21st Century Leadership

Monique Bauchman
Management Concepts
July 25, 2015

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” (African Proverb). John Driscoll has been the CEO of CareCentrix as of 2013. He has been with several multi-billion healthcare businesses, including Medco and Oxford Health plans to name a few(Modern Health Care). He has exhibited the ability to work strategically, to inspire with vision, to develop people and to deliver results. But most importantly he has the ability to lead an incredibly fast growing and dynamic company with limitless potential such as CareCentrix. His goals becoming CEO is to meet and exceed the expectations of their customers and to provide exemplary care to the patients. Moreover, as a company the goal is to move patients out of acute and sub-acute care to their homes where they can leverage technology in innovative ways to improve quality care and sustainable outcomes, all in a setting that is emotionally and physically beneficial to the patient. (CareCentrix)
According to John Driscoll, “CareCentrix is not only a premier company to do business with, but also a great place to work.” In 2014, was implemented, for the first time ever, performance reviews, with merit increases awarded for performance. Another initiative rolled out was the “Golden Thread” which connects everyone’s individual objectives with their unit’s objective and overall corporate objective. This is designed to ensure that every team member knows how their day-to-day work contributes to CareCentrix’s corporate objectives and ultimate success. It all begins with the vision, mission and values. CareCentrix’s vision is to create a world where anyone can heal and age at home. Its mission is to improve patients’ lives by delivering innovative home health solutions that produce better outcomes and reduce overall costs through partnerships with providers and payors. Finally, at its core the values are, doing the right thing, caring, striving for excellence, thinking big and taking our work seriously, not themselves. (CareCentrix)
The company’s approach to human capital management includes its relationships with health plans, discharge planners, physicians, patients and caregivers. CareCentrix partners with health plans by assuming utilization management and claims management responsibilities and monitoring for fraud and abuse. CareCentrix also partners with discharge planners in supporting the successful transition of the patient from the facility to home care. The one-stop solution simplifies the process of coordinating home care, even for the most complex cases. Physicians are another aspect. CareCentrix provides them with the knowledge that CareCentrix’s partners will keep them apprised of the patient’s progress and inform them of any changes in condition. The practitioner will have the information they need to make any necessary changes to the care plan and keep the patient on the road to recovery. (CareCentrix)
Then there are the patients, a vital aspect of CareCentrix. They give them the knowledge that their partners will ensure a service that is a covered benefit and has been authorized before the service is delivered, thus minimizing out of pocket expenses. Patients will also have 24/7 access to the best-in-class provider network, which includes 8,000 and growing, meeting high standards for quality care that will help them to return to health and an improved quality of life in the comfort of their own home. Finally the caregiver, CareCentrix gives them the support and information. In times that perhaps a patient may be unable to communicate, CareCentrix can ensure quality care.
What their patients, referral sources, and discharge planners are saying - “Great response time, detailed about who the patients are set up with, and if no one can be reached on our end, CareCentrix always leaves detailed messages.” “The information is always complete and you don’t have to ask a lot of questions. CareCentrix provides all the information at once.” “CareCentrix is very nice and they have a great attitude.” “I can find a provider regardless of where the patient lives.” “I couldn’t imagine doing my job without CareCentrix!”
The Patient Experience Team has been collecting information across all functional areas and interviewing senior management, associates and patients to help better understand the current state and identify opportunity areas. This has also helped them to understand who their patients are, why the patient experience matters, what the patient experience is with CareCentrix and where the opportunities to improve service and reduce cost exist. That is why Patient Experience is critical to the value they provide to their health plan customers and their patients. Health plans are investing in consumer and patient experience from a people, process and technology perspective. They plan to partner with their clients and the employees in creating a more patient–centric experience. (CareCentrix)
