KP Georgia’s Dr. Kate Koplan on population health

On this episode of The Scope podcast, we’re joined by Dr. Kate Koplan, who is the Chief Quality Officer and Associate Medical Director for Quality and Safety at The Southeast Permanente Medical Group, part of Kaiser Permanente Georgia. In that role, Dr. Koplan oversees varied aspects of the National KP Quality Aims with responsibilities including quality oversight and improvement, population care, performance improvement, peer review, simulation and team training, medical ethics, safety systems, innovation and human-centered design, research, threat management, and ambulatory resource stewardship including laboratory medicine.  

She is a graduate of Yale University, and completed medical school at Emory University, where she also earned a master’s degree in public health. She trained in Internal Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, as a Clinical Fellow in Medicine for Harvard Medical School. In addition to authoring several publications on quality and care improvement, Dr. Koplan has taught at Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital Internal Medicine Program.

We cover a range of issues on this episode including Dr. Koplan’s work in the field of population health, the importance of physician leadership, and ushering in important changes in healthcare. We’ll also find out what she sees on the horizon and what she’s excited about for the future of healthcare.

• How Dr. Koplan got involved in the population health movement and leadership of it as wel as Kaiser’s work in the field.

• What is being lost in the shuffle as we switch from the fee-for-service model to value-based care?

• Dr Koplan’s thoughts on whether we stripped too much autonomy away from individual physicians and if they need to be afforded a bit more trust.

• What are the dangers of health systems, hospitals, practices, etc., not paying close enough attention to the overall patient experience?

• The quadruple aim as the future of healthcare and what we risk if we don’t heed the quad aim mantra and mission.

• Healthcare innovations that have Dr. Koplan excited.

• What’s on the horizon at KP in this time of upheaval and change in healthcare?

If you enjoyed this episode, you can find all of our past episodes of The Scope’s podcast here.