AI & organizational realities, rising labor costs, and specialty care as the next wave of virtual care and VBC: insights from 150 payer & provider execs | Ezra Mehlman (HEP) and Tom Cassels (Manatt)
Health Tech Nerds Radio · Kevin O'Leary
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Show Notes
Kevin is joined by HEP Managing Partner, Ezra Mehlman, and Executive Partner, Tom Cassels, to discuss findings from Health Enterprise Partner’s annual LP survey of ~150 health system and health plan executives.
They highlight widespread but shallow AI adoption which has the potential to widen gaps between best-in-class organizations that redesign processes, and laggards that “slap on” tools.
They also discuss the finding that nearly 90% of providers expect labor costs per discharge to rise in 2026, driven by slow human/organizational change and persistent clinical labor pressures.
They also discuss virtual care’s “next wave” as operationally embedded by specialty (e.g., behavioral health, OB/GYN, orthopedics), and growing payer-provider collaboration via specialty-focused risk/shared-savings models (e.g., kidney, cardiology) and improving interoperability as a path out of adversarial “bot vs bot” dynamics.
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