18 Modern Healthcare | August 19, 2019
John Brownstein Consumerism
Chief innovation offi cer
Boston Children’s Hospital
Brownstein co-founded Circulation, a non-emergency
medical transportation company. The program integrated
with Uber, creating a customizable, HIPAA-compliant digital
transportation platform. Eventually, Circulation started
to operate its own fl eet. Last year, Circulation was in use
by health systems in 45 states. It accesses scheduling
information and helps put a dent in the nearly 3 million
missed appointments annually due to lack of transportation.
Circulation was recently acquired by LogistiCare Solutions.Bill Hagan
President
UnitedHealthcare
Clinical Services
Hagan oversees
UnitedHealthcare’s growth in digital health. His team pulls data
from a variety of sources including claims, clinical and demographic
information, and digital devices such as wearables and sensors to
create personalized care plans for members. The program helps
patients avoid unnecessary hospitalizations. Diabetics, for instance,
had a 27% drop in hospital visits in the fi rst year of participation.
He oversees community partnerships that tap into data to address
social determinants. Between January 2017 and the fi rst quarter
of 2019, UnitedHealthcare provided 682,000 referrals to social
services for Medicare Advantage members and has begun working
with more than 100,000 members who can’t afford medications to
get some assistance.Julie Hall-Barrow
Senior vice president of
network development
and innovation
Children’s Health
Hall-Barrow leads
Children’s Health’s
Virtual Health program,
one of the nation’s
most recognized
school-based telehealth
and tele-behavioral health initiatives. The program expanded
access to care for over 70,000 students in Texas. The school-
based program started in 2015 and allowed pediatricians to
immediately diagnose and provide treatment for students,
helping to decrease absenteeism rates—75% of caregivers said
that the child would have missed at least a half day of school
without the program. In 2018, Children’s Health expanded the
program to behavioral health. The telehealth program is in 116
schools; tele-behavioral health is in 24 schools, and counting.For the industry to truly
transform how it operates,
innovation must take hold at
all levels of an organization.
Often, a seemingly simple
idea can lead to huge change.
The inaugural class of Top 25
Innovators found new ways to
engage consumers, improve
quality of care and lower costs.