Last week, NC Chamber members Patrick Conway, president and CEO of BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, Dale Jenkins, CEO of Medical Mutual and past chair of the NC Chamber, and Bob Seligson, CEO of the North Carolina Medical Society, appeared on Spectrum News’ Capital Tonight to discuss the NC Chamber’s roadmap to value-driven health and why North Carolina needs value-based health care.

Highlighting the findings from the NC Chamber Foundation’s two health care studies, the “NC Chamber Healthcare Strategy Roadmap” and the “Roadmap to Value-Driven Health: Benchmarking Study Results and Implications for North Carolina,” Conway, Jenkins and Seligson outlined the steps we must take to drive value and how their organizations are working to make it happen.

We’re thankful for these valuable NC Chamber Members and their commitment to bringing value-driven health and health care to our state. To watch the full interview, click here.

To watch the full video, click here. Excerpts are transcribed below.

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Tim Boyum, host: When we talk about health care, when we talk about value, what does that mean? How should people take that?

Patrick Conway, BlueCross Blue Shield of North Carolina: So really it is that we want to pay for better health outcomes for people at a lower cost with a great experience. If you think about traditionally health care we pay for volume, so more procedures, more tests, etc. We’re really trying to shift the system to pay for prevention, pay for better health and lower costs for customers. We’re working to partner with providers, doctors, hospitals, health systems across the state so we’re jointly accountable for quality and total cost of care so the patient – the customer – is not caught in the middle. That we’re all working on behalf of that patient, that customer, that family to deliver better health care outcomes at a lower cost.

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Tim Boyum: From your perspective what does value mean and how do we get there?

Bob Seligson, North Carolina Medical Society: First of all, I think it’s important to recognize that physicians want to provide the best care possible. Just like in business, you want to provide your customers with everything they need. I think physicians want to give their patient everything they need and give them the best quality care possible. Value care means giving them the care they need when they need it and there’s a lot of components that go into providing value-based care…Doctors, if they have the right information, the right data, the clinical data, to make the better decisions, the health outcomes are going to improve. I will tell you from the stand point of the doctors that I’ve talked to from all around the state, they welcome the fact that information can be made available for them as long as it is easy to get to and easy to use…

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Tim Boyum: Dale, you mentioned your work with the Chamber. I’m fascinated about the business aspect of this because to me the value of value-driven health care could be stability. When I talk to businesses the biggest concern they always have, whether its tariffs or health care, is instability. Is that a driving factor for businesses in the state to maybe look into this?

Dale Jenkins, Medical Mutual: Absolutely. The uncertainty around the cost of health care is one of the biggest issues businesses have faced over the last several years. So what we want to try to do at the [NC] Chamber through a project we’ve initiated is really engage the business community in a more robust way because ultimately the business community is generally the payer of all health care, whether it’s paying for our employees or paying through taxes, so it’s important we think to get the business community engaged and at the table to meet with all of the folks along the supply chain of health care…Having business people engaged with the right parties, sitting down with folks like Bob, Patrick, health care systems and other organizations that are along that supply chain in health care and then developing a roadmap for how we can improve value, how we can drive down costs and create healthier people – that’s a great and ambitious goal and that’s what I hope that we can convince the business community they need to do. It’s not just enough having a wellness program, having a nurse in your office, you really need to sit down with folks who are providing health care and help craft programs and policies that really do drive down costs and improve quality.

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To watch the full video, click here.

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