During the quarter, CareCentrix and Qualcomm Life announced a strategic partnership to influence Qualcomm’s HealthyCircles technology to provide critical components for a CareCentrix “healthcare coordination engine”. Through this partnership, CareCentrix will be able to extend their services into the home and interact with patients, caregivers and providers in a more impactful way. CareCentrix will be able to create and share individual care plans, send applicable educational materials or assessments, incorporate home telemonitoring devices and interact with patients and nurses using their preferred methods, phone, web or mobile applications. (Eddy)
The CareCentrix Care and Service Centers (CSCs) have recently employed a Lean tool called “Triple L Huddles”. Triple L huddles provide a daily opportunity to gather feedback from all levels of the organization. The “L”s stand for - “Look Back”: How was our performance yesterday? What success do we have to celebrate? Did that issue we talked about get fixed? “Look Forward”: This is our plan for the day. What can we expect? What do we need to look out for? “Leadership”: What does the leadership team need to be aware of? How can leadership assist? In these quick morning meetings, the supervisor leads a person-by-person discussion focused on communicating key process opportunities that are impacting quality, service and efficiency. Staff becomes actively involved in identifying opportunities for improvement and in “Thinking Big” to drive solutions to make work easier and improve outcomes. (Bloomberg)
They also have created an enterprise-wide medium to review all critical issues affecting internal and external customers. The process involves an in-depth root cause analysis and preventative measures of any defects presented. This included updating the existing crossfunctional issue-tracking database (CART). CART allows the organization to manage/track and direct issues across business and IT functional areas to help improve operational and service excellence. The enhanced tool supports processes which simplifies and streamlines logging of requests and improves reporting and tracking of issues across teams.
Change Management and Implementation (CMI) is another business forum that will serve as the company’s enterprise methodology that selects, prioritizes, governs, manages, and implements project initiatives. It is a collaborative effort between all areas of the company that aligns the strategic, annual, and tactical plans with those projects that will be initiated and implemented. It is an end-to-end methodology that starts with project initiation and prioritization, establishes the cash spend budget (both capital and expense), creates an approved project portfolio, and manages the project lifecycle and implementation of the new business and IT capabilities that have been developed. Because of all these procedures an effect of all these implements has been Aetna Florida’s commercial membership had a nearly 20% readmission reduction and a $2.72 per member, per month, savings in 2013. (PRNewswire)
The Compliance Department created a dedicated Special Investigations Unit (SIU). The SIU team is responsible for preventing, detecting, and investigating potential fraud, waste, and abuse by providers, patients, and CareCentrix employees. So far since implementation they have opened 116 fraud waste and abuse case files. Reviewed more than $14 million in claims to ensure they were billed appropriately. Recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in claim over-payments to the customers and CareCentrix. Redesigned the CareCentrix fraud, waste and abuse annual training module to ensure compliance with CMS requirements. Developed and provided targeted training to the claims team to assist them in identifying potential fraud, waste and abuse. (CareCentrix)
As the saying goes, “happy wife, happy life” I think the same can be applied in the workplace. If the employees feel a sense of belonging, a sense of care, it can produce some of the most productive and efficient employees. At CareCentrix, they pride themselves on what it provides its employees. Along with the Golden Thread mentioned above, there are other services, such as, iCare and service heroes, coaching, investing in employees, career pathways and CareCentrix Cares. Of all these iCare and CareCentrix Cares are by far the most innovative I’ve seen in any company before. iCare is CareCentrix’s employee recognition program. One of their values is “We Care” and they know that their actions have an impact on people’s lives. This includes patients, providers, customers and all of the people at CareCentrix. It is important that they publicly recognize each other when they live their values and do the right thing. iCare promotes this! iCare includes both Thank Yous and Points, and then employees can redeem their accumulated iCare Points for various items, gift cards and even tickets.

References
Aetna Names CareCentrix Preferred Provider of Home Health Care Services in Florida. August 15, 2011. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aetna-names-carecentrix-preferred-provider-of-home-health-care-services-in-florida-127723868.html CareCentrix. http://www.carecentrix.com

CareCentrix Adds to Senior Leadership Team. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ae8SXemcRjU8 CareCentrix Names John Driscoll CEO. http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20130814/NEWS/308149948 Qualcomm Life Partners With ResMed, CareCentrix. Nathan Eddy. August 18, 2014
http://www.eweek.com/it-management/qualcomm-life-partners-with-resmed-carecentrix.html