EP240: The Inside Scoop on How Medical Travel Improves Health Outcomes and Lowers Costs for Employers, With Olivia Ross, Associate Director of the Employers Centers of Excellence Network

“If operating on the wrong leg is called a ‘medical error,’ what do we call operating on someone who doesn’t need surgery?” That is a quote I have heard attributed to Jack Wennberg. It also crystalizes a theme I have been hearing a lot lately—the idea that quality metrics in this country today assess care from basically a patient safety standpoint but they don’t consider whether the patient actually needed the surgery or whatever in the first place. Or whether the outcome of the treatment matched an outcome the patient understood and had hoped for.

I get into this in depth, by the way, with Dr. Suzanne Clough (EP235); and I’m going to get into it again in my upcoming interview with Dr. Marty Makary (EP242).

In this health care podcast, I speak with Olivia Ross. Olivia has a reputation as a “rock star in the employer coalition world,” and I say this because it was a direct quote from an email I received after I mentioned that she was coming on the show. Olivia earned her rock star chops at the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH). Olivia is the associate director of the Employers Centers of Excellence Network, otherwise known as ECEN.

What Olivia has worked on at ECEN is to put together a network of centers of excellence (COEs), meaning provider organizations that have committed to prospective bundled care payments for services like orthopedic surgeries, oncology, and bariatric surgery. Not only do these organizations … well, not only have they demonstrated excellence, but they also have demonstrated that they only treat patients who are appropriate to treat.

Employers including Walmart, Lowes, and McKesson use this network. In my interview with her, Olivia discusses how the COEs are selected and exactly how employers intercept employees at the right waypoint along their patient journey, fly them or get them to travel to the COE, and then repatriate them back home with their local PCP (primary care provider) for follow-up care. I’m not sure if repatriate is the right word to use there, but I’m going to go with it.

You can learn more at Pacific Business Group on Health. 

Olivia Ross, MBA, MPH, is associate director of the Employers Centers of Excellence Network (ECEN) at the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH). Olivia oversees the ECEN program, a national, multi-employer initiative developed as part of PBGH’s commitment to value-based purchasing.