Dr Kristin Oaks: Value-Based Care Allows Us to Support Our Sickest Patients

Kristin Oaks, DO, Agilon regional medical director at Central Ohio Primary Care, spoke at our recent Institute for Value-Based Medicine^® event held with Zangmeister Cancer Center. In this clip from our interview, she addresses the importance of value-based care within the primary care space.

Transcript

Can you discuss your presentation, “Value-Based Care: What Is It and Why Should We Care?”

I spoke about how we, as a primary care group, think about our empaneled patients in a value-based care approach. Value-based care is kind of 2 things. One is it's the payment model that we function under as primary care physicians in this particular population, in our senior-based care. And I think there's also the way that we provide that care and what we do differently now that we have this other model that we're paid via. Some of that is really around how we empanel our patients, how we've changed inside our organization to increase our access for those patients, to have high-quality visits for those patients, and to work outside the organization with specialists and hospitalists on what happens to our patients outside of the exam room.

What are key principles and components of value-based care, especially as they relate to primary care–related outcomes?

In primary care, we think about the totality of our care, right? That includes what other folks are doing, what we're doing. Some of that is just making sure that we understand what preventable disease exists in our patients. That’s the foundation of primary care anyway.

Some of it is, we have that longitudinal relationship with our patients that a lot of specialists don't enjoy. If we really understand the basis of the patient's chronic illnesses, as well as how to optimize the care of those illnesses, both from our side and specialist side, that’s a key component of value-based care. Additionally, having that access to the value-based care payment model allows us to develop programs that really support our patients at our practice.

We at Central Ohio Primary Care have after-hours support for our patients until 11 o'clock, including televisits. We have our own partners working in the same-day center, with hospitalists on duty that can give fluids and fusions and that sort of thing. We have a really robust care management team. We have our own palliative team and home-visiting physicians. So it has really allowed us support our sickest patients where needed and then keep our healthier patients healthier.