Latest / The Strategy Catalyst Dispatch / How St. Charles Turned Clinical Quality into Payer Leverage: From Seven MA Payers to One
Transcript
- 0:00Matt Swafford: we had one pair with 5,000 lives.
- 0:02Matt Swafford: 1200 denials in one 12 month period, of them were overturned.
- 0:07Anika: Mm-hmm.
- 0:08Matt Swafford: why are we doing this?
- 0:09Matt Swafford: the patient's important, the clinician's important, bend the system around it.
- 0:14Matt Swafford: And it's hard because the system isn't designed to be bent.
- 0:23Anika (2): Welcome to the Strategy Catalyst Dispatch, a podcast from the Strategy Catalyst team at the Health Management Academy.
- 0:30Anika (2): I'm your host, Anika Rashid Senior Analyst, and each episode we'll explore The trends and insights shaping healthcare strategy today.
- 0:38Anika (2): Let's dive in.
- 0:45Anika: Today we're talking about how St.
- 0:47Anika: Charles health system went from seven Medicare advantage payers, down to one terminating contracts with six plans, that they felt weren't serving their community, and then use decades of clinical quality data to negotiate instant authorization with the payer that was willing to work with them.
- 1:02Anika: That cut the time from cancer diagnosis to treatment start in many cases from weeks to just a single day.
- 1:08Anika: What's special about this is that even though one of my guests today is a CFO of St.
- 1:14Anika: Charles, the payer strategy that you're gonna hear about wasn't really a finance play first and foremost, though, of course, that was also a motivator.
- 1:21Anika: It wasn't the primary one.
- 1:23Anika: This was a clinical quality play where the main goals were around safety experience for patients and clinicians and better care delivery for the community.
- 1:31Anika: That is what was at the heart of this So today we've got a CFO who says every single number in finance has something to do with people, and whose chief clinical officer calls him an uncommon CFO.
- 1:42Anika: You'll hear why.
- 1:44Anika: You'll also hear how the two of them think about their work.
- 1:47Anika: Their partnership is really special.
- 1:49Anika: the two of them in lockstep always acting as if the other was in the room with them.
- 1:53Anika: Matt and Mark presented on this work at T-H-M-A-C-F-O Circle, and we'll also touch on the just culture framework that they use to bring vacancy rates from over 20% down to single digits.
- 2:04Anika: So today I'm joined by Matt Swer, chief Financial Officer, and Mark Hallett, chief Clinical Officer at St.
- 2:09Anika: Charles Health System.
- 2:10Anika: Matt, mark, thanks so much for joining me today.
- 2:14Mark Hallett: Good morning.
- 2:14Mark Hallett: Thank you for having us.
- 2:16Matt Swafford: good morning.
- 2:16Matt Swafford: Thank you, Anika.
- 2:17Matt Swafford: This is Matt.
- 2:18Matt Swafford: and, as the Chief Financial Officer of St.
- 2:20Matt Swafford: Charles, Working with Mark, we're happy to be here to share our experience
- 2:24Anika: So before we get into all of the moves you made, I wanna kind of set the stage.
- 2:29Anika: You terminated contracts with six of.
- 2:32Anika: Your seven MA payers.
- 2:34Anika: But before we get into how that happened, could you walk us through what inspired the termination of those contracts?
- 2:43Mark Hallett: Maybe I'll step forward.
- 2:44Mark Hallett: This is Mark.
- 2:44Mark Hallett: St.
- 2:44Mark Hallett: Charles is not unusual in our patients experiencing delays and denials as part of the, MA process probably also not unusual.
- 2:57Mark Hallett: In our providers and staff having to jump through numerous hoops, trying to reverse denials and get pre-authorizations and so on.
- 3:09Mark Hallett: our initial work was focused on our cancer institute, despite the fact that.
- 3:15Mark Hallett: Our care at a very high and sustained level was conforming to national guidelines, the NCCN guidelines which are national guidelines for cancer care.
- 3:25Mark Hallett: if you imagine the frustration and the burden on, the providers and the staff, but more importantly.
- 3:34Mark Hallett: the cancer patients who were sitting waiting for these, hidden processes to, work themselves out.
