Jennifer P. Lundblad, PhD, MBA

President and CEO | Stratis Health

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Challenges: Deep fractures in the U.S. health care system have become impossible to ignore during the current pandemic, including the lack of coordination between health care and public health. There has been a reawakening about health disparities and structural racism, and the financial recession has put further pressure on all stakeholders.

Strategies: Stratis Health develops and guides health improvement initiatives across the continuum of care that result in better health and care for people and communities. Addressing social determinants of health is deeply embedded in our work. We are leading the way to meet the monumental challenges posed by COVID-19, building bridges between health care and community.

Ruth Lynfield, MD

State Epidemiologist and Medical Director | MDH

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Challenges: Ensuring that all Minnesotans have ready access to high quality health care. This is something we need to continue to strive for to benefit individuals and the public’s health, and the pandemic has further highlighted these disparities. Another challenge the pandemic revealed was the lack of surge capacity for health care workers, particularly in long-term care facilities, when staff cannot work, because they were exposed or ill.

Strategies: We need to rethink how we develop, support, and maintain added emergency staffing capacity. This will take the pooled resources of state and federal governments, as well as the Minnesota Department of Health and state leaders engaging in tough policy conversations.

John Mach, MD

Chief Medical Officer | Medica

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Challenges: A big challenge is health care inequity and poor outcomes associated with it. Health care is very uneven across populations, particularly for minorities and people with socio-economic challenges.

Strategies: We consider equity and affordability as we seek to understand who our higher risk members are as individuals and work with our provider partners to proactively understand their unique needs. We closely monitor their clinical outcomes and with our provider partners to identify additional interventions. For example, we identified more than 200,000 of our members at high risk for Covid and conducted an outreach campaign to assess member needs and safety, and recommended resources to support their health and well-being. A second outreach campaign followed when Covid became an extended event.

Jan Malcolm

Commissioner of Health | MDH

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Challenges: The COVD-19 pandemic has shed light on many of the existing challenges of our system—it’s complicated and fragmented, making it difficult to navigate. The pandemic has also highlighted the continuing existence of health disparities by race, ethnicity, income, gender identity, disability, and multiple other factors.

Strategies: We continue to take a holistic approach to advancing health equity—one that recognizes the role that all organizations and systems that impact individual and community health play in eliminating structural inequities. We are reaching out to communities to understand the barriers they face and working with them to address those barriers and invest in community-driven solutions.

Carolyn McClain, MD

Emergency Physician | EPPA

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Challenges: Emergency departments are increasingly filled with older patients with complex medical problems. Social determinants of health play a large role in health outcomes, as do psychiatric afflictions. These factors can lead to clinician burnout. On the bright side, COVID-19 has proven that we can rapidly adapt to the changing landscape of health care.

Strategies: We created the Urgency Room as an innovative model to offer care outside the emergency department by providing consumer-friendly services and developing follow-up protocols targeting those patients that could be safely discharged from the emergency department. We offer these services at a lower price. Our group has also invested heavily in data analytics.

William J. McDonough, MBA

President and CEO | Constellation

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Challenges: Added costs of technology, consolidation of health care, and clinician shortages all contribute to elevated stress and burnout. Along with COVID-19, these issues have a direct impact on the lives and behaviors of physicians and their patients. Many physicians are retiring early, adding stress on those who remain. We must care for the caregivers so they are better able to care for us.

Strategies: Our Honor, Empower, Act and Learn (HEAL) program is intended to be a better way forward after a harm event. Transparency and empathy provide healing for both patients and caregivers. The program replaces silence, doubt, fear, and frustration with an honest, human-centered acknowledgement of what happened, its impact, and what to expect next.

David McKee, MD

Chief Medical Officer | Integrity Health Network

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Challenges: The vast majority of physicians take their role as patient advocate seriously, but the ability to choose optimal treatments and colleague referrals is increasingly influenced by the financial concerns of health plans, hospital administrators, and government bureaucrats. At times it is impossible to advocate for patients without serious consequences to one’s career.

Strategies: Our mission is to help physicians practice competitively in independent practices, which avoids the undesirable influences of employed arrangements. We help our members with contracting and all aspects of setting up and maintaining independent practice. Recently we have developed a program to assist physicians who would like to transition from an employed position to an independent one.

Mark Mishek, JD

President and CEO | Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

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Challenges: COVID-19 tops the list, followed by the need to improve patient care and population health while simultaneously reducing costs.

Strategies: We’ve established a medically-led, cross-functional National Incident Command Team and local response teams at each site to guide our daily navigation of the pandemic and ensure that patient and staff safety are at the forefront. To meet the challenge of improving patient care and population health while reducing costs, we are focused on data-driven decision-making, scaling through growth, generating additional philanthropic support, elevating our evidence-based clinical practices, growing our network of collaborators, innovating through telehealth, expanding prevention services, reducing disparities in access to care, and empowering others through education, advocacy and research leadership.