Advancing Health Care Through Partnerships
Max Gomez, PhD, Senior Medical Correspondent, CBS2 New York The idea that scientists labor alone in the lab to solve the world’s greatest problems is a common trope, but one that couldn’t be further from the truth. Take Alexander Fleming’s 1928 discovery of penicillin. By happenstance, Fleming noticed an errant mold growing in one of his Staphylococcus bacterial cultures, killing off bacteria in the vicinity. Fleming is heralded as one of the fathers of antibiotics, but it would take collaboration with other scientists, and eventually industrial production by Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, to bring penicillin to the world. The moral of penicillin’s story is that it’s not just discoveries, but partnerships that push medicine forward. Today, more than ever, partnerships are needed at every level of medical care to help accelerate the pace of research, facilitate better care, identify gaps in health equity and bring new treatments to the public. We’ve already seen what partnerships can accomplish in the lab. In partnership with the Helmsley Charitable Trust, Sanford Health is currently conducting a study identifying early warning signs of Type 1 diabetes (T1D) in children. Due to this increase in funding, Sanford’s network of providers can now simply take a small sample of blood during a child’s routine visit and analyze it for early signs of T1D. “If and when they get to the point where they need insulin, we can start that early, before they get very sick, and before they come in with ketoacidosis,” said Dr. Kurt Griffin, the Todd and Linda Broin Chair for Diabetes Research at Sanford Health. “That, by itself, has tremendous impacts on how well they do after the diagnosis, as well as obviously saving the cost of intensive care admission.” Critically, partnerships don’t just exist in the research domain. Health care providers and payers have already teamed up in a similar fashion. For instance, Hackensack Meridian Health , Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey (Horizon BCBSNJ) and RWJBarnabas (a Hackensack Meridian Health competitor) have formed their own Medicare Advantage- approved insurance company called Braven Health. Braven Health has placed providers, payers and a team of physicians all under the same umbrella and helped establish a clear set of goals: to provide expedient, evidence-based and value-driven health care to New Jersey’s senior citizens. Working together has allowed each independent group to focus on what it does best – Hackensack Meridian Health focuses on care, Horizon BCBSNJ on analytics and data analysis. Allen Karp, executive vice president of Healthcare Management and Transformation at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, said that the traditional barriers that might slow down the delivery of health care have been removed thanks to this partnership. “We are able to eliminate some of those barriers that happen between a payor and a provider because now we are in it together,” Karp said, citing preauthorization as an example. Although partnerships can accelerate work and create positive synergy, the most critical way partnerships can improve health is by identifying and filling existing gaps in care. The same way a team of scientists might edit a manuscript, providers who work together can help reach overlooked patients.
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