- 3:42Mark Hallett: of that in the setting where what we're really trying to do is take, evidence-based, best practice, standard care of these cancer patients as quickly and as, low burden as possible.
- 3:55Mark Hallett: That was the impetus Now.
- 3:57Mark Hallett: that's easy for me to say as a clinician.
- 3:59Mark Hallett: And, the magic really had to do with what Matt and the, contracting team were able to work out.
- 4:06Mark Hallett: So, Matt's openness to that clinical frame, I think was part of the magic here,
- 4:11Anika: So if I'm hearing correctly, this was a huge burden on your patients and then also administratively.
- 4:18Mark Hallett: correct.
- 4:19Matt Swafford: I think, one of the things that, that I'd like to, with is back in 2022, we had just, experienced one of the most challenging, periods, during COVID and had come out of, accelerating losses.
- 4:33Matt Swafford: Lost$16 million in 2021 lost$36 million in 2022.
- 4:39Matt Swafford: at the time we were about a billion, one in revenue.
- 4:43Matt Swafford: So$36 million in losses is a lot.
- 4:46Matt Swafford: We had negotiated some contracts, and improved our contracts from 22 into 23.
- 4:53Matt Swafford: That was primarily, stabilizing our financial picture so we could reinvest in people.
- 4:59Matt Swafford: And that was the critical theme, is that we're trying to make sure that we have the right people, the right programs and the right facilities to deliver exceptional care, for St.
- 5:12Matt Swafford: Charles in 2023, listening to the concerns of a very specific population in our cancer, program with three week delays to receive care.
- 5:26Matt Swafford: When we started our negotiations in 2023, we had seven plans in the Medicare Advantage market, and several of them were, national payers, Humana Health Net, WellCare.
- 5:39Matt Swafford: As an example, they proved to be very difficult to work with in prioritizing, the, improvement of prior authorization.
- 5:49Matt Swafford: And with that, we noted that it was going to be very difficult to bend the system to meet the needs of people receiving care and people delivering care.
- 5:59Matt Swafford: we chose to terminate those national plans.
- 6:02Anika: Matt, can you give me a sense of scale of what you were dealing with?
- 6:06Matt Swafford: you know, we had one pair with 5,000 lives.
- 6:09Matt Swafford: 1200 denials in one 12 month period, of them were overturned.
- 6:15Anika: Mm-hmm.
- 6:15Matt Swafford: why are we doing this?
- 6:17Anika: So you walked away from six of those seven plans.
- 6:21Matt Swafford: We did find some traction with local not-for-profit plans in particular, PacificSource.
- 6:27Matt Swafford: and what we oriented with PacificSource around was a specific instant authorization program for our cancer patients.
- 6:38Matt Swafford: And we started with cancer because of the high quality and performance, work done by that particular Clinical area at St.
- 6:46Matt Swafford: Charles, and due to the fact that patients were receiving, delays of up to three weeks, And what we decided to look at was how do we get an instant authorization process in place for those patients where it's really clear.
- 7:01Matt Swafford: Their clinical needs could be met readily.
- 7:04Matt Swafford: distinct from a gold card approach, which is based on a 98 or 95% approval rate by a payer.
- 7:12Matt Swafford: We were really trying to orient around guidelines that would be payer agnostic.
- 7:19Matt Swafford: Both PacificSource St.
- 7:20Matt Swafford: Charles used the NCCN guidelines, that's where we initiated the primary negotiation.
- 7:25Matt Swafford: And Mark, maybe you can describe a little bit of what the NCCN guidelines meant in terms of, the instant off versus, non-instant off part of that.
- 7:36Mark Hallett: Sure.
- 7:36Mark Hallett: just briefly.
- 7:38Mark Hallett: NCCN guidelines are category one, category two, A and B.
- 7:43Mark Hallett: In category three, category one guidelines are standard of care.
- 7:47Mark Hallett: Very well established two A are just a notch down below that when you get to two B and three you get more.
- 7:56Mark Hallett: I'll say, research based, if you will, meaning there's less evidence based for those.
- 8:01Mark Hallett: So the problem we are trying to solve is for, testing or treatments that were category one.
