Programs developed by Dean Ornish, MD, for coronary artery disease, Type II diabetes, and early-stage prostate cancer are expected to extend Healthways' existing portfolio of well-being improvement programs.
Healthways, the giant wellness program and disease management company, has entered into a partnership with popular author and researcher Dean Ornish, MD, to operate and license his lifestyle management programs.
The Ornish programs for coronary artery disease, Type II diabetes, and early-stage prostate cancer are expected to complement and extend Healthways' existing portfolio of well-being improvement programs.
"The question we ask ourselves all the time is 'what can we do to help well-being improve?' If we can get that accomplished, there's a lot of economic benefit," said Ben Leedle Jr., Healthways president and CEO. He and Ornish were interviewed by phone. Healthways officials see the Ornish programs as playing a major role in achieving that economic benefit.
Ornish, founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, CA and a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco, has spent much of the last three decades conducting clinical research that supports how lifestyle changes, including diet, moderate aerobic exercise, stress reduction, and smoking cessation can prevent and even begin to reverse the effects of chronic conditions such as severe coronary heart disease, without drugs or surgery.
As healthcare makes the paradigm shift from volume to value and emphasizes population health, "there's a convergence of opportunities and Healthways understands them," Ornish said. "In this new environment where [providers] are paid a certain amount of money to manage care, interventions like ours are perfectly positioned."
Ornish says that as his programs have gained acceptance among commercial payers and Medicare, providers have asked to be trained in the Ornish methods. "We've been looking for several years for the right partner to help us scale this quickly." Healthways, which has a global presence and serves about 45 million people worldwide, "has the capacity to help us create a paradigm of healthcare instead of sick care," Ornish adds.
As part of this partnership Ornish says data, including clinical outcomes, will be collected on "millions of people to provide ongoing evidence of the power that these simple lifestyles changes can make."
Healthways sees the partnership as a way to differentiate itself from competitors such as Aetna's Active Health and Optum at UnitedHealthcare. Leedle sees a unique value that others "will have a difficult time" replicating.
Under the terms of the contract, health systems, health plans, hospitals, and physician groups will be trained and certified for Ornish programs exclusively through Healthways. The training will assure that providers will be eligible for Medicare reimbursement as they use Ornish programs to improve patient health.
Leedle says Healthways will reach out to Fortune 500 companies that he describes as "desperate to find credible, science-backed ways to be able to effect healthcare claims costs in the near term but also performance, productivity and engagement of their work force." He expects health plans to look at the Ornish programs as ways to "engender deeper relationships with their provider networks." Integrated delivery systems will look at the Ornish programs as "accretive to their brands."
Healthways declined to release contract details, but Leedle and Ornish acknowledged that the agreement is exclusive and open-ended in terms of duration.
Margaret Dick Tocknell is a reporter/editor with HealthLeaders Media.
