Humana has expanded its focus to the social determinants of health because issues like food insecurity and lack of transportation impact outcomes even if patients are getting the best medical care, said Bryan Loy, MD, physician lead, oncology, laboratory, and personalized medicine, Humana.
Humana has expanded its focus to the social determinants of health because issues like food insecurity and lack of transportation impact outcomes even if patients are getting the best medical care, said Bryan Loy, MD, physician lead, oncology, laboratory, and personalized medicine, Humana.
Transcript
What is Humana working on to improve value that you think will have a big impact?
I think we’ve expanded our aperture at Humana to include the social determinants of health. If you listen to some of our press releases, we talk an awful lot about food insecurity. We also talk a lot about transportation issues. You can get the very best care that science has to offer but if you send someone home to an empty refrigerator or if they can’t get back to their next follow-up appointment because of transportation issues, you’re not gonna get the outcome that you’re looking for. Until we begin to engage the folks that can help us to do something about that, the doctors and some of the other agencies that can help, or the caregiver support that’s needed to meet those unmet needs, I don’t think our work’s through.
How are you engaging physicians to make these community connections to help patients?
What we hear from the docs is that you’ve got to help make it easy, you’ve got to help build that into our processes. So, if you think about how does that connection get made, you really have to begin to ask yourself, what sort of infrastructure do you have to have from the patient—provider interface and then connecting them to all of the assets and agencies a community might have to offer.
So, it depends on what you’re looking for, if you’re looking for health disparity or health access or health literacy issues, you’re going to have a different set of agencies rather than comparing the issue of health literacy or food insecurity. You’ve got other social agencies and not-for-profits that can help solve those problems, food banks for example, other not-for-profit agencies.
The challenge is just making sure that the model makes sense so we’ve invested heavily in what we call our Bold Goal markets. Those markets are areas that we’ve chosen to invest in the health, not just the healthcare delivery but the health of those communities to try to improve their overall health by 20% by the year 2020 and beyond.
Allegations call out restrictions on medically necessary care; CDC data highlight surge in COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations; failure to include additional Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) aid raises concerns over food access.
Read More
Oncology Onward: A Conversation With Thyme Care CEO and Cofounder Robin Shah
October 2nd 2023Robin Shah, CEO of Thyme Care, which he founded in 2020 with Bobby Green, MD, president and chief medical officer, joins hosts Emeline Aviki, MD, MBA, and Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, to discuss his evolution as an entrepreneur in oncology care innovation and his goal of positively changing how patients experience the cancer system.
Listen
Nathan Walcker Discusses Value-Based Oncology Care Initiatives at FCS
September 8th 2023Nathan Walcker, CEO at Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute (FCS), highlights some of the recent partnerships and initiatives at FCS to improve community-based oncology care from a value-based perspective.
Listen
In this interview with The American Journal of Managed Care®, Katie Queen, MD, addresses the complexity of obesity as a medical condition, pivoting to virtual care while ensuring that patients who lived in a rural location continued to receive adequate care, and the importance of integrating awareness of obesity and chronic disease prevention into local food culture.
Read More
Allegations call out restrictions on medically necessary care; CDC data highlight surge in COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations; failure to include additional Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) aid raises concerns over food access.
Read More
Oncology Onward: A Conversation With Thyme Care CEO and Cofounder Robin Shah
October 2nd 2023Robin Shah, CEO of Thyme Care, which he founded in 2020 with Bobby Green, MD, president and chief medical officer, joins hosts Emeline Aviki, MD, MBA, and Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, to discuss his evolution as an entrepreneur in oncology care innovation and his goal of positively changing how patients experience the cancer system.
Listen
Nathan Walcker Discusses Value-Based Oncology Care Initiatives at FCS
September 8th 2023Nathan Walcker, CEO at Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute (FCS), highlights some of the recent partnerships and initiatives at FCS to improve community-based oncology care from a value-based perspective.
Listen
In this interview with The American Journal of Managed Care®, Katie Queen, MD, addresses the complexity of obesity as a medical condition, pivoting to virtual care while ensuring that patients who lived in a rural location continued to receive adequate care, and the importance of integrating awareness of obesity and chronic disease prevention into local food culture.
Read More
2 Clarke Drive
Cranbury, NJ 08512