- 8:11Mark Hallett: I can think of a specific time when different oncologists needed to, appeal just to get approval for NCCN category one treatment.
- 8:23Mark Hallett: So that was the sort of the impetus.
- 8:27Anika: That's the, that's that's the standard of care treatment, and they were still having to do that.
- 8:31Mark Hallett: Absolutely.
- 8:32Mark Hallett: this is really unnecessary and not serving the patients and putting additional burden on the physicians and staff.
- 8:41Mark Hallett: what's curious about that is, sometimes cancer comes back, sometimes cancers, Fail different treatments, and in some cases what you actually need is a more rapid denial so that patients who fall into that category can be treated, with a research trial.
- 9:02Mark Hallett: So in, in the vast majority of cases, when it's guideline conforming, we want speed, in return for that high quality, evidence-based practice.
- 9:12Mark Hallett: Treatment and evaluation in that other case, we actually want a rapid denial so we can enroll, patients in trials to try to, treat their cancer.
- 9:23Anika: so I think what I'm hearing is that there was.
- 9:29Anika: Immense burden and delays for patients.
- 9:31Anika: And then also that was frustrating the clinical teams.
- 9:34Anika: And so you had this vision of how things should be, and not every payer was open to that vision, but Pacific Source was because you were able to use, the NCCN concordance rates as a little bit of a lever to pull there.
- 9:49Anika: Is that kind of, would you
- 9:52Matt Swafford: when you look at a system that is designed based on denial, we wanted to flip that and say, the patient is able to get care immediately because the standard of care designates it, do we orient around that?
- 10:08Matt Swafford: where this program came from.
- 10:10Matt Swafford: So it flew in.
- 10:11Matt Swafford: The face of the larger dynamics of authorization is important for however anybody might describe it.
- 10:18Matt Swafford: This is the patient's important, the clinician's important, bend the system around it.
- 10:24Matt Swafford: And it's hard because the system isn't designed to be bent.
- 10:29Anika: What does the instant authorization experience look like for a patient now?
- 10:35Mark Hallett: Very quickly.
- 10:36Mark Hallett: Our meantime to begin treatment, which when you're a cancer patient, every day that goes by that you're not on treatment is a day that, you're worried about the cancer getting worse or spreading.
- 10:48Mark Hallett: So that's a really meaningful patient facing metric.
- 10:52Mark Hallett: that meantime to begin treatment was roughly around two weeks, and once we began this, it rapidly came down to one day.
- 11:02Mark Hallett: and if you're the staff or the providers, you can see more cancer patients, because you're not taking time to get pre-ops and denial appeals and that sort of thing.
- 11:13Anika: So better experience for everyone around and also peace of mind.
- 11:17Mark Hallett: yes,
- 11:18Anika: Yeah.
- 11:19Matt Swafford: in the larger population for, PacificSource, I think 33% of patients had a wait time that was greater than 10 days.
- 11:28Matt Swafford: Now it's less than 10%.
- 11:30Anika: Wow.
- 11:31Matt Swafford: that's the overall population.
- 11:33Matt Swafford: Mark is describing those that were subject to the instant off, the entire population, those that were a little bit more complicated and required that direct appeal, peer-to-peer appeal.
- 11:44Matt Swafford: so we have really improved the experience of patients and clinicians very directly in this program.
- 11:51Matt Swafford: and that is, an excellent outcome.
- 11:54Anika: So it sounds like it had far reaching implications in terms of access.
- 11:58Anika: Also
- 11:59Mark Hallett: Yes, and actually We're in early conversations to try and duplicate this in our next area.
- 12:05Mark Hallett: so we continue to try and build this.
- 12:08Anika: That's amazing.
- 12:09Anika: so I think understand the impetus on to make the experience better for clinicians and also patients, how the system should be right and bending it to fit that vision of what it should be.
- 12:19Anika: walk us through that decision to terminate those contracts.
- 12:22Anika: How did you weigh the revenue you might lose against the cost, financial or otherwise of keeping those relationships?
- 12:33Matt Swafford: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge with that whole, analysis was starting with what is gonna be the impact on our community.
