Hello, colleagues.
I am Dr. Lama El Zein, senior medical director for population health and clinician engagement at EmblemHealth. I am also a practicing family physician at AdvantageCare Physicians (ACPNY).* My focus is on care management, creating equitable programs around chronic and advanced illnesses, and value-based care initiatives.
A Unique Perspective on Population Health
One of our key goals is to help create healthier futures for our members. To help us meet this goal and influence better health outcomes, we are adopting a population health approach. As doctors working as medical directors for EmblemHealth and ConnectiCare, we are uniquely situated to influence population health. Having you as our partners – supported by data and technology – gives us a broader perspective than what we would see from just treating patients in our own medical practices.
Changing Ourselves First
In adopting a population health approach, the first thing we are changing is ourselves as medical directors. We are redesigning our role from a traditional, reactive, utilization management-focus to a proactive, multifaceted leadership-focus. We are acquiring new skill sets and have staffed our team with diverse personality traits, cultures, and backgrounds. This diversity gives us better insights into those we serve and makes us better partners for you.
Transitions of Care
Our data helps us uncover opportunities to improve transitions of care across our full range of services. We are in the final stages of transitioning the management of our post-acute care programs from outside relationships to our own teams. This will allow us to build our clinical partnerships with you, optimizing the transition of care experience when a member is discharged home from a hospital, skilled nursing facility, or other inpatient site. We appreciate our hospital partners who offer our members virtual visits post-discharge and are here to support post-discharge visits to reduce readmissions.
What’s Next?
Next month, we will look at how our population health approach influences our perspectives on primary care and the use of technology.
Lama
Lama El Zein MD, MHA
Sr. Medical Director/Population Health
If there are other health topics you would like our perspectives on, you may write to us at
emblemhealthmedicaldirectors@emblemhealth.com.
While we welcome your suggestions, we ask that you do not send protected health information (PHI) or patient-specific issues to this mailbox. This mailbox should not be used for complaints, grievances, appeals, or claims inquiries. Please use the Claim Inquiry and Message Center features in the provider portals (EmblemHealth|ConnectiCare) for those issues.
*AdvantageCare Physicians is part of the EmblemHealth family of companies.
