Mark Casner on post-COVID Changes in Healthcare

Joining us today on The Scope is Mark Casner. Mark is the CEO of Providence Anesthesia Associates, or PAA, in North Carolina. PAA, with over 100 providers, is the largest independent anesthesia group in the southeast covering all Novant hospitals and surgery centers in and around the Charlotte area along with many other inpatient and outpatient facilities throughout the state. With more than 30 years in the healthcare industry, Mark has developed a talent for calmly leading physicians and business growth during times of extreme volatility. He brings strategy and solutions to the biggest challenges his organizations have faced.

On today’s episode, we’re chatting about how health systems and independent groups are working together and evolving post-pandemic as the industry changes faster than ever. We also discuss how patients’ care and experience will be impacted by these changes.

Highlights include:

1. Mark explains how he manages keeping his physicians and the larger institution happy and focused given the very different priorities, cultures, and politics involved with both.
2. We discuss how COVID impacted the future plans for physician groups and health systems, and what our industry’s new normal will look like.  
3. What physicians’ response to consolidation has been since it’s happening almost daily on a national level. Mark discusses how the increasing complexities of running an independent physician group today (i.e. resources and scale needed) make sustainability and survival more difficult. We talk about ways in which these groups are going to have to look at more creative solutions to solve this.
4. We follow up with the patients’ response to this consolidation and why physicians need to be more engaged with their patients.
5. We go over the term “value-based care” and why it’s used over and over again in today’s industry, yet no one has clearly defined what it entails. We hear from Mark on what the term means to him (spoiler: lower-priced care ≠ value-based care).
6. How Mark sees the patient fitting into the value-based care equation, and how he sees a migration to the least-invasive surgery locations as an asset in this equation.
7. We talk about what will cause value-based care to sink or swim and how insurance companies’ shortage of data and their lack of interest in quality-based programs plays a part.
8. Finally, we discuss who will be the leaders solving some of the industry’s most significant challenges and answer the call regarding value-based care.

I invite you to follow Mark Casner on LinkedIn to hear more of his insights on this industry.

For more episodes of The Scope, follow along on Twitter at @TheScope_MA and on LinkedIn here. If there are any guests you’d like to hear on The Scope, send your ideas my way – you can message me on LinkedIn.