- 12:41Matt Swafford: And, and the impact of a program, Medicare Advantage, that is designed to offer, private insurers an opportunity to provide benefits that, would often take resources away from the acute care system in favor of benefits like dental or others that might not be included in traditional Medicare.
- 13:04Matt Swafford: So you can see the appeal.
- 13:07Matt Swafford: the challenge that we noted is that when it's time to actually receive acute care and Medicare advantage, there were a lot of barriers, sometimes denials and inability receive, significant interventions because of the way, Medicare Advantage, is managed and frankly diverting.
- 13:30Matt Swafford: Resources from the acute care system towards these other benefits.
- 13:34Matt Swafford: not all community members know that.
- 13:38Matt Swafford: Part of what we had to do was provide education to the community and support organizations that help seniors understand the choices that they make.
- 13:46Matt Swafford: and for St.
- 13:48Matt Swafford: Charles coming out of the post COVID financial challenges, we needed to make sure that we had stabilized the financial picture, so that was really what we were trying to get to is I would say make Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare competitive, make them similar in terms of the financial outcome.
- 14:10Matt Swafford: So it did have a financially beneficial impact to St.
- 14:14Matt Swafford: Charles from a stabilization perspective, really started with.
- 14:19Matt Swafford: What is the impact on people receiving the care and people providing the care?
- 14:24Matt Swafford: and then the financial impact was secondary to that.
- 14:29Anika: I would love for you to talk me through How did you manage the transition?
- 14:33Anika: What was the community reaction?
- 14:36Anika: Talk me through that.
- 14:38Matt Swafford: mark, you and I had the opportunity to be, in the press, sometimes with, the challenge of having the actual message get through and, in favor of sometimes the preference for media to.
- 14:51Matt Swafford: Tell the story they'd prefer to have told.
- 14:54Anika: What was that story?
- 14:56Matt Swafford: that anytime there is a dispute between an insurance company and an hospital system, very easy to villainize one or the other.
- 15:06Matt Swafford: And about the outrage of the conflict rather than the substance of the challenge at hand.
- 15:13Matt Swafford: and you get it.
- 15:14Matt Swafford: It's a very upsetting and emotional, thing to have your coverage changed a contract terminated.
- 15:22Matt Swafford: That was a challenge to just know that you can be grounding it in the facts that you have.
- 15:27Matt Swafford: You can be really clear, you can be trying to keep it about, um, the substance of what is the issue, gets wrapped up and a very emotional.
- 15:37Matt Swafford: reaction that is also completely understandable.
- 15:40Mark Hallett: I think you're getting, at the essence of.
- 15:44Mark Hallett: Sort of how Matt and I collaborate and the reason is that we were completely aligned about the framing that, this is not good for patients.
- 15:55Mark Hallett: This is not good for providers and staff and financially The hidden cost of this is really hurting the business model.
- 16:05Mark Hallett: So that
- 16:07Anika: That story.
- 16:07Mark Hallett: Matt needed to do all the negotiations and, between ourselves, even though we were shoulder to shoulder, we agreed that the clinical face should be outward facing, telling the clinical storytelling about what's actually happening to patients and that.
- 16:25Mark Hallett: that was pretty complex from the standpoint that people who are not on Medicare Advantage don't really understand how it's different than, than fee for service Medicare, even our provider.
- 16:39Mark Hallett: So we actually had to start out with the change management internally with our physician providers and staff, and then work with our community partners.
- 16:50Mark Hallett: Because Matt's absolutely right it.
- 16:52Mark Hallett: The idea of, wait a minute, we're gonna terminate.
- 16:57Mark Hallett: something with Medicare in its name was pretty frightening and intimidating, and we had to make sure we were leading with people understand that this system isn't working for anybody right now.
- 17:13Mark Hallett: we were talking with our, Senior medical director, physician leader for cancer yesterday, and she said this program has been outstanding for patients, outstanding for providers and staff, and has actually led to, growth and, commercial success of our cancer institute as well.
- 17:33Mark Hallett: So I, I think it, it was a big change management lift, but we led with the, the clinical side and backed it up with the financial side.
- 17:46Anika: Gotcha.
