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Hospitalogists, I hope it’s a happy Tuesday for you, but coming off of the first back-to-back losses since 2021 (and against unranked opponents no less) for the Horns, it’s black Tuesday for me. (I’m only half kidding). Anyway, at the start of this week I was dealt with some exciting news with a company whose team I’m close to - Lumeris - and they were kind enough to give me an exclusive (whatever that means) on them naming Dr. Charles “Chuck” Saunders the new chief clinical transformation officer and president of Value-Based Care Enablement. He’ll run the company’s VBC enablement business and lead clinical development and adoption of Tom, Lumeris’ AI-powered primary care as a service platform. And if you’ve been following along, I’ve been on the Tom beat since I got the first look at ViVE. So I wanted to hear from the physician now responsible for where it goes next. Chuck’s résumé reads like a tour of the big swings at fixing healthcare over the past 30 years:
So he’s seen a hype cycle or two. I sent Chuck a quick batch of questions on why he signed up and what he plans to do with both. His answers are below, in full. (I also wanted to give a quick shout-out to Dr. David Carmouche, who is moving on from his role but has been a great steward of his position at Lumeris) Was this email forwarded to you? Sponsored by Predoc Every Q4, I watch the same scramble play out across VBC orgs: the gap report drops, and teams sprint to sort which gaps are real versus which ones are just missing documentation. That chart chase is brutal, and it’s essential for risk adjustment and reimbursement. I guarantee people on your team are doing it today -- it's also not their primary role or focus. Check out this article from Predoc. It breaks down why HIEs still miss the long tail, and how support for the year-end chart chase can surface revenue and impact performance measures. Start your year-end gap sprint before the clock runs out. 1. What attracted you to Lumeris at this stage of your career? I’ve spent more than 30 years working to make healthcare smarter, more effective and more sustainable, primarily through technology innovation, population health and value-based care. What attracted me to Lumeris is the opportunity to help drive the next major transformation in healthcare - AI -and its potential to enhance patient engagement, automate care processes and provide deep insights for personalized care. I believe it will be a game changer, and I am excited about the opportunity to play a role in this transformation. Lumeris brings together deep experience in value-based care, strong relationships with physicians and health systems, and AI technology that can change how care is delivered. We’re at a pivotal moment in healthcare, and Lumeris has the expertise, technology and ambition to help lead what’s next. That’s an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. 2. What do you want people to know about you, and what is your most closely held belief about healthcare and where we’re headed? I’m a physician first, and that shapes everything I do. I’ve spent my career at the intersection of medicine, technology and business because I believe we can and must build a better healthcare system. My core belief is simple: The future of healthcare isn’t about doing more of the same. It’s about fundamentally changing how we deliver care, to create a more affordable, accessible, and satisfying patient experience with ever improving outcomes. AI gives us an unprecedented opportunity to make physicians more effective, patients healthier and healthcare more affordable. 3. What will your primary responsibilities be in this new role? My focus is on accelerating Lumeris’ value-based care business and helping bring the power of AI to more physicians, health systems and patients. I’ll lead our Value-Based Care Enablement business and provide clinical leadership for the continued development and adoption of Tom, our AI-powered Primary Care as a Service platform. Ultimately, my job is to help turn innovation into measurable results for providers, health systems and patients. 4. How does your previous experience position you for this role? I’ve worked across nearly every dimension of healthcare, from practicing medicine to building technology companies and leading large-scale population health and value-based care initiatives. I started my business career in California, implementing the first capitated care model for MediCal in San Francisco. I later joined Jim Clark as Chief Medical Officer of Healtheon (later WebMD), where we pioneered the use of the Internet in healthcare. At Aetna, I founded Healthagen and helped build a business supporting more than 70 accountable care organizations. Most recently, as CEO of Integra Connect, we focused on advancing value-based oncology care and precision medicine. Those experiences reinforced something important: Healthcare transformation requires more than great technology. It takes clinical knowledge, operational discipline and a business model that rewards better outcomes. That’s exactly the combination we’re bringing together at Lumeris. 5. How will you help accelerate Lumeris’ value-based care business, and how would you assess the current state of value-based care? Value-based care has made meaningful progress, but we haven’t yet realized its full potential. The economics are compelling, and the clinical rationale is undeniable. But too many providers still lack the tools, insights and operational support needed to succeed. The next chapter of value-based care will be defined by making it easier for physicians to deliver better care, not by asking them to do more with less. Lumeris has the experience, infrastructure and technology to help health systems scale value-based care. AI gives us the opportunity to dramatically accelerate that progress. I plan to build on those strengths, by deepening its solutions, innovating in the use and deployment of AI, and expanding our market reach. 6. What makes Lumeris uniquely positioned to advance value-based care? What are its core differentiators? There are plenty of companies with interesting healthcare technology. Far fewer have the experience to translate that technology into better clinical and financial performance. Lumeris understands both the science and the economics of value-based care. That’s a powerful differentiator. We’ve built deep expertise working with health systems and physicians, and we bring firsthand experience operating a Medicare Advantage health plan through Essence Healthcare. Now we’re combining that experience with advanced AI capabilities to help providers succeed in a fundamentally different model of care. 7. How is Lumeris combining its value-based care expertise with AI? AI is extraordinarily powerful, but technology alone doesn’t transform healthcare. The real breakthrough happens when you combine AI with deep clinical expertise, actionable data and insights into each patient's unique needs and gaps in care, with the ability to engage them in real time as active participants in their care every day. That’s what Lumeris is doing with Tom, our AI-powered Primary Care as a Service platform. We’re working to help physicians identify patient needs earlier, make better-informed decisions, reduce administrative complexity and deliver more proactive, personalized care. AI is the accelerator. Better care is the destination. 