Dr. Alan Lotvin, Executive Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer for CVS Health, recently sat down with POLITICO to highlight how our recently integrated company is transforming the future of consumer health services and addressing needs in chronic disease care.
The conversation centered on the importance of advancing our health care system to meet consumers where they are and when it is convenient for them. According to Dr. Lotvin, “A lot goes into building a consumer-centric health care model. The first part of it is a recognition that we have to organize a health care system around and for the benefit and convenience of consumers.”
Here are four takeaways from his discussion with POLITICO:
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Managing conditions requires expanded touchpoints care. It can be difficult to improve patient engagement with just three or four doctor visits per year — underscoring the importance of interacting with patients on a more frequent basis. According to Dr. Lotvin, “What we're trying to do is bring more personalized services into people's homes and communities at a point in time when it's convenient for them to interact with us, but also in a way that is on their terms. When they call us to fill a prescription or walk into one of our stores, they're primed to think about their health, and they tend to be very receptive to messages that are promoting health.”
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Improving patient health is critical to help manage growing costs. According to Dr. Lotvin, the best way to lower total health care costs is to improve overall health. If we can help patients prevent conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure, we are able to avoid the expenses that are incurred from managing these conditions over an extended period of time. Dr. Lotvin noted that we must first provide better access to more coordinated care and then take steps to ensure that patients are receiving their care in the most efficient setting.
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Strengthening care coordination begins in the community. Dr. Lotvin shared the example of a diabetes patient to highlight the importance of providing coordinated, high-quality health care services all under one roof. Anyone living with diabetes should have several annual exams and evaluations. These patients are typically required to visit several sites and providers, which can lead to fragmentation. Through our new HealthHUB model, we’re doing more to ensure that these exams and evaluations can all be done within our own four walls and we can help patients identify the next best action.
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Analytics are key to improving health care outcomes. Through analytics, we are able to turn insights into meaningful health care actions. According to Dr. Lotvin, the acquisition of Aetna provides the company with the opportunity to analyze health care challenges in a more holistic manner and then identify how we can address them at the community level.