The annual conference of America's Health Insurance Plans last week had something that healthcare industry conferences are rarely able to muster: Suspense.
Against a backdrop of an imminent, historic Supreme Court ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the mood at the Salt Palace Conference Center in Salt Lake City was laced with anticipation.
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Thursday morning a packed house at the Conference Center sat and waited for Karen Ignagni, AHIP's CEO, to open the conference. It was 8 a.m. in the mountains and 10 a.m. on the east coast, where the Supreme Court was announcing its decisions for the day.
The room was silent as Ignagni crossed the stage about 10 minutes late, took her place at the podium, and announced that she had no news about the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act. She was well into her prepared remarks when a staffer approached the rostrum and handed Ignagni a note. "What a wonderful dramatic moment," she said as she opened the note. The she announced, "there is no decision today."
While the ACA was definitely the elephant in the room throughout AHIP, there was also the sense that no matter what the Supreme Court outcome, the delivery of healthcare has forever changed. Attendees and presenters at the conference frequently credited healthcare reform with accelerating conversations that the healthcare industry should have been having years, and maybe even decades, ago.
HealthLeaders Media Breakthroughs
The Promise of Healthcare Analytics
Healthcare is rich in data. Yet healthcare lags in using data analytics to learn about the people it serves and to improve its operations and bottom line. Leaders are overcoming structural and cultural hurdles to involve many end users—executives, managers, and clinicians—as well as analysts.
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AHIP featured three days of workshops, networking breakfasts, and more than 30 sessions devoted to the intricacies of the healthcare industry. Along the way, attendees were treated to presentations by Paul Begala, Deepak Chopra, Atul Gawande, Malcolm Gladwell, and Ari Fleischer.
For those of you who weren't lucky enough to be there, here is my impression of some of the big ideas presented at AHIP 2012:
Consumer engagement (Part 1). You know an idea is big when every tech vendor has a product that addresses it. The buzz is that the consumer experience with health plans and providers needs to improve. It starts with enrollment, extends to outreach and educational efforts, and ends with brand loyalty. In between, there are all types of vendor products that can help health plans get closer to the members they love to hate—the individuals.
Consumer engagement (Part2). Last year at AHIP there was a lot of talk about the healthcare industry shifting from a wholesale (group) to a retail (individual) business. There was some anxious wringing of hands as health plans looked for ways to appeal to this new and important market.
Fast forward to 2012 and the conference talk has shifted to consumer responsibility. As in "how do we engage the consumer and make them more responsible for their care." There was a lot of talk about consumer empowerment, especially in terms of benefit selection and financial obligations. Be sure and consider the flip side: engaged consumers will require more attention and demand more services
The payer-physician relationship is still in transition. For all the talk about the care continuum and everyone working together for the good of the patient, there are still huge gaps between health plans and docs. Vendors told me stories about having to act as the middle man between physicians and health plans. Physicians complained about receiving out-of-date and inaccurate data about their patients from health plans. For their part, insurers complained that physicians don't know how to use the patient data they provide and don't want to learn.
Learn from other industries. A few years ago IDEO, a San Francisco design firm, developed a user-friendly shopping cart design that was featured on the TV show Nightline. Watching the show was the CEO of a Missouri hospital system, who asked IDEO to develop ideas to improve that hospital's emergency room experience.
IDEO focused on the need for patient information about what happens during an ER wait. Among IDEO's suggestions: add monitors to the ER so patients know their rank on the waiting list; staff information booths 24-7 or not at all; add valet parking to the ER; and provide patients with Velcro patches that tell hospital employees where the patient is in the treatment process. The point is that as the healthcare industry evolves, health plans need to be open to different ideas and new ways of looking at their business.
Margaret Dick Tocknell is a reporter/editor with HealthLeaders Media.
