After a very successful 2024 Kellogg Business of Healthcare Conference, our team has been able to compile some key takeaways and highlights from talks given by our keynote speakers as well as the 6 in-depth panels involving key leaders across the healthcare landscape.

Keynote Speaker: Christi Shaw

Christi Shaw, the CEO of Kite Pharma, spoke at length about how her career pursuit in the biopharmaceutical industry was driven by her belief that she could “do well by doing good”. As a leader across multiple organizations, she stated that her core principles of PIE (People, Integrity, Excellence) informed her leadership style and guided how she formulated her career goals. She improved her leadership potential by developing a broad skillset to tackle any problem in a variety of ways – “the broader your base, the higher your peak” was her way of framing this strategy. Her advice to those wanting to influence others in the healthcare industry was to show people how much you really care about patients and patient outcomes.

Keynote Speaker: Mike Pykosz

Mike Pykosz started off his talk by stating that his work building Oak Street Health didn’t start with him thinking “I’m going to start a company, because I’m an entrepreneur”. He deeply studied the problem of wasteful healthcare spending in the United States – nearly $4 trillion is spent on healthcare with almost $1 trillion being spent wastefully. For value-based care businesses, Mike talked about how this waste is their profit pool. Now the President of Healthcare Delivery at CVS Health, he will be aiming to use CVS Health’s assets to scale the Oak Street model to a significantly larger patient base. Altogether, he summarized his successful healthcare business strategy as “needing a strong mission, volume of patients, and the business model to make economic sense”.

From Conception to Care: Women’s Health, Fertility, and Maternal Wellness Health

Carrot Fertility, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Laerdal Million Lives Fund, Mercer

In this panel, leaders came together to discuss the major problems that have affected the women’s health industry. 80% of women don’t have full fertility coverage and over 1 million women a year try and fail to get pregnant but don’t make an appointment at a fertility clinic due to stigma and lack of awareness. However, innovation themes in diagnostics and medical devices have provided promise for the future of this industry. In addition, many companies have rolled out travel abortion benefits since Dobbs vs Jackson, the Supreme Court ruling that returned abortion regulation to individual states. While this is a novel industry, there are plenty of opportunities to tackle key access and treatment issues to improve maternal wellness health in the United States.

Anti-Obesity Drugs: America’s Weight-Loss Drug Revolution

Feinberg School of Medicine, WeightWatchers, Obesity Action Coalition, Blue Cross Blue Shield Illinois

This panel started off noting that the US is at an inflection point in obesity care – new GLP-1 medications can be used by a large percentage of the population and can reduce body weight by 15-25% compared to alternatives that only lead to a 6-10% change. Experts discussed how these medications are disruptive but need to be used in the right environment that provides comprehensive care. The US healthcare system is not set up to treat all who need obesity care; much work is needed (e.g., infrastructure, supply) to get the drugs into the hands of those who need them most. These medications are relatively new and expensive innovations, and as a result, insurance coverage is currently limited; providers need to be incentivized to code for obesity and payers will likely need to treat obesity like other chronic conditions to justify coverage.

Hospital Consolidation: The Future of Horizontal Consolidation Among Health Systems

Endeavor Health, Kaiser Permanente, Bates White Economic Consulting, Chartis

Leaders discussed the 3 key factors driving an increase in health system consolidation. Scale is critical as it is believed to help weather uncertainty and improve access in specialty care. Anti-trust pressure is on in-market mergers can also drive vertical and cross-market mergers. The third key factor is the razor thin operating margin hospitals have forces them to pursue deals to improve efficiency. This can be seen in Kaiser Permanente’s latest growth strategy: launching Risant to then acquire 5-6 non-profit health systems. Research has shown that consolidation tends to raise prices for patients on average, but measuring benefits is complicated and takes time to accrue, making this a burgeoning discussion topic in the healthcare industry for the foreseeable future.

Value-Based Care: Effectively Engaging Specialists in Value-Based Care Models

UnitedHealth Group, Valtruis, Somatus, Oncology Care Partners

In this panel, key stakeholders representing value-based insurers, networks, and investors came together to talk about how specialty-led value-based care models will lead with episodes of care and total cost of care capitation – “those who pursue value-based care will be on the right side of history”. They discussed how these will likely enter key opportunity areas like oncology, nephrology, and substance abuse. In addition, they noted that value-based investment has been heavily invested in primary care and is much more mature relative to value-based models in specialty care.

Artificial Intelligence: Expectations and Applications of Generative AI in Care Delivery

GE Healthcare, MCRA, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Paige.AI

Leaders across the tech landscape, healthcare providers, and regulatory bodies discussed how AI can be used to reduce human errors and increase human efficiency. In fact, 79% of executives are currently initiating and implementing 3 or more AI solutions (15-20% increase in the last 2 years). In the future, they expect it to extend capabilities beyond a single device to touch the entire ecosystem from tracking patient journeys to harmonizing patient data for a longitudinal view. They did caution that the costs of implementation, regulatory hurdles, and building patient and physician trust will be critical in affecting the adoption rate. However, they do believe that AI will continue to be a major area of investment and innovation for decades to come.

Cell and Gene Therapies: Achieving Near-Term Scalability Across the Healthcare Ecosystem

Advisory Board, Phoenix Biotech, Pfizer, Cardinal Health

Panelists sat down to talk about the how the financial risk behind investing in cell and gene therapies can limit funding and its effect on scalability. They also discussed how patient access is limited by social determinants of health and upstream variables. To mitigate these challenges, payer contracting models such as risk pooling via orphan reimbursement were discussed as well as investing in critical commercial infrastructure. The panel expressed optimism that prices would come down over time with the influx of competition entering this space.

To those that attended the conference, we trust you've also had a chance to reflect on learnings from KBHC 2024.

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Thanks,

The KBHC Team

2024 Kellogg Business of Healthcare Conference Takeaways and Highlights