- 17:46Anika: So it sounds through any period of change, there's going to be, a period of discomfort, right?
- 17:53Anika: so it sounds like it was about being resilient through that, and then also about the messaging piece and making sure that you have the right face behind that messaging piece, and then eventually, the impact and the results speak for themselves.
- 18:06Anika: Does that sound right?
- 18:09Matt Swafford: It does.
- 18:10Anika: since we're already getting at it, the partnership between, both of you.
- 18:15Anika: What would you say is really inherent to that partnership?
- 18:17Anika: What makes that partnership work and what are some things that you both do that other pairs might not?
- 18:23Mark Hallett: You wanna start Matt?
- 18:25Matt Swafford: No, I'm curious to hear how you would start, mark.
- 18:29Mark Hallett: Matt is a, an uncommon CFO in my experience, in that he understands that healthcare begins with, patient care, by nurses and doctors and providers, the rest of us are in support of that.
- 18:47Mark Hallett: So I think there's a certain humility.
- 18:51Mark Hallett: that along with shared vision that allows me to, be shoulder to shoulder, lead, as if Matt was in the room.
- 19:01Mark Hallett: he does a similar thing, meaning, There's no finger pointing.
- 19:06Mark Hallett: this all has to work.
- 19:07Mark Hallett: The clinical care and the business model has to work, and it's on us to make it work the way we lead.
- 19:15Mark Hallett: So what it's led to is, example we talked about earlier, with negotiations and trying to bend the Medicare advantage.
- 19:25Mark Hallett: Contracting world so that it's better for patients and providers and staff.
- 19:31Mark Hallett: And at the same time, we did some work on, just culture, what we call culture of Excellence.
- 19:38Mark Hallett: And Matt as a CFO was trained, as a, culture of Excellence champion.
- 19:44Mark Hallett: So one of, one of 40 that we trained, system wide.
- 19:48Mark Hallett: So there's very much of a, A collaborative leading as if the other person, was right off your shoulder.
- 19:56Mark Hallett: because if we don't get it right, in the organization will get it.
- 20:01Mark Hallett: Right.
- 20:02Anika: Matt, I would love to hear your perspective on this and then as well, what your experience participating in the cultural work was.
- 20:09Matt Swafford: so I do lead with Mark's voice, in the back of my mind, in large part because the numbers that we assemble in finance the interactions of people every single number has something to do with people.
- 20:25Matt Swafford: And if you, start there, then in my view a finance leader, your insights.
- 20:32Matt Swafford: Your, work, your negotiations, all the aspects of what you do are centered around that.
- 20:39Matt Swafford: If the rest of the system understands that Mark and I as respective leaders in our areas, see eye to eye there's no daylight, and the disagreements we handle that's meaningful, as an example to the rest of the system, that we aren't, Prioritizing one area over another, that we listen to one another.
- 21:00Matt Swafford: And so that creates the basis of, in my view, trust, and understanding.
- 21:06Matt Swafford: raised my hand for the Culture of excellence work, in part because of the inspiration of Mark's leadership since he joined and knowing that.
- 21:15Matt Swafford: If I don't show as a system services leader, and system services being the part of the system that enables the provision of care but isn't necessarily at the front line, what example, will be provided to those who are, in system services If someone in my position hasn't stepped up, plus, I firmly believe that in our Culture of excellence work.
- 21:41Matt Swafford: you can have values written on a piece of paper or on your website, but your values mean nothing until they're challenged and you don't wanna wait for them to be challenged in the of just patient, interactions.
- 21:54Matt Swafford: You need to create some training where those case studies of how your values appear and how you address them, especially when there's a conflict and practice that.
- 22:06Matt Swafford: there's a powerful example if you have leaders at St.
- 22:10Matt Swafford: Charles leading that work rather than a consultant.
- 22:14Matt Swafford: I learn about the cases that people run into, I understand.
- 22:19Matt Swafford: Oh.
- 22:20Matt Swafford: This is the actual work that goes on.
- 22:22Matt Swafford: These are the actual values, conflicts that people have.
- 22:24Matt Swafford: This is what I need to be mindful of, and understanding the insights of the performance of the system from a numbers perspective as well.
