Dr James Whitfill Discusses the Success of the Scottsdale Health Partners ACO

Scottsdale Health Partners’ success is derived from its physician engagement, care coordination and transformation, and meaningful IT usage, explained James Whitfill, MD, chief medical officer. The organization has also learned that direct contact with both patients and provider is critical to continuing that success.

Transcript (modified)

Why do you think the Scottsdale Health Partners ACO has been successful at achieving shared savings?

So Scottsdale Health Partners, as an ACO and a clinically-integrated network, is a young organization, but we’ve had some early success that we’re very proud of. We think that that success probably comes from 3 main areas: physician engagement, the use of care coordination and care transformation, and the successful use of what I would call meaningful IT.

As a young ACO, what lessons has Scottsdale Health Partners learned?

So a couple of lessons that we’ve learned is that more direct contact either with our patients or our providers is critical for success. Models of care transformation where you just send out memos, or letters, or emails, or you just have web pages, we think is not enough. We have to still have that face-to-face interactions, and whether that’s with our patients who are at high risk and we’re trying to help them out and be healthier and use the healthcare system less, or with our physicians trying to learn the new way of value-based healthcare.