From left: Steven Krein (moderator), Esther Dyson, Dr. David Feinberg, and Dr. Richard Zane
Geisinger Health System CEO Dr. David Feinberg used the StartUp Health Festival to launch its population health initiative, Springboard Health during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco this week.
Starting with Springboard Healthy Scranton, the program will work with Scranton, Pennsylvania residents on helping them to manage diabetes, obesity and behavioral health needs. It will also help individuals gain access to healthy food by leveraging food banks.
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The program launch was part of a wider panel discussion on building innovation hubs with the panelists reaching a similar conclusion — that hospitals and health systems need to work with their communities to transform themselves or risk being disrupted in ways they can’t control.
In an interview with MedCity News, when asked what Feinberg has learned from hospital public health initiatives, for better or worse, Feinberg said he wanted to avoid the kind of piecemeal initiatives that Geisinger, admittedly, has done as well.
“A lot of times health systems do a community needs assessment because it’s a requirement and when it comes back, obesity is an issue, transportation is an issue, access to care is an issue, mental health is an issue. But then, no one does anything with that data but put it on the shelf until you do the report the next year. Then they’ll have a health fair, do some health screenings and we are guilty of all that too. So it is sort of piecemeal, not consistent and never really brings everybody into the community together and says, ‘We will do this together’.”
Feinberg noted that Springboard Healthy Scranton would include elements such as a fresh food pharmacy — an initiative that “prescribes” a food program for diabetic, food-insecure patients. The initiative will also pull together data, genomics, and double down on community involvement in an interesting combination of population health and personalized medicine.
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Geisinger will do DNA sequencing for Scranton area program participants so they can receive information about serious genetic conditions they may be at risk for yet unaware of. The idea is to do early testing and get a diagnosis earlier to improve the long-term outlook for those individuals.
“It is about how we can engage with our community and benefit from our community,” Feinberg said.
Among those who sit on Sprinboard Health’s advisory board are John Sculley — chairman and chief marketing officer at RxAdvance and former CEO of Apple and Pepsi — and Esther Dyson, an angel investor who is two years into a 5-year population health initiative called the Way to Wellville. Dyson’s program is working with five communities of under 100,000 people. But Springboard Healthy Scranton has also organized community leaders and will include some of the Scranton residents they are trying to help.
In the panel discussion, which included Dyson, Feinberg and UCHealth Chief Innovation Officer Richard Zane, each was asked how entrepreneurs could get involved and what they’re looking for from them.
“We need you to say that you want to be part of this [initiative],” Feinberg said. “The litmus test is you have got to be aligned with us from a values standpoint. You have got to come with the best of intentions.”
Dyson responded, “What we are doing in these communities is not pilots. We are not testing stuff on people. We want stuff that works and we want to do it at scale. The big challenge for so many startups is moving from pilots to scale.”
Feinberg also referenced a practice it adopted last year of returning money to patients who were unsatisfied with the quality of their care, which led to Geisinger giving back roughly $500,000.
“We need to disrupt ourselves or we will be disrupted,” said Feinberg. “We have to get it right quickly.”
Photo: StartUp Health