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Developing Physician Culture in New Risk Models

flying cadeuciiThere is a saying that “culture eats strategy for lunch.” Never has this been truer than when looking at primary care or physician group delivery system innovation.  Health care industry leaders must invest more time creating and scaling the right culture as they innovate.

There has been a great deal of controversy on the ability of the Primary Care Medical Home (PCMH) to impact total medical costs. Critics have noted that PCMH is adding additional costs to the structure without systematically demonstrating improvement in total costs and quality.

A great deal of time has been spent debating the proper structures, processes and financial incentives that are necessary to create value in physician-led-risk or shared-savings models. However, I suspect the real issue is that culture is a major driver of performance, and it has not been systematically measured or managed.

At ChenMed, we have developed a primary-care-led model focused on the care of seniors with multiple and chronic health conditions.  Funded through full-risk arrangements with Medicare Advantage plans, we outlined an overview of the original Miami-based model in Health Affairs last year [1].

Over the last three years, we have scaled the model from five centers in Miami to 36 centers in eight markets in the Southeast and Midwest.  This has required us to adjust our model in ways that allow it to readily scale. We have been able to make the fundamental economics work while rapidly scaling the medical practice, and are actively working on innovations to improve value every day.

One of the foundations of our strategy is getting the physician culture right.  This is not easy to measure from a health services and policy research perspective.Yet, it matters a great deal from a practical and business perspective. McKinsey and Company has developed an influence model on how organizations create the right behavior and mindset shifts, which we have found useful [2].

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