Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Podcast / John Benko, Director Healthcare Coordination, Bellefaire JCB

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John Benko, Director Healthcare Coordination, Bellefaire JCB · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

• 0:02
  This is where health care leadership comes together.
• 0:04
  Becker's sixteenth annual meeting brings more than 3,500
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  hospital and health system executives and nearly 800
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  speakers to Chicago, April 13 through the sixteenth.
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  This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas
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  Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former president George
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  w Bush. For the agenda and event details,
• 0:23
  visit beckershospitalreview.com
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  and click on the events tab in the
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  upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you
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  in Chicago.
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  This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
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  Podcast, and we are recording live at the
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  thirteenth annual CEO and CFO roundtable.
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  I'm currently joined by John Benko, who is
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  the director of health care coordination at Bellfair
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  JCB. So, John, thanks for being here. Let's
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  have you start off by introducing yourself a
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  little bit further and telling us more about
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  your background. Sure. Thanks, Grace. It's great to
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  be here this morning.
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  Again, my name is John Benko. I'm with
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  an organization called Bell Fair. We are in
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  the Cleveland Metropolitan Area in Ohio, and we
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  service, from a very organic level, families and
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  children who are in either behavioral health or
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  special needs areas.
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  We do that in a variety of ways
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  from in school counseling to in home counseling
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  to 69 beds on-site
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  to a small 12 bed inpatient hospital. So
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  really the full gamut of how we can
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  support the community with their behavioral health and
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  special needs, as that aligns with behavioral health.
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  Wonderful.
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  And let's start our conversation
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  by having you expand on your growth strategy
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  in the next year or two. Yeah. It's
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  a very interesting,
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  conversation for folks, in the arena that we're
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  in. We often refer to ourselves as the
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  mom and pop shops because these have all
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  started over the last hundred years or so
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  very organically, typically as a social organization or
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  an orphanage, and then they've grown grown into
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  the full gamut of support throughout health care
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  as well as, counseling. And in some cases,
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  actually, housing for adults and those who become
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  emancipated through the system. So how do we
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  grow that other than organically? Really, it's a
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  diversification
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  both of the the products, aligning ourselves with
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  some of the community partners who may not
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  be able to fulfill all of those missions,
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  or maybe we can do it over a
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  bright a broader footprint.
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  And really looking at every one of our
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  service lines as a way to be sustainable,
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  at the same time, looking to where the
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  changes in service,
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  have presented. We certainly post pandemic know that
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  we're reaching a lot more families than we
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  probably did originally. We think that's a good
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  thing. We think it's raised some awareness. But
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  the funding end of it, comes through partnerships
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  and just finding ourselves in spaces that we're
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  both familiar and unfamiliar with and trying to
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  align with partnerships.
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  Absolutely.
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  And tell us about the most exciting and
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  impactful
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  initiative or project that you're working on right
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  now.
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  Yeah. Thanks. There's several.
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  In in just some disclosure, I had been
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  with, this agency for a number of years,
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  left, went into the inpatient space for a
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  while and came back. And when I came
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  back, I noticed that we weren't potentially
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  accessing
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  care in the form of physical care for
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  some of our special needs,
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  population,
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  maybe as well as we knew how. We
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  certainly did better than than the community footprint,
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  but we tried to find a way to
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  do that better, particularly with routine medical care
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  and routine dental care for special needs populations.
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  We've been able to roll out two programs
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  that are both now, in full swing and
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  showing signs of sustainability. But what we had
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  to do is break that payer model because
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  these are all Medicaid recipients.
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  A Medicaid recipient typically
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  can bill a doctor or a dentist maybe
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  $16
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  for a visit. There's not a dentist that
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  can do that work for $16, and so
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  we've had to find some alternative funding. The
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  nice thing is what we've been able to
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  show is in addition to improving the care
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  for those individuals,
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  other areas of their care have become much
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  more manageable because,
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  these are folks who can typically let their
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  needs be known. And so by preempting
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  some of those needs and providing
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  a a full holistic look at their health,
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  we're able to get them through their course
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  of treatment much faster,
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  which often puts them back into the community,
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  and and we would hope a more enriched
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  life as benefit of that treatment.
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  And what is the most important thing that
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  you think health care executives should be doing
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  right now to make sure their organizations are
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  successful in the future?
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  I think what we have to do is
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  we have to immediately start looking at what's
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  sustainable.
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  We we often bring in these large projects
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  to how we're going to measure things and
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  how we're going to move things forward. And
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  we have to be a little more nimble
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  than we've been in the past. And I
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  think really where that's going to, be in
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  the space that we're in is we have
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  to align. We're the most fragmented industry, health
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  care.
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  Health care, has the most to say about
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  population health. We spend the most of federal
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  dollars by far from any organization,
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  and yet there's no more than, I think
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  maybe one 5% is the most aligned,
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  provider we see out there. So until we
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  can get these partnerships going back in both
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  big and small, I don't think we're gonna
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  have a workable solution, and it's a big
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  lift.
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  Absolutely. Well, John, thanks so much for joining
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  me today on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. Again,
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  we are recording live at the thirteenth annual
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  CEO and CFO roundtable.
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  Well, thanks for having me. It's good to
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  see you.