8. What role will you play in the continued development and adoption of Tom? My role is to help ensure Tom delivers meaningful clinical value and fits the realities of how physicians practice medicine. Technology succeeds in healthcare when it solves real problems for clinicians and patients. I’ll work closely with our teams to guide Tom’s clinical development and support its adoption across health systems and physician organizations. The measure of success isn’t how sophisticated the AI is. It’s whether physicians can care for more patients, make better decisions and achieve better outcomes. 9. What most excites you about Tom and its development? What excites me most is the opportunity to fundamentally expand what primary care can accomplish and how we can better serve populations at scale, keeping them well and identifying and addressing conditions before they become serious and requiring complex care and hospitalization. Primary care is the foundation of a better healthcare system, but physicians are overwhelmed, capacity is constrained and too much of their time is consumed by administrative work. Tom has the potential to change that equation, giving physicians more capacity, better insights and more time to focus on what matters most: their patients. We’re talking about moving from a system that’s largely reactive to one that’s increasingly proactive, personalized and connected. 10. How can Tom help physicians address capacity constraints and administrative burdens? Physicians didn’t go into medicine to spend their days navigating administrative complexity. They went into medicine to care for patients. Yet administrative demands continue to consume valuable time and limit capacity. Tom is designed to work within clinical workflows, helping reduce administrative burden, improve access and support more proactive care. It can help automate complex processes, identify gaps in care that can be addressed early, before they cause major illness and augment the physician's ability to engage patients and participants in their own care, every day. The opportunity with AI isn’t to replace physicians. It’s to give them superpowers, to extend their reach, sharpen their insights and free them to practice medicine. 11. How can Lumeris help health systems improve clinical and financial performance? The fundamental promise of value-based care is that better outcomes and stronger financial performance can go hand in hand. But achieving both requires the right combination of clinical strategy, technology, data and operational execution. Lumeris brings those capabilities together to help health systems better manage populations, improve care delivery and succeed under value-based reimbursement models that align incentives around keeping patients well. The goal isn’t simply to take costs out of healthcare. It’s to eliminate waste, improve outcomes and create a more sustainable model for delivering care. 12. What opportunities do you see to improve patient care through Lumeris’ technology and services? One of healthcare’s greatest challenges is that we still spend too much time reacting to illness rather than preventing it. We have an opportunity to change that. By combining AI, clinical insights and value-based care expertise, we can help physicians identify risks earlier, coordinate care more effectively and engage patients more meaningfully in managing their health. Imagine a healthcare system that anticipates patients’ needs instead of waiting for them to get sick. That’s the future we’re working toward. And it’s a future where technology strengthens the relationship between physicians and patients rather than getting in the way. Chuck keeps coming back to the business model. He’s been in the room for capitation, the dot-com era, and the ACO wave, and his lesson from all of it is that great technology needs “a business model that rewards better outcomes.” I’d take it a step further. In fee-for-service, an AI that closes care gaps and keeps patients out of the hospital works against the hospital’s own P&L, since every avoided admission is lost revenue. Under risk, it’s the whole ballgame. So putting Tom and VBC enablement under one leader is the right call, and I think more AI primary care plays end up structured this way. I also loved this line: “The measure of success isn’t how sophisticated the AI is.” Every CIO who’s sat through an AI demo this year would co-sign that. Now comes the hard part. Chuck describes his job as turning innovation into measurable results. With Ochsner as Tom’s flagship enterprise deployment, I’ll be watching how many health systems and physician organizations follow, and what the numbers look like once they do. Congrats to Chuck on the new gig, and welcome to the Tom cast of characters. Sponsored by Laudio Clinical Ladder Programs (CLPs) facilitate career growth, but they also have to be financially sustainable and aligned with organizational strategy. The latest AONL and Laudio Insights report analyzes 70,500 ladder applications from 41,500 RNs to reveal how CLPs vary widely in design, participation, and impact. The report pairs data with actionable tips and strategies from nurse leaders who have redesigned their programs to boost workforce engagement and retention. AI RETREAT UPDATE The CFO’s Guide to AII’ve been hearing the same thing from finance leaders all year: AI is supposed to fix margins, but payors deploy it faster than providers can keep up. Denials are climbing, coding is getting more complicated, and patients are paying more out of pocket than ever. Meanwhile, every vendor promises ROI. There’s a whole lot of talk, but nobody’s having the right conversations. That’s why I'm hosting the Hospitalogy AI Retreat next month**.** I’m pulling together a small room of health system CFOs, revenue cycle VPs, and data and IT senior leaders to get candid about:
It’s off the record, and travel and hotel are covered for approved attendees. If you run the revenue side of a health system, this is your room. If you know someone who does, forward this along. MISCELLANEOUS MADDENINGS Texas fans (and fanbases in general) have short memories and entitled mindsets. I went to Texas as a student in Mack Brown’s last year, and Charlie Strong’s 3 year tenure.
So when I see all of the things people are saying, I remember that it has been 5 years since we have even lost back to back games. And yes, NIL has fundamentally changed the college football landscape, and we are in pay-to-win territory. I acknowledge that comes with certain expectations. I just ask people don’t forget where the Texas Longhorns have come from since 2010, and will politely remind them of this team’s ceiling after our win on Saturday. Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email. — Blake | ||||||
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