Audio Transcript
<0:29> Host: Thanks for taking the time to join us today. First, for those who may not be familiar, can you give a quick overview of CareAllies and the team you are a part of?
<0:30> Esteban: Let me very briefly explain who CareAllies is. Over the past 20 years, CareAllies has built services designed to help providers radically simplify the transition to value-based care.
We all know that the transition to value-based care can be hard. Every physician wants to deliver high-quality care and make it affordable and accessible. But achieving those things through value-based care models involves a lot of operational burdens and administrative challenges.
So, CareAllies works to alleviate the operational and business challenges for provider organizations that are striving to deliver more accessible and affordable care. Today, we are helping to reduce administrative burdens, empower providers, and promote financial success for more than 6,000 physicians in 66 different organizations.
I am a member of a clinical team at CareAllies, and my current role is the chief of pharmacy, which involves leading a group of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.
One aspect of what we do as pharmacists at CareAllies that excites me is how we serve as a “bridge” for providers, payers, and patients in the transition to value-based care.
<2:07> Host: Now you mentioned that your team acts as a bridge between providers, payers, and patients. Can you tell us a bit more about how your team achieves that?
<2:23> Esteban: My team does act as a “bridge” for those groups. In order for the CareAllies Pharmacy Team to be that “bridge”, we have to have the right foundation for the providers involved. CareAllies has contracting expertise to help lay that value-based care foundation with payers.
In addition, we need buy-in, so our provider engagement team offers the support and education to help get providers involved in the model. Then, all of our teams (engagement, clinical, and population health) collectively work together for optimized performance. So it’s really this ongoing process where collaboration is key.
Pharmacists sit at the intersection of quality measurement, patient and provider satisfaction, population health, cost/benefit analysis, and many other initiatives that are mission-critical for providers.
We act as a bridge by facilitating medication-utilization conversations mainly centered on quality improvement. Our initial conversation happens with health plans, and normally involves pharmacists/quality teams, which then support getting the right information to providers so they can connect with patients to discuss and address barriers to improve medication utilization among the population.
Consequently, our pharmacists are in a unique and valuable position to help close gaps in care loops.
<5:16> Host: With ongoing success not being an easy feat in this value-based care environment, what do you think gives pharmacists an edge when it comes to helping overcome the unique challenges providers face today?
<5:33> Esteban: It is not an easy feat for physicians. There are many layers of complexity that exist today in health care that make transitioning to value-based care challenging.
But I’m convinced we make those layers more simplified for providers if we take a collaborative team-based approach to patient care that is grounded in data.
One approach that gives pharmacists an edge in these challenges is relieving primary care providers of the extensive work involved in medical management. Undoubtedly, that is a benefit to having a pharmacist support providers. An example here would be having a pharmacist support direct patient care alongside a provider.
There are other ways as well that pharmacists can be, utilized to elevate team-based care within value-based models.
I think about the training that we all complete as pharmacists that gave us that edge. We are all trained as clinical experts in medication management for an array of disease states. In addition, we are trained to engage other clinicians about medication management topics to support patient care. Taking those skills into account, here at CareAllies, we have the opportunity to support activities that involve data, such as the aggregation, normalization, and the ability to analyze a multitude of medication management data — and then we can “translate” that information, in a clinician-to-clinician conversation, intended to have a meaningful impact.
<7:32> Host: Right, we know that driving health outcomes is dependent greatly on being able to utilize available data. You touched upon that as well. Can you explain how pharmacists on your team are able to empower providers in that aspect?
<7:52> Esteban: Absolutely. I can. I guess maybe I can come back to the significance of having to collaborate with other groups to drive success in value-based care to answer that question. At CareAllies, it begins with collaboration between a multitude of teams, including the provider engagement team, our clinical team, and population health teams. All of these collectively work together to make it easier for providers to understand what the data we are providing means and how it can be used to support patient care.
And in specific to the pharmacist’s role in the model, pharmacists at CareAllies on my team are in a unique position to utilize the available information that they have in front of them to supply care teams with, for example, evidence-based prescribing data and medication adherence data to support patient care activity. Additionally, pharmacists on my team are also in a unique position to offer care teams practical guidance and education about what to do with all that data.
The importance of that practical guidance is something that can’t be overstated. Therefore, pharmacists on my team are in this unique position to educate providers about how to sustainably improve their medication-related workflows and how to optimize those to impact the overall cost and quality of patient care.
So I’ll summarize it this way: we help providers that we work with understand where patients are in their medication journey, where patients might need support, and where that patient's support has been most successful.
<9:52> Host: Thank you for providing us with insight on how physician organizations can benefit from including pharmacists on their teams. Do you have any final comments before we wrap up?
<10:06> Esteban: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss this topic. I would also just encourage those listening to think about the support a pharmacist can bring to value-based care beyond the “traditional role” of a pharmacist. There is significant value to having a pharmacist involved in organizations focused on improving value-based care as we discussed. I really appreciate the opportunity to elaborate on that in this podcast.
<10:36> Host: Thanks Esteban!
