Dr. Robert Pearl, Former CEO of Kaiser Permanente Group, on the Invent Health podcast

Invent Health with Dr. Archana Dubey and Bambi Francisco Roizen; Episode 18

Dr. Robert Pearl, former CEO of Kaiser Permanente Group, and author of “Uncaring: How the culture of medicine kills doctors and patients." Dr. Pearl, also known as Robbie, was CEO for 18 years from 1999-2017. Kaiser's physician group is the largest in America with 10,000 doctors, 38,000 staff and 5 million members. He joins hosts Bambi and Archana.

The Invent Health weekly podcast with Dr. Archana Dubey, Chief Medical Officer at HP, and Bambi Francisco Roizen, Founder of Vator, is a weekly podcast that breaks down the latest digital health news of the week and what it means for patients, providers and payers (or who's paying). Plus a deep dive on a particular topic to help listeners understand how innovation is changing the healthcare paradigm.  

Key takeaways --

-- In the hierarchy of medicine, we elevate intervention more than prevention. We value the cardiologist above the doctor who prevents these serious conditions. If we add 10 primary care physicians and you raise longevity 2.5 times more than adding 10 specialists. We don't value them because of objective measures but because of the existing economic system of fee for service. 

-- How are physicians responsible for poor outcomes in what is a trifecta challenge? Patients  are not proactive about their health; payers make financial decisions to pay more for specialists vs primary care. But physicians are the ones administering the care, which is unfortunately influenced by an entrenched system. Insurers don't have a great reason to lower costs and providers have not incentive to lower costs. The consequence is higher costs to the patients.  

-- Now is probably the time for change given deductibles and premiums continue to climb to unsustainable levels. 

-- Need to move from fee-for-service to capitation. Judge them on the quality and value they create and incentives change and prevention becomes more important, avoidance of complications becomes more important. 

Join us: November 17 (main event) and Dec. 8 (webinar) - Primary Care and the New Medical QB. Join CEOs, Chief Medical Officers from K-Health, Carrot, Eden Health, Buoy Health, CirrusMD, Pepsico, Unilever and VCs from F-Prime, DCM, Initialized, GSR Ventures and more. Use Vatornews as the complimentary code. Register here. 

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