In the latest episode of the Paytient Podcast, we’re talking about healthcare innovation and employer partnerships with Bridgette McCullough of OhioHealth.
Bridgette is a director at OhioHealth who heads up a lot of the direct-to-employer wellness initiatives that the nonprofit healthcare system offers to residents in and around Columbus, Ohio. This discussion touches on holistic well-being, workplace benefits design, continuity of care, and how COVID-19 has impacted the health system’s operations over the past year.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
The main ways OhioHealth drives innovation
“We've got a team of people that are devoted to coming up with new solution ideas — whether it's things that we want to do in-house leaning into the health system and figuring out what gaps we could be filling there, or whether we want to have a partnership with another external vendor. We've done that in the past as well, where we create a partnership so that we can provide solutions that maybe [...] we don't offer.”
How this approach is helping OhioHealth flourish
“We want to serve the community. The people in the community that work for these employers are our patients — those are people that we see come into our health system. So our primary goal is to serve them well.
“By doing these services for employers, we're also getting brand recognition. We're getting our brand out there. We're getting people to utilize the health system more because they're connecting with us in different ways. They see the value in us if we're running their wellness program. If their on-site clinic is an OhioHealth clinic, they’re getting to know some of our practitioners. So in that way, it really drives people to the system.”
Why employers should want higher healthcare utilization
“It's about the right utilization. There may be more cost on the front end if you're getting people to go see their PCP, but you want to get them to the right care. And getting them connected to a primary care physician is to get them to use healthcare the right way.
“Rather than going to the ER for something that they don't need to go to the ER or even going to urgent care, we’re getting them to build that relationship with a primary care physician who's also going to notice things that they might not even know about. So it may be some cost on the front end, but ultimately you're avoiding higher costs in the long run by getting people to pay attention to prevention, getting them connected to a PCP, and getting them to use the right care at the right time.”
The services OhioHealth offers to support mental health
“We developed a toolkit during the COVID time period around resilience both for individuals but also for leaders so that they had tools that they could use with their teams to support their mental health and resilience — which is really, really important [and] something I think that we're hoping to do more with. We definitely want to get more into helping with psychological safety and creating that in the workplace and helping leaders to understand what that is and why it's important for their teams.”
Listen to the full discussion via the podcast player below or by clicking this link. If you'd like to connect with Bridgette, you can find her on LinkedIn. For more on OhioHealth, you can follow along on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and at OhioHealth.com.
