Vanessa Sammy Outlines Successful Healthcare Partnerships and Improving Transparency

Successful partnerships between employers and healthcare organizations need trust and transparency, said Vanessa Sammy, MPA, MHSA, senior director of commercial strategy and implementation for Remedy Partners.

Transcript

How can employers not only set up successful partnerships, but ensure that they are being successfully utilized?

To set up successful partnerships, it really is about trust. We take the concept of trust but verify very seriously. And the truth is that most employers have likely been burned by a relationship at some point that didn’t bear fruit and go into their next relationship with any partner looking to verify that they can do what they say they can do.

The reality is that as you set up partnerships between employers and organizations like ours and like others, you’re looking for a partner that is looking to be strategic with you and is looking to grow with you. And when you’re looking to align on principles of growth, and in this case with employer activists it is around transparency—transparency of data, transparency of prices, and transparency of outcomes—then you know you’ve found the right partner.

Everyone wants more transparency: where are we currently with increasing transparency?

There has been a significant push towards price transparency that frankly has left a lot of people confused, because there is no standardization thus far in the market about what price transparency ultimately looks like. So, for a patient like me, can I go to a hospital and select services based on something I know will be trusted and accurate?

At this moment in time, while there is an executive order, there isn’t a current marketplace where I could do that. I hope that is where we are moving and certainly that is where policy seems to indicate that we will be in a few years.