- 22:34Anika: That makes a lot of sense I mean, culture isn't really culture if it just lives in the HR pillar, right?
- 22:41Anika: it has to expand beyond that to everyone.
- 22:42Anika: And I really like what you said about, The values point doesn't mean much until it's challenged.
- 22:47Anika: And then what you said earlier about your partnership, I think that really resonates with, a quote from your presentations.
- 22:53Anika: I think it's, I think it's yours, Matt, that your decisions are grounded and Together Choices grounded in shared math rather than just finance says no.
- 23:01Anika: would love it if you could give me an example of how that plays out in practice
- 23:07Mark Hallett: from my standpoint, you heard Matt's.
- 23:12Mark Hallett: and humility.
- 23:13Mark Hallett: Because, culture of excellence, just culture is high level holding individuals accountable for the quality of their choices.
- 23:23Mark Hallett: While at the same time leaders are responsible for how, the quality of how we judge those choices in the moment.
- 23:32Mark Hallett: And more importantly, the quality of system design.
- 23:35Mark Hallett: nothing that we're doing is hard.
- 23:38Mark Hallett: It's just, we make it hard through some of our mindsets, some of our attitudes the fact that I lead as if Matt was in the room.
- 23:50Mark Hallett: I never ever point to as the people of, no.
- 23:55Mark Hallett: I take responsibility, for having tough conversations, as if Matt were in the room and at the same time you've heard that he looks at patient care in a way that understands the complexity.
- 24:10Mark Hallett: of patient care I know executive teams collaborate.
- 24:15Mark Hallett: I've been part of many of those, but we've just taken it to another level I think.
- 24:20Matt Swafford: as we push further and further the understanding of what it means to have a strong business case that matches safety, quality, financial sustainability, and growth, everybody is thinking in that balanced scorecard.
- 24:35Matt Swafford: There are degrees of emphasis, but we all own quality.
- 24:40Matt Swafford: We all own safety.
- 24:42Matt Swafford: We all own sustainability.
- 24:44Matt Swafford: We all own growth.
- 24:46Matt Swafford: In one way, shape, or form.
- 24:49Matt Swafford: And the advantage of a smaller rural focused system like St.
- 24:53Matt Swafford: Charles is in one conference room, you can have the entire leadership and you can look each other in the eye.
- 25:01Matt Swafford: So one of the things about collaboration that I think is important is do you create that level of connection regardless of the scale of your organization.
- 25:11Matt Swafford: If somebody believes that the chief strategy officer owns strategy and that's it, if somebody believes that for the Chief clinical Officer, chief Financial Officer, that's not a recipe for success.
- 25:24Matt Swafford: there is a co-ownership of the challenge.
- 25:26Matt Swafford: It's too big allow the silos to, evident at the top, and certainly, unfortunately, that would inspire the same level of silos all the way through.
- 25:40Anika (2): I think that's a great one to end on.
- 25:42Anika (2): So, thank you so much to both of you for joining me today.
- 25:46Anika: the shared ownership piece is, is really what ties this whole conversation together.
- 25:51Anika: the payer moves the culture work.
- 25:53Anika: None of that happens if the leaders are operating in separate lanes.
- 25:57Anika (2): obviously, you have your niches, but it's really important to find that common ground and that common ownership over things to really establish that, Impactful and efficient partnership.
- 26:08Anika: Matt, mark, I'd like to thank you so much for joining me today.
- 26:12Mark Hallett: Thanks for having us.
- 26:13Matt Swafford: Thank you Ika.
- 26:14Matt Swafford: Appreciate the opportunity.
- 26:17Anika (2): That wraps up this episode of the Strategy Catalyst Dispatch.
- 26:20Anika (2): If you found this episode valuable, please like and subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and leave us a comment.
- 26:26Anika (2): If you have other thoughts or questions, we'd love to hear them.
- 26:29Anika (2): Email us at Strategy catalyst@hmacademy.com.
- 26:33Anika (2): You can also find more of our resources on HM academy.com/strategy-catalyst.
- 26:40Anika (2): That's it for this dispatch.
- 26:42Anika (2): Thanks for listening.