RamaOnHealthcare April 6, 2023
Active Collaborations and Meaningful Innovations
Introduction: Today, RamaOnHealthcare talks with Wendy Warring, J.D. Wendy is the President and CEO of the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation (NEHI), a national, non-profit, member-driven organization focused on advancing innovative care models and technologies. Their mission addresses unmet healthcare needs, improves equitable access to health, leverages expertise, and promotes policies and practices to apply in real-world settings via expert collaboration and innovation.
Wendy Warring, President and CEO of NEHI
RamaOnHealthcare (ROH): What can you tell us about the work NEHI does?
Wendy Warring (WW): The Network for Excellence in Health Innovation (NEHI) is a non-profit membership-based healthcare organization. We attempt to solve complex problems to improve the value our healthcare system delivers by fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. We identify policy and operational recommendations that advance promising diagnostics, therapies, and care models.
Our programs examine the research, evidence, and testing of innovations. We also consider payment and reimbursement models that enable and control access and operational changes to affect the adoption of valuable innovations. This also includes workflow and workforce considerations.
It is currently an exciting and challenging time for us as the pace and scope of innovation are incredible. As a non-profit, we are mindful of sophisticated and well-resourced thought leaders, consultants, think tanks, and academic institutions. We generate priorities to balance our capabilities with our ambitions and focus on the issues and perspectives our members bring us. We identify unmet healthcare needs and focus on promoting access to innovations that address this while being mindful of health equity and a person-centered approach.
We identify unmet healthcare needs and focus on promoting access to innovations….
Currently, our focus is on prevalent chronic diseases (e.g., cancer and obesity) that impact large segments of the country’s health and overall healthcare costs. We also concentrate on solutions addressing behavioral and mental health.
ROH: How do you get this work done to lead, integrate, collaborate, and find opportunities within massive amounts of change?
WW: Advances in science and technology, industry consolidation, and payment reforms have opened possibilities for positive changes, but they have also created anxiety about how to adapt to those changes. To accomplish this, we:
- Approach every problem by first clearly defining and understanding it through ample research,
- Search for available solutions and the barriers or situations that pertain to the problem,
- Identify key experts and parties critical to formulating new approaches and eliciting information, insights, unforeseen challenges, and opposing viewpoints,
- Provide ample debate to develop recommendations, and
- Test those recommendations with a broad range of organizations that will be affected by them to build as much consensus for action as possible.
Advances in science and technology, industry consolidation, and payment reforms have opened possibilities for positive changes, but they have also created anxiety about how to adapt to those changes.
ROH: Can you provide us with an example?
WW: The innovation work of NEHI was involved in advancing the automation of prior authorization in healthcare. Automation will be a significant change affecting payers, hospitals, physicians, and patients, and would remove significant physician burden and administrative waste from the system. In partnership with the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium, which facilitates health information and technology transformation, we formed a group of stakeholders, including technology service providers, and state and federal regulators. With significant input from that group, we explored what automation entailed and the role that different stakeholders would have to play. This led us to formulate specific recommendations for automating prior authorization across the state in the next two years. The collaboration among influential stakeholders produced feasible recommendations with clear benefits for those with various roles in the prior authorization process and increased the likelihood the recommendations will be executed.
ROH: What brought you to NEHI?
WW: Healthcare is my second career. I was a lawyer in both public and private practice for many years. My work as a lawyer in the public sector brought me to healthcare. I had been familiar with NEHI from my work within various healthcare systems. My perspective in different sectors of the healthcare system enables me to advance NEHI’s mission and work on promoting innovations that address some of healthcare’s biggest challenges. I am privileged to work with NEHI, their dedicated team, and former healthcare associates for the past three years.
ROH: What is a concern within your role as CEO of NEHI?
WW: We rely on membership for our financial stability. It is difficult to encourage organizations to join NEHI because we cannot always deliver a direct benefit to their bottom line. We add value by connecting organizations around an issue, but we remain independent and structure discussions with neutrality. In this connection, we facilitate organizations creating or modifying their strategies. In doing so, we highlight ways in which collaboration is essential to the implementation of innovations.
In doing so, we highlight ways in which collaboration is essential to the implementation of innovations.
ROH: Where are your concerns and optimism in healthcare today?
WW: We have yet to solve the problem of ensuring health care is available and accessible to those who need it. We must do more to incorporate the ideas and interests of those underrepresented in formulating solutions. There remains tension between the cost (price) of healthcare, the cost (price) of innovations, and the unintended consequences some innovations may bring. Finally, we are facing an onslaught of information about our own health as therapies grow to treat more conditions. How do we support both patients and caregivers in adapting to these?
There remains tension between the cost (price) of healthcare, the cost (price) of innovations….
My experience in healthcare has made it clear that not only are there incredibly smart people in all areas of healthcare, but there are so many who remain dedicated and determined to improve healthcare. In terms of NEHI’s mission, we are finding an abundance of innovators, payers, providers, regulators, and patients, among others, who recognize the importance of dialogue and collaboration in effecting positive changes in our healthcare system.
More about Wendy Warring
Wendy provides leadership and support to state and local consumer organizations, policymakers, and foundations. She is also a member of the Board of the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality. She received her J.D. from Yale University.