How Cone Health could transform American health care by prioritizing prevention and wellness — and becoming part of Risant Health
More than a decade ago, Cone Health physicians and leaders set out to do what some might consider the impossible: shift health care in a new direction, one that unburdens patients, providers and even entire health systems and communities from the challenges of rising costs and diminishing health.
If it sounds daunting, it’s because it is. Yet the ideas behind the shift are surprisingly simple. Streamline the patient journey. Focus on wellness rather than sickness. Prevent disease from recurring or from even taking root. These are some of the pillars of what’s known as value-based care. You might hear CEO Mary Jo Cagle, MD, refer to it as proactive wellness care.
Although the ideas themselves are not new, what’s significant is that Cone Health is willing to take on this charge. Cone Health providers share a deep calling to move health care in this direction, away from a cumbersome national system built around getting reimbursed by insurance companies for the number of services a provider bills. Cone Health’s intimacy with the community — our desire to know our community members, to listen to them and to join with others to serve — brings about positive outcomes.
Telehealth clinics in public schools are the perfect example, Community health workers embedded in neighborhoods are another. Cone Health donors like Mike Weaver (the Weaver Foundation) and Board of Trustees Chair Mae Douglas made significant investments in these important community-based initiatives.
Cone Health’s progress as one of the nation’s early leaders of the value-based care model is why Kaiser Permanente tapped our local health system to become part of Risant Health, a movement to accelerate the adoption of a health-focused outcomes and access care model in communities across the country and bring about better health for millions of Americans.
This opportunity to be just the second system to become part of Risant Health — Geisinger in Danville, Pennsylvania, being the first — will also bring critical technology, data and capital to projects benefiting the Piedmont Triad region and positively impacting community members right here at home.
Read the full story to hear from Dr. Hochrein, Dr. Wright, Mae Douglas and Bethany Porterfield beginning on page 8 of the giving effect.
