Steve Santangelo, CRO AT Garner Health - NextGen Healthcare Summit 2025 Recording Series

In this NextGen Healthcare Summit episode with Steve Santangelo of Garner Health, he delves into healthcare costs heading toward an unsustainable threshold where nearly 9% of company revenue will go toward benefits packages—the same percentage that contributed to GM's financial crisis in 2008. Data analysis reveals that which individual doctor a patient sees has the greatest impact on healthcare costs, with significant variations in quality and expense that don't necessarily correlate with each other.• Top-performing doctors maintain complication rates around 5% for major surgeries while bottom-performing doctors approach 20%• Approximately one-third of all healthcare procedures are deemed medically unnecessary• Basic office visits cost around $100 with top doctors versus $250 with lower performers• Traditional methods of evaluating doctor performance are highly inaccurate• More granular assessment of doctor performance includes factors like tendency to jump to surgery, techniques used, complication rates, and setting choices• Employers can save approximately 27% by directing employees to higher-quality providers• Current provider directories are only about 27% accurate, creating barriers to finding good doctors• AI and machine learning can help clean provider directories and deliver real-time information• Using incentives to encourage patients to see high-quality doctors creates better outcomes while reducing costs• Implementing these approaches can reduce employer healthcare spend by approximately 12%