Dr Samyukta Mullangi on Innovations, Future Directions in Specialty Value-Based Care

Samyukta Mullangi, MD, MBA, medical oncologist at Tennessee Oncology and medical director of oncology at Thyme Care, discusses what was covered at the Institute for Value-Based Medicine® (IVBM) event held in partnership with Tennessee Oncology on August 22, along with how attendees can put what they learned into practice; Mullangi cochaired the event.

She also shared her opinion on the future of specialty value-based care and how entrepreneurs can adapt to this shift.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Transcript

Could you summarize what was covered at the IVBM?

We covered a lot of topics today at the IVBM. The conference was about innovation in specialty care delivery with a focus on oncology. We convened thought leaders and industry leaders from a variety of different spaces within the health care ecosystem.

We had health care delivery system CEOs, presidents, talking about what they could do as legacy systems within the space to advance value-based care and innovation. We had folks from venture capital talk about how they think about unique considerations of specialty care delivery that are maybe different from what we've seen in the last decade. We had folks from the payer space telling us about their challenges but also their opportunities, and thinking about value-based care and how they can enable that with their wide reach.

Then, finally, we had folks from the startup space and value-based care enablement companies. What role do they fill, and how do they think about creating value in a crowded space?

What is the future of specialty value-based care? How can entrepreneurs adapt to this shift?

I think the world is the oyster for specialty value-based care. Value-based care, as a concept, it feels like we talk about it a lot, but it's important to remember that it all had its genesis in less than 15 years. So, it's really evolved over time.

The initial focus was in primary care and certain surgical specialties that were very discrete procedures. It's really, I would say, only in the last 5 or 6 years that there's been this momentum toward thinking about specialty value-based care. There were initial investments by CMS in the kidney care space and oncology that really spurred this on, but now it's taken a life of its own.

I think a lot of people see the value of value-based care as an important lever in standardizing quality and improving total cost of care. I think we're trying to figure out, as the years go by and we get more and more experience doing this, what works? What doesn't work? What is a way in which we partner with physicians and with practice as opposed to treating it like either or, or in opposition?

All of those things are kinks that we're working out. I think there is so much coming down the pipeline, so I'm very excited for it.

How can attendees take what they learned at the IVBM and put it into practice?

I'm hopeful that the conversations that we had today were value-additive and actionable. I think specialty value-based care introduces a degree of complexity above and beyond value-based care in and of its own, which I think is actually sometimes very difficult to think about in terms of execution. It's complicated from an actuarial perspective, from a compensation and incentive perspective, from identifying the opportunity to work with existing tech to make it happen.

There's just a lot there. I think just delineating some of it and trying to introduce understanding through the maze of complexity is the first step that I hope we achieved today. Moving forward, I just hope that we've generated a lot of enthusiasm and excitement for it, for a lot of our medical-heavy audience to take back and think about how they can potentially get involved or create momentum.