Becker's Hospital Review

52 POPULATION HEALTH 52 CEO / STRATEGY Payers must support virtual health for long-term success, UC Davis Health CEO says By Georgina Gonzalez T he pandemic helped cause a boom in virtual healthcare that was enjoyed by patients and physicians alike. However, without support from payers, this care is diffi- cult for hospitals to provide, according to David Lubarsky, MD, CEO of Sacramento, Calif.-based UC Davis Health. He also discussed the virtual care brought to the team and said he has hope for its future during a Jan. 28 episode of the "Becker's Healthcare Podcast." Editor's note: is response was lightly edited for length and clarity. Dr. David Lubarsky: Here's the problem: Very oen, practice follows the best funding, and re- ally funding could follow the best practices. And that's actually what happened during COVID. Now there are threats to roll some of this back, but we had equivalent pay for doing virtual visits to in-person visits for the physicians. Aer all, you are actually compensating them for their time. Also, the idea that at-home monitoring will allow us to unburden some of our highest-acu- ity hospitals and will allow us to provide more convenient care where patients want it, how they want it, and when they want it in their own homes, right? But that has to actually be followed by payers who are willing to pay for the time and effort and the technology that it takes to accomplish that in the long run. You have to allow for the invest- ment of the infrastructure and the reimburse- ment of the time that it takes to perfect this, and we're not quite at that universally, but I think that we will get there. I think on another level, it's really opened up an ability for organizations like ours to really ce- ment our clinical partnerships with community hospitals. It was incredibly beneficial, not only for the patients, which is the No. 1 issue, but also for the development of trust between the differ- ent physician groups and different facilities that we were there to support each other. And that was a really great thing to see. n CVS Health board shrinks By Georgina Gonzalez T he CVS Health board has shrunk to 11 members as David Dorman, the independent chair of the board of directors, and Tony White, director of the board, both retire, according to a March 10 news release. Mr. Dorman, who was elected to the board in March 2006, has served as independent chair since May 2011 and is set to retire at the end of his term at the annual stockholders meeting on May 11. "It has been a great honor to serve on the board and as chair of CVS Health," Mr. Dorman said. "I am proud of everything that we have accom- plished and the challenges we overcame in building the nation's leading health solutions company. I could not be more excited about what the fu- ture holds for CVS Health." Roger Farah has been elected to replace Mr. Dorman as chair of the board. He joined the board in 2018 and has a 40-year career in retailing, including positions held at Tiffany & Co., Ralph Lauren and Foot Locker. Mr. White, a director of the board, is also set to retire in May, as he has been a director since 2011 and has reached the mandatory board retirement age. This means the board size has been reduced to 11, since no replacement has been named for Mr. White. n What Coca-Cola can teach US healthcare By Georgina Gonzalez C oca-Cola, among other corporate giants, is leading the charge to report accurate data on how its operations affect climate and en- vironment, something the U.S. healthcare industry could use as a model, according to a Yale News article published Feb. 10. While around 90 percent of S&P 500 companies produce annual sustain- ability reports, most healthcare organizations, hospitals and health systems do not. An analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine Cat- alyst suggests hospitals could learn from those companies. "The healthcare sector, which is responsible for 18 percent of the U.S. economy, should be leading the rest of industry in its environmental performance. Instead, healthcare organizations are lagging far be- hind," said Jodi Sherman, MD, an associate professor of anesthesiolo- gy and epidemiology at Yale and an author of the analysis. "We need data, not anecdotes." The authors of the analysis argue that health systems should publicly re- port their climate impacts, such as on-site fuel burning, electricity usage and supply and greenhouse gas emissions related to their operations, among other measures. These disclosures could benefit the companies financially given that inves- tors and lenders are increasingly climate-conscious. "If Coca-Cola and Walmart can tell people what they're doing to protect their human capital and the planet, then why shouldn't hospitals?" said Em- ily Senay, MD, a co-author of the analysis and an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at New York City-based Mount Sinai Hospital. n

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