A Fresh Start at the 2022 Payer/Provider Summit
This year’s payer/provider summit reconfirmed that there is hard work to do as payers and providers work to come together. Our overarching goal with this summit was to reduce administrative friction and waste, improving the patient or member experience. So we convened leaders wanting to challenge the status quo. We wanted people to suggest alternatives and collaborate around successes. When all is said and done, we feel like we were able to achieve all those things this year.
We had the first payer/provider summit back in 2019. But given everything that has happened since, this year’s summit felt like a fresh start. And it's only the beginning of the journey.
Working in Partnership
There was much more collaboration than friction for the duration of the summit. There really wasn’t a lot of finger-pointing or arguments. Instead, the focus was on trying to find ways to work together for the benefit of the patient or member. We could feel a sense of partnership as both sides worked to solve very difficult issues.
In many ways, the credit for this cooperative atmosphere goes to the attendees that came; not everyone in healthcare would have been able to work in this way. And many attendees noticed that sense of cooperation. In the comments from the post-summit survey, people frequently expressed gratitude for the willingness of other attendees to remove their own biases and work toward common goals.
Event Highlights
Before the summit, KLAS published case studies in the Points of Light report to recognize where health plans and healthcare providers are finding ways to build bridges and work better together. During the summit, many of those payer and provider partnerships from the report presented their success stories together along with their vendors. It was inspiring to see them up on that stage, being vulnerable but also sharing how they're winning right now.
The presenting partnerships were able to show other people that they could also build those bridges. The presentations really seemed to make people think about how they could do something similar and about how they could do better. Offstage, it was great to see people reach out to the presenters to ask further questions.
Topics Addressed in Tabletop Discussion
The first tabletop discussion addressed removing the hurdles surrounding value-based care to help create better alignment between payers and providers. We asked groups to brainstorm on the top hurdles that payers and providers can quickly overcome together to move toward value-based care. Though everyone is aware that value-based care won’t solve all the problems in healthcare overnight, we had a great discussion around this topic.
Additionally, when we met in 2019, the attendees established metrics for both payers and providers to be measured by. So during another tabletop discussion, we asked attendees to propose one or two additional metrics that could capture the patient/member experience. We then reviewed the 2019 metrics in another discussion. The purpose of these discussions was to review and refine the measurements used in our payer/provider measurements to ensure data is applicable to others. We worked together to ensure that the metrics were actionable, digestible, standardized, and easy to pull.
Changes and an Invitation
In recognition of the hard work payers and providers face as they work through issues together, it was announced at the summit that the Payer/Provider initiative will soon be renamed the K2 Collaborative. More information will be coming about the name change at a later date.
To learn more about the Points of Light initiative shared at the summit and more, we recommend reading the report published in May. We are also encouraging forward-thinking and successful payers, providers, and vendors to submit their joint efforts and success stories as case studies for next year’s Points of Light report. Successful submissions will focus on areas like collaboration, use of technology, partnership, trust, and more. If you are a provider, payer, or vendor with a positive experience to share, please reach out to us. Submissions for consideration are due no later than July 29, 2022. We will be completing the interview and validation phase by October 31, 2022 with anticipated publication in April 2023.