EP237: Improving Health Care Value by Pausing and Asking Questions, With Derek Winn, Cofounder at Distilled Concepts and Consultant at the Business Benefits Group

Bad things have a propensity to occur in health care when patients are placed on a trajectory and then simply follow the yellow brick road—to an Oz potentially filled with unnecessary surgeries, MRIs that cost 10 times what they should, low-quality providers chasing RVUs (relative value units) like their paychecks depended on it … I could go on.

Today I speak with Derek Winn, cofounder at Distilled Concepts and consultant at the Business Benefits Group. His distilled advice is to recognize that every transaction with the health care system is a waypoint on a larger journey—and also an opportunity to pause and ask questions. Payers of health care have a profound opportunity and perhaps growing obligation to help employees/members/patients, first of all, to recognize that a “look both ways before you cross the street” modus operandi is safer from both a monetary as well as an actual patient safety standpoint. Derek and I discuss the ways to make this happen, when/if it will become standard operating procedure, and the likely impact on providers and insurance carriers and Pharma if employers choose to take this route.

By the way, BUCA stands for Blue Cross, United, Cigna, Aetna, and Anthem. We use this acronym in the interview.

You can learn more by contacting Derek on LinkedIn atDerekWinn or by visiting distilled-concepts.com.

Derek Winn is a lead consultant at the Business Benefits Group, where he has consulted clients regarding employer-sponsored benefit programs for nearly the past decade.