Brad Montgomery, MHA, CMPE

Executive Director | Noran Neurological Clinic

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Challenges: There are many challenges facing health care today but because of recent ransomware threats, cyber security is one of the larger issues at the moment. As more health care functions continue to move online over the next year, it’s extremely important to ensure our processes and systems are protected from these threats.

Strategies: Noran Clinic is working with our IT vendor and other consultants to ensure we have adequate protection.  We also believe that telehealth will be part of health care delivery going forward so we are working to identify a solution that will integrate better into our delivery process.

Rep. Rena Moran

Chair | Health and Human Services Policy Committee

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Challenges: When we treat health care as a business, we incentivize short-term profits rather than long-term preparedness. That penny pinching has cost us dearly, and the burden is falling disproportionately on rural areas, low-income families, and communities of color. Disparities in health care access and outcomes are nothing new, but the need to address them is more urgent than ever.

Strategies: The pandemic is pushing the Legislature to reimagine health care. We have authorized several temporary innovations that may warrant becoming permanent, such as expanded telemedicine. The Minnesota House of Representatives also recently passed a resolution declaring racism a public health crisis and forming a committee to address health care disparities, which I will co-chair.

Jeanne Mrozek, MD

Medical Director | Neonatal Intensive Care Maple Grove Hospital, North Memorial Health

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Challenges: The biggest challenges facing healthcare today are cost and equal access to quality care. The people who do not have access to high quality care are prone to morbidities that are costly, both to themselves and society. Providing equitable healthcare access and delivery within communities can improve quality of life and ultimately save money.

Strategies: We are working with our hospital system to improve access to quality prenatal care for all women. Preterm birth is one of the most common and costly sequelae of under-supervised pregnancies. By improving access to high quality maternal care, particularly in high risk areas, we can reduce the number of newborn intensive care unit days.

John Naylor

President and CEO | Medica

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Challenges: The extraordinary – and unsustainable – increase in the cost of health care is on everyone’s mind. It affects individuals, employers and taxpayers. Related to that is the uneven value of care.

Strategies: Medica works collaboratively with our provider partners to address increasing costs. The norm has been to reimburse providers for the number of patients they see, not for the quality of care they provide. Medica and many of its provider partners feel that this is backwards. Building trust and working together is much more sustainable and effective. Medica’s unique provider partnerships create incentives and tools for population-level care improvements. We jointly seek to understand preventable determinants of poor outcomes for the people we serve. And we make care more efficient and cost-effective.

Kevin C. Nelson, MD

President | Fairview Physician Associates Network

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Challenges: Procedures, visits, imaging, and medicines often result in incredibly high deductibles, putting a significant burden on the families of our communities. We have an affordability crisis. On the delivery side, our providers are compensated through an arcane system that is highly variable by payer.

Strategies: Our clinically integrated network of providers and affiliated independent providers works diligently to provide the highest quality and experience as we also lower costs through innovation. These include the virtual care utilized across our network to help care for patients during the COVID pandemic. We focus on creating value, using new operating structures and synergies to leverage the great providers across our network to drive to a healthier future.

Lucas Nesse, JD

President and CEO | Minnesota Council of Health Plans

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Challenges: The cost of care is on an unsustainable path—tripling over the last twenty years—so finding ways to bend the medical cost curve down to improve affordability is a requirement for the future of health care delivery. Making immediate progress on reducing health disparities is an equally important challenge for the industry.

Strategies: Everyone working better together is a prerequisite to making progress, so the Minnesota Council of Health Plans and our nonprofit members are constantly working to build broad coalitions around these issues. These challenges are not unique to Minnesota, but I am optimistic that together we can lead the way to find innovative and actionable solutions to provide broad access to more efficient and effective care.

Kevin J. Nokels, FACHE

President and CEO | St. Luke’s

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Challenges: One of the biggest challenges facing health care delivery today is recovering from the disruptions and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic while continuing to serve our communities. In addition, we must prepare for the future by creating and reimagining what health care can become post-pandemic. COVID-19 exposed health care’s reliance on funding from procedural-based services and our need to shift to new payment models that drive and reward consistent excellence in service, quality, safety, equitable care, and efficiency.

Strategies: At St. Luke’s, our entire team has been and will continue to be preparing for the future by working to reduce costs and improve performance in all aspects of care for our patients.

Carolyn Ogland, MD, FAAP

Chief Medical Officer | North Memorial Health

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Challenges: The pace of change at an industry level is tremendous. Healthcare organizations must pay attention and look to the future to stay aligned with consumer expectations and technology advances. We also need to assess where the care is best delivered to achieve optimal outcomes for our patients – whether in a hospital or clinic, at home or elsewhere in the community.

Strategies: Our focus needs to pivot on keeping people healthy along with achieving the goals our patients and families deem important for their overall health and wellbeing. A key factor in our success will be working with the payor models to support these goals.