finding more alignment among the employer community and these other key constituents that I think will create a chance on the policy front and in the private sector.
What other industry disruptors are you watching?
There’s a wildcard in this that is probably bigger than any of us could have assumed: players outside the industry. It’s the Uber effect. Players that bring technology and look at the problems with a new lens. The industry could change overnight.
A disruptive force like COVID could accelerate innovation at a level that we just can’t imagine. It’s incumbent upon us to be open-minded about what could happen as we enter a technology age in health care that goes beyond buying expensive hospital machines to truly disruptive approaches. When folks like Amazon come into the industry, you have to respect it. This virus has shaken everything up; anybody who thinks things are going to go back to the way it was isn’t paying attention.
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