Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts CMO Sandhya Rao, MD, spoke to Becker's about her time at the JPMorgan, Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway startup Haven, and the primary focus of her current role at BCBS.
Below is an excerpt from the podcast. Listen to the full interview here.
Editor's note: This response has been edited lightly for clarity.
Question: It's fascinating to hear your journey from being a clinician, working on population health all the way through your time at Haven. And now with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, I can imagine there are just so many different ideas and opportunities to, as you've mentioned, make the care process better for patients. What are your top priorities today and how do you anticipate they're going to change in the coming year?
Dr. Sandhya Rao: I can think of at least three that I don't think will change over the next year. The first is supporting our members through COVID. I'm really proud of the work that predates me when the pandemic started, where we worked to support primary care physicians financially, we identified high-risk patients through some algorithms. And then as we progressed, we made sure that virtual care was accessible, that behavioral health was accessible. And now as we're in the vaccine rollout, making sure that every single member who's eligible is aware. And then when we find members who have transportation issues, for example, or are home-bound, we work with them to get them the vaccine.
The second big area, which I don't think will change in the next year, is working with our providers to address health equity. This is not new for us, but certainly in light of the pandemic, has become a more intense focus. And we've had close partnerships with providers for many years, looking at quality. And in the coming years, we hope to do that with the health equity lens, with the first step being getting accurate data on race among our members, which is a major priority.
And then the third area, which unfortunately I don't think will change in the next year either, is behavioral health. As we all have seen, there's been a tremendous increase in the demand for behavioral health, including among children and adolescents. So we've taken a number of actions to grow capacity in our network, to support tele-behavioral health, and even provide all of our members with a self-service type program. This journey is not over despite those actions. We still hear a lot from members about this need and the need across different members within the family. And so I think we'll be working on that for a long time.