Tom Kayrouz, MD, FAAP, CPE, Senior Vice President, Riverside Health System; and President, Riverside Medical Group

This presentation by Riverside Health System highlights the profound impact of system-wide skill development. By addressing professional practice gaps in both clinician well-being and patient interactions, this skill development strategy is designed to raise the capacity of clinicians, leaders, and teams to enhance the overall experience for clinicians and patients, measured by patient experience and talent retention.

Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to:

• Describe the importance of system-wide skill development in enhancing the clinician and patient experience.
• Develop strategies for implementing a comprehensive skill development program.
• Identify measurable outcomes and metrics to track the impact of a skill development strategy.

Moderator: John W. Kennedy, MD, President, AMGA Foundation; and Chief Medical Officer, AMGA
Panelists: Bracken Babula, MD, MS, Vice Chair, Quality & Clinical Informatics, Jefferson Health; Laura Nelson, BSN, RN, Provider Efficiency Specialist, Ambulatory EMR Support, OSF Healthcare; Sofia Loucao, MHA, Senior Project and Operations Manager, Community Physician Group, University of Utah Community Clinics; and W. Michael Ellerbe, MD, Senior Physician Associate Medical Director, Ochsner Health 

This panel of leaders from Jefferson Health, Ochsner Health, OSF Healthcare, and University of Utah Community Clinics will discuss how they’re confronting the burden of EHR in-box work. Learn how different organizations are reducing physician burnout by identifying physician knowledge gaps and redesigning their processes for team member recruitment, training, data-tracking, technical solutions, and protocol-based responses to enhance the patient experience and general delivery of care.
 
Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to:

•  Describe methods and resources that can be used to identify, quantify, communicate, and solve the problem.
• Describe opportunities to deploy technology to support in-basket message management and decrease physician time managing in-basket messages. 
• Evaluate your patient portal through the lens of the patient behavior it drives.

Jennifer DeBruler, MD, Vice President, Patient Access for the Adult Ambulatory Enterprise; and Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Modernizing a scheduling decision tree logic allows patients to have a consistent experience when making appointments online, through a centralized call center, or at a checkout desk. Vanderbilt University shares its execution strategy—specifically, goals, governance, team structure, process, technology solutions, and challenges—that will help other organizations as they attempt to implement similar projects. 

Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to:

• Illustrate team structure, goals, and process to drive desired build.
• Utilize innovative solutions to meet complex needs of business, clinicians, and patients.
• Describe the level of organizational collaboration needed to execute an advanced scheduling project.

Ken Cohen, MD, FACP, Executive Director, Translational Research, Optum Health

In the U.S., 93% of specialists are equally paid fee-for-service (FFS) for both low-value and high-value care. Until this compensation model is changed, value-based care (VBC) will fail. Optum Health shares an innovative model incorporating specialty-specific quality, efficiency, and reporting metrics to supplement relative value unit (RVU)-based reimbursement.

Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to:

• Describe the need to change how specialists are reimbursed.
• Use claims and pharmacy data to design specialty-specific compensation pools.
• Develop transparent VBC reports for each specialty.
• Blend RVU and VBC reimbursement for success in both FFS and VBC models of care.

Lauren Hardison, MBA, Vice President, Strategy and Consumerism, UnityPoint Clinic

Consumer preferences are changing at a faster rate than traditional healthcare models. As a result, processes that were differentiating in the past became gambles. In this presentation, UnityPoint Clinic shares iterative and transformational strategies to provide an omnichannel approach to consumer access and care delivery.

Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to:

• Apply multiple modalities to patient access and care delivery, thus empowering the consumer to achieve an easier and more personal path to care.
• Include providers and staff on the journey to more personal care.
• Ensure their transition is founded upon the technology critical to creating a differentiated digital experience that is scalable.

Charu Dhavalikar, MD, Director of Medical Informatics; and Suelyn C. Boucree, MD, MBA, FACP, MACHE, Network Director of Quality, Hackensack Meridian Health

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a leading cause of mortality, but approximately 85% of CKD cases are estimated to go undiagnosed. Hackensack Meridian Health will describe the development and deployment of non-heuristic models to identify undiagnosed/untreated patients to address this gap, thus increasing the rate of intervention and empowering clinicians with an intuitive interface.

Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to:

• Describe the role that electronic medical records (EMRs) can play in improving the rate of diagnosis and treatment for CKD.
• Identify concerns associated with EMR data, including incompleteness and volume of data, and ensure that they are addressed before implementation within a clinical workflow.
• Describe how EMR data can be integrated into a clinical workflow.

Robert A. Gerberry, JD, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer; and Jay Williamson, MD, Board Vice Chair and former Medical Group President, Summa Health 

This session focuses on evolving governance structures to meet the rapidly changing demands of governing a medical group’s operations. Summa Health will address integration with the health system’s board and its board committees to best allocate fiduciary and oversight responsibilities, while driving engagement among the management team, the board, and its physicians.

Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to:

• Build a more effective governance process by revising board membership, restructuring board agendas, and focusing on board process improvement initiatives.
• Facilitate integration between medical group and health system boards with defined allocation of decision-making authority.
• Implement clinical governing bodies to drive physician engagement and ownership around key areas of medical group operations.
• Implement board self-assessment processes to identify performance improvement opportunities.
• Develop board composition and succession planning models driven by a skill set and competency matrix.
• Measure board effectiveness with oversight of organizational risk, CEO performance, and strategic plan development.
• Develop key performance indicators, including financial, operational, and quality metrics for effective board oversight and monitoring.
• Develop enterprise risk management programs to provide oversight of key organizational risks including cybersecurity, payer strategy, and regulatory issues.

Moderator: Scott Hines, Chief Quality Officer, Optum Tri-State, Optum Health
Panelists: Darryl Drevna, MA, Senior Director, Regulatory Affairs; Jamie Miller, MBA, Senior Director, Government Relations; and Lauren Lattany, MPS, Director, Government Relations, AMGA

AMGA’s public policy experts will discuss the legislative and regulatory environment in Washington, D.C., with a special emphasis on AMGA’s efforts to promote the medical group model and value-based care (VBC). The political landscape is constantly shifting, and the AMGA team will brief you on the healthcare agenda for Congress, the administration, and regulatory agencies, as well as AMGA’s work to ensure your voices and concerns are heard. The team will also discuss the 2024 presidential election and how the candidates’ proposals may affect your medical group in both the legislative and regulatory arenas.

Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to:

• Describe current legislative and regulatory issues that will affect medical groups.
• Participate in AMGA’s legislative activities and outreach.