Understanding risk in accountable care organisations

Author's Biography

Lynn Barr is a recognised leader in the movement to transform and improve the US healthcare system. While working at a rural hospital as Chief Information Officer, Lynn organised the National Rural Accountable Care Consortium to overcome barriers for rural health providers so they could participate in innovative payment models under healthcare reform. In 2014 Caravan Health was formed to provide turnkey services to providers interested in population health programmes in practice transformation networks, Medicare and commercial accountable care organisations, MACRA, comprehensive primary care and other payment models. As founder of Caravan Health, Ms Barr has led the development and execution of nationwide programmes that bring better care to patients and help healthcare providers achieve financial success. Caravan Health supports more than 13,000 primary care providers and 250 community hospitals in making the transformation to value-based payments, with affordable, simple solutions that achieve outstanding results.

Anna Loengard has served as Caravan Health’s Chief Medical Officer since 2017, guiding accountable care organisations in clinical practice transformation and strategies for advancing team-based primary care. Dr Loengard trained in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard University and completed a geriatrics fellowship at the University of Arizona. After training, she joined the Department of Geriatrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center, where she focused on palliative care and home-based primary care for the frailest elderly. In 2007, she founded Successful Caring, a company designed to educate caregivers to better navigate the United States’ fractured healthcare system. She and her family moved to Hawaii in 2009, where she held a series of leadership positions focused on hospice, home health and care for the ageing. In November 2014 Dr Loengard joined the Queen’s Clinically Integrated Physician Network, Hawaii’s largest statewide CIN, as their first Chief Medical Officer. Dr Loengard has been on the faculty with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the John A. Burns School of Medicine Departments of Geriatrics and has received numerous teaching awards. She was named Healthcare Association of Hawaii ‘Physician of the Year’ for 2013.

Eric Shell is the long-time leader of the Stroudwater Associates’ rural practice and Chair of the firm’s Board of Directors. In his nearly 30 years of experience in healthcare financial management and consulting, Mr Shell has focused on assisting rural hospitals, rural health clinics and physician group practices to improve financial and operational performance and develop strategic and operational plans. Before joining Stroudwater, Mr Shell was the director of finance and administration for Rochester Community Individual Practice Association, Inc. in Rochester, New York, where he provided leadership and financial management to a 2,500-provider community-based Independent Physicians Association (IPA) that contracted with a local health maintenance organisation (HMO) to provide physician services to nearly 500,000 enrolees. He has also held positions at a local accounting firm and at Arthur Andersen & Co.

Louise Yinug comes to Caravan Health with extensive public policy and government experience in both the executive and the legislative branches of the federal government. At Caravan Health, Ms. Yinug leads the development of written content for our external audiences, specialising in policy issues. Before joining Caravan, she worked on Capitol Hill, where she managed a 10-person research team at the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Prior to this, Ms Yinug was a senior health policy and legislative analyst with White House’s Office of Management and Budget and later at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. At both Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Personnel Management (OPM), she developed policy proposals and advised senior agency officials about health programmes, including Medicaid, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, and the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.