One of the most important reasons for physicians to attend healthcare meetings is the connections they'll make with like-minded colleagues.
But when stay-at-home orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic effectively grounded all in-person meetings earlier this spring, an important source of connection disappeared for doctors seeking to make real change in healthcare, said Paul Grundy, M.D., who is chief transformation officer at San Francisco-based health data platform company Innovaccer.
In that vacuum, Grundy—who is often referred to as the godfather of the patient-centered medical home model and founding president of the Primary Care Collaborative—is leading the launch of a new non-profit virtual community this week.
Called CareAsOne, the platform is aimed at providing a credible place for industry professionals to connect and share news and information around healthcare transformation and patient-centered care, Grundy told Fierce Healthcare.
"Really, we are creating a platform for the ongoing conversation we would normally have at meetings," Grundy said. "I think of it almost as a small, niche LinkedIn for people who are passionate about the trusted healing relationship in primary care and moving away from what I would define, humbly, as milking machine medicine."
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He said the idea came together after talking with some of the leaders of the medical home movement and his colleagues at the National Academy of Medicine and Innovaccer to come up with a new place to meet and discuss issues such as delivery transformation, primary care reform, and the survival of primary care, he said. Other leaders starting up the platform including David Nace, M.D., who is chief medical officer at Innovaccer and who previously served as CMO at UnitedHealth Group, Aetna and McKesson.
The goal is to allow participants to explore novel care models, expert opinions, and innovative ideas for care delivery. The platform will allow users to share and access documents, blogs, tools and other resources with the CareAsOne community of participants.
The “CareAsOne” platform will provide new examples of how some organizations are sharing data and achieving new models of collaboration to advance value-based care and better outcomes, officials said in a statement.
"After years of struggling with fragmented data, the U.S. healthcare system has realized just how critical information exchange is to improving healthcare. Providers, payers, and employers are seeking a platform to unite, share information and explore collaborative initiatives that can drive patient-centered care and performance efficiency," said Nace, who is a member of the Working Committee of CareAsOne, in a statement. "Through the CareAsOne community platform, healthcare participants can come together and identify the most pressing issues that need swift attention and formulate ways to improve overall healthcare operations."