Keith Fernandez, MD, serves as Chief Clinical Officer at Privia Health.
Keith will be serving on the panel "How to Reduce Variations in Care and Optimize Clinical Performance" at Becker's Hospital Review 12th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place in Chicago from April 25-28, 2022.
To learn more about the conference and Keith's session, click here.
Question: What are your top priorities for 2022?
Keith Fernandez: Privia’s top priorities for the year include maintaining a high degree of operational efficiency and physician satisfaction in the services we provide to our practice partners, expanding our capabilities and success in value-based and risk contracts, and continuing to build scaled provider networks across the country.
Q: How do you plan to pivot strategies this year to better serve patients?
KF: There is no need for Privia Health to change its strategy as we already work with all types of providers across all patient panels and all reimbursement models. We will continue to expand our offerings and capabilities in virtual care, including our 24/7 nurse-led triage and virtual clinic, partnerships in delivery of care in the home, and expanding our patient engagement strategies to deliver great care in all settings. Continuing to move practices to team-based systems and reducing the administrative burden is critical.
Q: What technologies and innovations are you most excited about in healthcare right now?
KF: The promise of AI is still much greater than the reality, but I remain very excited about the possibilities, to bring us a different understanding of our patients, people and practices, and to help build successful programs for very different populations. Clinical Decision Support (CDS) has a huge potential to reduce variation and harm, that so far, is only lightly used.
Q: What will the lasting legacy of COVID-19 be on the healthcare system?
KF: This is an easy one! As the pandemic becomes endemic, the lessons we learned regarding our failures as a healthcare system will not allow easy remedies. Different stakeholders will perceive those successes and failures differently, and thus their solutions will follow. Certainly, we need capabilities that are more effective in our public health system, including consensus on how we respond to the known and unknown threats, and more agility in expanding to meet a crisis.