CVS’ Karen Lynch wants value-based, not ‘volume-based,’ care

On the evening of Oct. 9, Karen Lynch, CEO of CVS Health, spoke at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit. 

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The publication recently named Ms. Lynch the most powerful woman in business for the third consecutive year. Over the past year, her company — the largest to ever be run by a woman — grew even larger, acquiring home healthcare company Signify Health for $8 billion and primary care provider Oak Street Health for $10.6 billion. 

During her opening remarks at Fortune’s summit, Ms. Lynch discussed the method behind the hodgepodge of entities that now make up CVS Health: drug stores, insurance, home health and primary care. 

“Our vision and our strategy is really about building connections in healthcare,” Ms. Lynch said. “We are driving at value-based care versus volume-based care. We’re driving at consumer connections and personal engagement by using technology so that people can be connected to their healthcare.

“And we are driving at community convenience, because healthcare isn’t just about going to the doctor, it’s about being in the community and having transportation to the doctor. It’s about being in the home and having access to healthy nutrition,” Ms. Lynch continued. “So essentially, our strategy in a nutshell is connecting all the dots for someone on their healthcare journey. And so we will be in the community, we will be in the home, and we will be digitally connected.”

Ms. Lynch said such shakeups are necessary if the troubled industry is going to survive: “If we don’t have radical change in the healthcare system, we will falter and we will fail.”

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