Dr Albert Tzeel Discusses the Benefits of Increased Risk Arrangements

Increased risk arrangements have placed more accountability on the provider’s part when it comes to a patient’s care, said Albert Tzeel, MD, MHSA, FAAPL, regional medical director of senior products at Humana.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How have increased risk arrangements changed the way providers are working together?

It’s interesting. When we put providers at risk and a lot of them move on a path to risk. So I guess I should back track and say that it’s not just someone takes risk at the beginning and they don’t know what to do with it. I mean, we certainly work with them to try to get them on a path to risk so that they understand what it entails so whether that’s just strictly upside for doing the appropriate things when it comes to performance to eventually being able to accept full risk for the care of that particular member.

Now, how does it change in terms of how provides collect collaborate? I think there’s more accountability between providers. Primary care physicians, they want communication from the specialty care physicians. They want communication from the hospitalists. They want communications from the health plan. They really want to be able to be, they’ve always been called the quarterback of the members care and they are but they want accountability from the other providers that are involved in that members care because of the fact that they are on the hook for that members care.

What I’ve seen, and we have a lot of providers that are at risk in my particular market, but from what I’ve seen is that they still want to do the right thing for the member but they want to make sure everyone else is doing the right thing and communicating that back so they can all be on the same page because that’s the only way everyone together can do the right thing for the member and improve health.