Paying it forward begins in the heart. Leaders who use their gifts in the service to others are those who understand that value given is value added.

By every measure of success, Dr. Shawn Griffin has become one of the most impactful physician executives in value-based care transformation. And his story is all about how he recognized his unique gifts and built amazing teams to improve population health outcomes. Additionally, his sharing of best practices and key learnings with others across the country – through peer learning and mentorship – has amplified impact in improving the lives of others. The host of this podcast, Eric Weaver, was one of the people impacted by the mentorship of Dr. Shawn Griffin. His mentorship inspired Eric to make a difference as an evangelist for a better way of delivering care in this country.

In this episode, you will gain access to an in-depth conversation with Dr. Shawn Griffin, the President and CEO of URAC. You will be inspired by his servant leadership in the pursuit of value-based medicine, and you will learn of his career path from rural physician to one of the leading physician executives in the country. We discuss the important of team-based care delivery and primary care transformation.  We also cover such important topics as healthcare accreditation, quality improvement, rural health care, pharmacy integration, technology innovation, and genomics-based care.

The truest measure of a leader is whether they are generous, have a big heart, and pay it forward. Dr. Shawn Griffin is the quintessence of this type of servant leadership in the race to value!

Episode Bookmarks:

01:30 Introduction to Dr. Shawn Griffin, the President and CEO at URAC

04:00 Eric shares a personal extension of gratitude to Dr. Griffin for the mentorship he provided years ago.

06:45 Dr. Griffin describes his journey in value-based care, beginning in the early days of practicing rural family medicine.

08:00 The United States is an outlier in that Primary Care is not at the center of medical care delivery.

08:45 A decision to impact more lives by taking on leadership roles in system design and care delivery transformation.

09:30 How love for family and others manifested into a commitment to patient care quality.

10:30 Building an effective Population Health Team at Memorial Hermann ACO during his leadership tenure.

11:00 The importance of effective storytelling and celebrating wins to drive value transformation.

12:00 “One has to decide in life if they are going to use their gifts to help themselves or help others.” (how VBC leadership is Dr. Griffin’s way of paying it forward)

12:45 The impact of constantly changing health policy on ACO success (and how frustration led Dr. Griffin to make a difference at a federal level).

13:30 How mentorship and teaching in value-based medicine can transform care delivery on a national scale.

17:00 Dr. Griffin explains the importance of accreditation programs and how URAC was founded to set standards in healthcare.

19:00 Specialty Pharmacy Services Accreditation as an example of standard setting to drive quality improvement.

20:00 Telehealth Accreditation and how “Telemedicine is more than just a good camera. It is good quality medical care using technology to do it.”

21:00 “Raising the bar and advancing the quality mission as things change is what accreditation should be doing.” (Reference video on revamping telehealth accreditation)

22:00 Why an accredited program (e.g. URAC Gold Star) provides a basis for a patient to validate their trust in the care provided.

23:00 Dr. Griffin discusses how URAC accreditation is driving care delivery redesign across the world (e.g. Egypt and Saudi Arabia).

25:00 The challenges of defining health care quality.

26:30 “Measuring quality is an ongoing unsolved problem in health care.”

27:30 The power of a trusting patient-provider relationship in care quality and how patient definitions differ.

28:30 The limitations of HEDIS measures.

29:30 Quality measurement data capture at the point-of-care is a major contributor to provider burnout (“checking the boxes”)

32:00 “Most of us have better information available on picking a hotel in Paris than we do selecting a high quality primary care provider.”

34:00 Realigning incentives to get more medical students to practice family medicine in rural communities.

35:00 The role of the federal government to ensure adequate access to primary care in rural areas.

36:00 The crushing economic pressures on rural hospitals.

36:30 “We talk about food deserts in cities. We have provider deserts in the country.”

37:30 “If we are concerned about providing electric charging options for someone’s Tesla crossing the country, perhaps a bigger concern is whether you can receive healthcare in rural parts of the country.”

40:00 Dr. Griffin on opportunity for pharmacy integration and team-based care.

41:00 “One of the good things about medicine in the last 40 years is the recognition that a ‘captain of the ship’ model is not sustainable for doctors or patients. Team-based care is the way to go.”

42:30 The role that URAC is playing in Pharmacy Accreditation and Rare Disease Certification.

45:30 Dr. Griffin on the importance of data liquidity and information sharing in value transformation.

47:00 How concerns about HIPAA compliance (a “HIPAA-chondriac”) can contribute to the problem of data siloing.

47:30 “More data is not always better for physicians. Technology will not always make health care better. A relationship will do more for a person’s health.”

49:00 Balancing Population Health Management with Targeted, Individualized Interventions (examples such as Kaiser Permanente, Intermountain, UPMC).

52:30 Dr. Griffin discusses how the pandemic shifted consumer demand for telemedicine and what we should expect for telehealth delivery in the future.

54:00 Behavioral health telemedicine visits are effective. Pre-surgical screening for heart transplants does not work with telemedicine.

55:00 The “Telemedicine Tug-of-War” going on nationally and why we must always consider the most appropriate application of technology.

56:00 Convenience doesn’t trump quality.

57:00 Telemedicine, Remote Patient Monitoring, Wearables, ML/AI – these will not suddenly make healthcare the “Garden of Eden” overnight.

58:30 Parting thoughts on genomics-driven care and individualized-care planning in a population health model.

59:00 A patient’s Walmart receipts are more valuable to a physician than genomic data.

60:00 Screening genomics for hereditary diseases are scaling as costs come down, but we still cannot discount the impact of lifestyle choices on health.

63:00 How to find out more about URAC and the importance of peer learning and sharing of best practices.