5 healthcare pros on the trends defining primary care

Docs need to adopt ambient listening -- now

During the Summit's keynote fireside chat, "AI Meets Primary Care: Transforming Access, Outcomes and Insight," Jason Hill, MD, the Innovation Officer at Ochsner Health insisted that ambient listening is an AI must-have.

"If you're not implementing an ambient solution right now, you should," Hill implored. "It's an amazing transformational technology."

Ochsner implemented ambient listening around two years ago, Hill said, and the organization's doctors lauded the tool for streamlining their clinical encounters. Not only that, but the technology has also paradoxically improved the patient-provider relationship, yielding an 8% absolute increase in Ochsner's patient satisfaction scores.

AI can transform community-based care, but needs guardrails

Effective community-based care hinges on good care coordination. But without the right data in front of them, clinicians can't make effective decisions to manage patient care -- in the clinic or out in the community, according to Scott Nass, MD, regional medical director at Aledade and a Population Health Steering Committee member.

"The biggest challenge in healthcare is we don't know what we don't know," Nass said during the "Closing the Gap: Bridging Primary Care into the Community" panel. "I need somebody to put that [data] in front of me in a meaningful way. I think leveraging AI, there is so much opportunity there... you want a tool that's going to be able to start doing all of these things for you."

But there are some risks in overlying on AI, or overlying on the wrong AI. Nass suggested providers prioritize tools that use trustworthy data sources, including claims, pharmacy and lab data. This will allow them to effectively identify population-level trends and individual patient risks.

Value-based care is healthcare's safe harbor

Fee-for-service is a sinking ship, according to Theresa Dreyer, CEO of the Healthcare Transformation Task Force. But value-based care is a lifeline during this time of crisis, she said at the Summit's "Aligning Primary Care Incentives Across Payers and Providers" session.

"This is a really difficult time in healthcare. I don't think I've seen the industry hit this hard in my whole career, where every sector of the industry is facing a lot of pressure across lines of business, payers and providers," she explained. "I would say, treat this as an opportunity. We are in a crisis, and a very customary way of responding would just be to retrench and say, 'I'm doing the thing. That's most of my book of business. I'm doing fee-for-service.' But even if it's a slow leak, you don't want to be on a sinking ship."

The transition to value-based care has undoubtedly been more of a marathon than a sprint. However, Dreyer has seen value-based care models succeed, including those with full financial risk. Some models she highlighted include full-risk Medicare Advantage models, which provide practices with upfront payments, and specialist co-management models, where specialty providers assume additional risk for specific populations.

Identifying community needs requires partnership

For all the potential AI has for transforming primary and community-based care, clinicians must not forget about their community partnerships, cautioned Sarah Nosal, M.D., the president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

In her work at a federally qualified health center in New York City, Nosal knows firsthand the power partnerships have in flagging community needs.

"Community health centers grew out of a community saying we have needs that aren't being addressed," Nosal said in the "Closing the Gap" session. " We have different types of either chronic illnesses or wellness goals that our whole community is looking for. That's really where a fundamental part of community health centers grew from is communities identifying that they weren't having their healthcare wellness goals or medical problems being met."

Through community partnership, clinician organizations can identify the population-level needs -- from clinical to social needs -- that will move the needle on outcomes.

A primary focus on federal policy stability

Payers and providers need more direction from the federal government to move the value-based care needle. That was Mara McDermott's most emphasized point during the "Aligning Primary Care Incentives Across Payers and Providers" panel. The CEO of Accountable for Health explained that healthcare's transformation depends fundamentally on stable, transparent policy.

"We have a lack of certainty in the Medicare Advantage market, a lack of certainty in the Medicaid financing market and a lack of predictability coming out of the CMS Innovation Center; it just makes everything harder," she explained.

Without stability, payers and providers can't make long-term investments in strategies that support primary and preventive care. And without those investments, value-based care just can't succeed, fueling a cycle of uncertainty as models fail.

McDermott advocated for predictable payment models that enable providers to make multi-year commitments and assume risk gradually. Federal agencies also need to be transparent and upfront about program changes and timelines, especially as models are slated to expire. She also called for consistent terms across different Medicare programs to reduce administrative complexity.

You can catch all of these insights and more by checking out the 2025 Payer + Provider Virtual Summit on demand via the BrightTalk platform.

Sara Heath has reported news related to patient engagement and health equity since 2015.

Jacqueline LaPointe is a graduate of Brandeis University and King's College London. She has been writing about healthcare finance and revenue cycle management since 2016.