December 5, 2020
Written by Sean Cavanaugh
In about two weeks, I’m joining the team at Aledade as Chief Administrative Officer – largely because three years ago, I went through a health scare.
It wasn’t me; it was my then 86-year-old father. And what started with a short-term crisis dragged out into a long-term battle with our dysfunctional health care system.
For two years, my dad bounced between doctors, hospitalists and specialists. We never got a clear picture of his health or the care he was getting. His doctors rarely talked to one another, rarely gave him much time and I couldn’t talk to them to understand it all.
At the same time, this was happening while I worked at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, tasked with running the entire Medicare program. I couldn’t help but put our situation into a broader context: if this frustrating and frightening ordeal could happen to my dad- a brilliant lawyer who was on the Law Review at Penn — and his son who ran the world’s largest insurer, what was it like for other families who didn’t have our resources and our knowledge of how to navigate this confusing health care system?
Fortunately, we were saved by a good quarterback – someone who could take a step back and look at the entire field of my father’s health. For an entire hour, a geriatrician sat with my father just to talk with him. He got a sense of his health conditions, what was giving him the most trouble, and the serpentine path he had taken to get help.
The doctor set up a care plan with him, and took a close look at his medications. When we focused on one drug in particular, my father pointed out that studies had shown it was relatively effective. “That’s true,” the doctor said, “until about 75 years of age.” My dad was taking medication that stopped being effective – and possibly became harmful to him — about ten years ago. In the end, we cleared out about half of my father’s prescriptions. It was as if a switch had been thrown. Over the next few months, my dad returned to the person we knew.
Value-based health care, directed by empowered, independent primary care physicians, is what my father and I needed then. Today, everyone agrees it’s what we all need now.
We need primary care physicians to be the stewards of care, guiding patients through this confusing health care system like the captains of a ship – always pointed to the north star of better health. We need a health care system that doesn’t focus on how many procedures or prescriptions patients get, but on how well their doctors keep them healthy. When those priorities are misaligned, that’s when our health care system doesn’t work. I know, because that’s what my father and I saw firsthand.
I’m joining Aledade because I know the team here is working with incredible physicians best situated to chart that path to value-based care. For years at CMS, I looked at the results and dove into the data – I saw that the future of health care will be led by primary care physicians with the autonomy to act in their patients’ best interests. I saw this potential for success across commercial plans, Medicare Advantage, and traditional Medicare – and Aledade’s covering all of these.
At Medicare, my focus was on the operational integrity of a program that provides insurance for more than 55 million Americans. I worked to ensure the program was run efficiently and responsibly for the taxpayers, and that we kept focused on our strategic goals of improving care and reducing costs. That’s what I’m most excited to do here at Aledade. My focus will be making sure the trains run on time – that our hardworking teams are valued and supported, and that we’re helping our partner practices along every step of this journey.
I’m also joining Aledade because there’s a unique mix of purpose and people in this place. I came from public service, and I wanted to join an organization with a mission that’s bigger than profits or short-term returns. Aledade lives its mission every single day.
I also was lucky to work at CMS with some of the most brilliant people in health policy who were also great colleagues. And I see those same qualities here at Aledade. Thanks to the hard work of so many people, Aledade partners with more than 200 primary care practices in 17 states to actively manage the care of nearly a quarter of a million patients. I can’t wait to be a part of the team that’s building the leading model for a health system that’s good for patients, good for doctors, and good for society.