WELCOME NEW MEMBERS!

Gabe Stein is Executive VP of GeBBS Healthcare Solutions, and also leads the Payer Solutions Division‘s sales, operations, marketing, and strategic vision, focusing on driving growth in revenues and profitability. GeBBS is a KLAS-rated leading provider of Revenue Cycle Management services and risk adjustment solutions firm that boasts innovative technology, combined with a global workforce (8,300 in India, 700 in the Philippines, and 150 in the U.S.). Prior to joining GeBBS in 2017, Gabe served as CEO and then Managing Director of Peak Health Solutions, responsible for growing the company’s product development, business development, and marketing enterprises. Gabe was also previously President of AlzBetter LLC, in New Jersey, whose patent-pending program for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients is a comprehensive blend of technology, care coordination, training and support developed from years of experience and scientific research. Earlier, he was a National Sales Manager with Maxim Healthcare, and served in the U.S. Army and Coast Guard. Gabe has joined the ABL-Health LA Round Table.

Bernadette Vincent is COO of Satellite Healthcare, since March 2020, and was most recently Chief Field Operations Officer, since mid-2018. Satellite is a leading nonprofit dialysis provider, and Bernadette oversees operations in all service lines and several administrative functions, like managed care, procurement, Incident Command System for COVID-19 pandemic and crisis, bio-medical services, leadership development, and staff training and education. She is also GM of Satellite’s Ambulatory Surgery Center, Tri-County Vascular Center. Prior to joining Satellite, Bernadette was with Mednax Services, in Florida, as COO Ambulatory Services and COO West Division. Before that, she was with Fresenius Medical Care, as Group VP South Division and VP of Operations. Earlier, she was VP of Medical Management at Peoples Health; Regional VP at Fresenius; and Senior Director Medical Management at Kaiser Permanente of Ohio. A registered nurse and former dialysis nurse with many years of clinical experience, Bernadette has joined the ABL-Health OAK Round Table.

UPCOMING ABL HEALTHCARE ROUND TABLES

• • • • • • • 1/06 – ABL-Health OC Zoom Table
            • 1/12 – ABL-Health SV Zoom Table
            • 1/13 – ABL-Health SF Zoom Table
            • 1/15 – ABL-Health LA Zoom Table
            • 1/21 – ABL-Health OAK Zoom Table

Blog by Mimi Grant

TELEHEALTH: COVID’s Healthcare Superstar

If there’s a silver-lining that’s emerged from the past nine months of our collective misery, it’s been the rapid embrace of telehealth by physicians, therapists, pharmacists, and patients alike. And, based on the feedback from the provider Members in Wednesday morning’s ABL Healthcare ZOOM Table, it’s never going back to its limited pre-COVID norm. In fact, according to a Medical Economics industry survey, “83% of patients expect to use telemedicine after the pandemic resolves.”

A prime example of how far we’ve come with Telehealth was revealed in my recent exchange with Artie Southam, MD, EVP of Health Plan Operations and Chief Growth Officer at Kaiser Permanente, who is also the co-national executive sponsor of Kaiser’s Telehealth activities. Although, as Artie said, “we were fortunate to have a head start going into COVID” – pre-pandemic, they were already conducting 15% of scheduled outpatient visits virtually. “And we are fortunate that our economic model [flat, monthly payments] supports sustained investment in these types of services.”

Nonetheless, when COVID struck, the organization shifted dramatically to telehealth; as Artie confirmed, they ended 2020 having provided 30.5 million (synchronous, voice or video) telehealth visits to their members, equaling 49% of all their outpatient encounters for the year – including an 80% highpoint in the early spring. These televisits are above and beyond the 400 million visits to kp.org, where “about 40 million [asynchronous] secure visits took place, and members exchanged secure ’emails’ (including attachments) with their KP providers.” And, while Kaiser’s telehealth percentage is currently ~50% of all outpatient visits, Artie is focused on always improving “the telehealth experience – the waiting room, and the start, and the finish – [so it’s] a really good consumer and clinician experience.”

Other providers and systems that didn’t have Kaiser Permanente’s head-start – or prepaid “economic model” – were thrown into catch-up mode using whatever technology was at hand… CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF MIMI’S POST & LEAVE COMMENTS ON HER LINKEDIN.

Mimi Grant’s Vlog:

7 Habits to Help Families Get Through the Purple Zone

Well, we’re back in the “PURPLE Tier.” And that means, for starters: “school campuses that have not yet reopened for in-person instruction will have to continue offering distance learning until infection rates improve.”

For months ABL Members have been telling us about the challenges their employees are having working from home, especially while their kids (of all ages) are learning at home. So with a nod to Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” ABL’s favorite “stretch,” psychiatrist Mark Goulston, MD, provides us with a “silver lining” to the pandemic’s “Purple Time”: behaviors those WFH can share with their kids who are LFH.

CLICK HERE to watch Mimi’s 3:06-minute vlog.