EP385: Morgan Health and the 5 Things Self-insured Employers Should Do Right Now, With Dan Mendelson

Morgan Health and the 5 Things Self-insured Employers Should Do Right Now, With Dan Mendelson. Five Concrete Moves Self-Insured Employers Can Make to Improve Community Health. Episode 385.

Stacey Richter talks with Dan Mendelson, CEO of Morgan Health at JPMorgan Chase, about the five things self-insured employers—who cover 150 million American lives—can do right now to improve accountable, value-based care in their communities.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

✅ Why self-insured employers are uniquely positioned to spur accountable care adoption at the local level

✅ The five concrete actions Mendelson recommends: expanding accountable care models, investing in outcomes data, aligning benefits with population health, prioritizing accessible care models, and building real care navigation

✅ Why physician practices need a critical mass of value-based patients before they can afford to transform away from fee-for-service

✅ How Morgan Health is trying to make its own care-model investments scalable for other employers to copy

✅ Why quantitative outcomes data is essential to knowing whether employer health investments are actually working

✅ What the DEI dimension of "meeting employees wherever they are" looks like in practice

WHY THIS MATTERS

Self-insured employers often default to doing what they did last year, leaving their communities stuck in the same suboptimal fee-for-service arrangements. Mendelson's five-point list gives employers and benefits leaders a concrete, sequenced starting point instead of a vague call to do better.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Encore! EP206 with Ashok Subramanian: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps

EP358 with Wayne Jenkins, MD: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps

Encore! EP308 with Mark Fendrick, MD: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps

EP334 with Sunita Desai, PhD: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps

=== LINKS ===

🔗 Show Notes with all mentioned links: Episode Page

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00:00 Introduction.

05:53 Why did Dan direct his article about health benefits at CEOs?

06:56 What does an accountable care model mean to a self-insured employer?

08:50 "This alignment of value will never work … if the 150 million Americans … getting their health insurance through their employer are not also aligned in the same way."

12:21 "We're offering them a higher level of service."

12:32 "Everything that we do is intended to be scalable and not just for us."

13:01 "We have an obligation to do better for our employees."

15:44 "Employers need to understand, the only way to get outstanding care is locally."

19:10 Why is getting quantitative metric data important?

21:50 "This is a much broader vision of accountable care than … primary care."

23:41 "Until everything is aligned, the employer is just not going to be providing an optimal product."

24:32 "There are substantial issues with … health equity, and employers are paying for the care of 150 million Americans in this country."

26:15 Is digital health access important for creating meaningful relationships between patients and providers?

30:43 What is the myth that employers need to tackle?

31:10 Why is care navigation important for employees?