Dr Karen van Caulil Says Patients Are Top Priority for Employers

It can be difficult at times for the Florida Health Care Coalition to meet the needs of every stakeholder, but the patient’s best interest is always at the center, said Karen van Caulil, PhD, president and CEO of the Florida Health Care Coalition. The organization works with task forces and advisory groups to find solutions that put the patient first.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How does the Florida Health Care Coalition help meet the goals of all stakeholders, including patients?

We are an employer coalition, but we operate as a multi-stakeholder organization. We’ve been around for over 32 years, and so our function has been to look carefully at the data that’s available, and to also request data from health plans and from the providers and bring it together with the claims data and other employer-based data, to identify problems and opportunities.

So we’re a convener, and we’ll bring everybody to the table. We do strive to meet the goals of all of the stakeholders at the table, but it is really hard to do that. Sometimes there are competing needs and desires. But no matter what, the patient, the employee, the family member is always at the center, and we do agree at the front end that we have to keep as our top priority what’s best for the patient.

We have work groups, we have task forces, we have an oncology care council that convenes. We also have a health advisory council of the major health plans that work with our self-funded employers and the hospital systems, and they really are a tremendous asset to the staff at the Florida Health Care Coalition, but also to our members in being able to bounce ideas and share concerns and problem solve.

Our role at the Florida Health Care Coalition is to identify the issues and the problems, the people that need to be at the table to solve it, and make sure at the end of the day that the patient is the top concern.