Ep 154 – Climbing the Mountain: Reaching New Heights for a Transformative Future, with Debbie Welle-Powell

What this episode covers

Are you ready to climb the mountain and reach new heights for a transformative future? In the “race to value”, the mountain climber must not be intimidated by the steep terrain of a broken healthcare system. Instead we must look within ourselves, while also finding inspiration from others, to keep climbing! The ultimate summit of value transformation is what drives us, but the climb itself is what matters.  If you are looking for inspiration in your value journey, look no further than our guest this week, Debbie Welle-Powell. Debbie is a healthcare thought leader, educator, national speaker, and content expert in delivery systems, clinical models of care, population health, and digital care. She is also an avid mountain climber, having attempted three of the Seven Summits while also reaching the summit of all 58 of Colorado’s 14,000 peaks. She has also climbed Mt. Rainer in in Washington and Grand Teton in Wyoming and, she has climbed peaks in Bolivia, Mexico, France, Argentina, and Mt. McKinley in Alaska.  In this podcast, you will learn how taking the path least travelled is when you learn the most about yourself and why value transformation is a most noble journey to undertake in healthcare. As the former Chief Population Health Officer at Essentia Health – an integrated delivery system with 14 hospitals, and 1,500 provider health system spanning the states of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin – Debbie Welle-Powell designed, built, and operationalized Essentia’s $2.5 billion dollar transition from a primarily fee-for-service model of care to one that focused on value.  She oversaw risk-based contracting with payers and care delivery transformation, resulting in forty-five percent of the system’s fee-for-service revenue tied to financial and clinical performance which produced record earnings on shared savings. Debbie’s exceptional experience and background in multi-state, large integrated delivery systems, coupled with industry involvement and insights into emerging opportunities, trends, and challenges, have been valuable to health systems and purchasers seeking to grow, diversity, and promote expertise in the development and implementation of data-driven strategies and solutions in population health and value-based care. Episode Bookmarks: 01:30 Introduction to Debbie Welle-Powell, a nationally-recognized leader in value-based care transformation. 03:30 Support Race to  Value by subscribing to our weekly newsletter and leaving a review/rating on Apple Podcasts. 04:00 The grim statistics of American healthcare and the moral and economic imperative to reform it! 05:00 Recent article from Don Berwick about the excess profiteering and greed in healthcare: “Salve Lucrum: The Existential Threat of Greed in US Health Care” 06:30 Debbie discusses the current state of the healthcare industry and how she spent her career moving healthcare delivery to full-risk and globally capitated payments. 07:30 A leadership commitment to test models of care that address the moral imperative for improved outcomes. 08:30 Reflections on Dr. Berwick’s article and the need to expand the conversation by focusing on solutions. 11:00 The Innovation Center Strategy Refresh is a stake in the ground for 100% of Medicare beneficiaries to be in an accountable care relationship. 12:00 The need for innovation in specialty care and new risk models that improve health equity. 13:00 “Medicare is a laboratory for change.” (e.g. alignment of quality measures, multi-payer approaches to improvement, expansion of access in rural areas)