EP198: The Trend Toward Direct-to-Employer ACOs, With Eric Parmenter, National Leader of Value-Based Care at Collective Health
September 20, 2018
198
34:28

EP198: The Trend Toward Direct-to-Employer ACOs, With Eric Parmenter, National Leader of Value-Based Care at Collective Health

Eric is established as a national expert on the impact of health care reform on health care providers and is a respected thought leader in the hospital health system industry. A consultant with deep experience in health plan strategy, design, prevention care, and productivity and behavioral economics, Eric serves as the national leader of direct provider solutions for Collective Health. A former executive at Evolent Health and principal with Towers Watson, he has worked in the employee benefits business for 30-plus years as an advisor to hospital and health system clients, developing health benefit and prevention care strategies that align with the health system’s population health business. Eric focuses on improving the poor health of health care workers and professionals as a first step to improving patient satisfaction and quality outcomes. He frequently speaks about the direct link between improving health care workers’ health and boosting patient satisfaction and quality outcomes.

Eric is a published author, including the book STOP!: 21 Stops to Reduce Stress and Enhance Joy, and has authored more than 20 articles on employee benefit topics, including "Fixing the Broken Triangle," "The Healthcare Benefit Crisis—Ten Years Later" in 2015, "Choice Architecture—A Tool for Ratcheting Up Benefit and Wellness Results,"eACOs—The Health Plan of the Future," and "The Healthcare Benefit Crisis." A member of several "Who’s Who" lists for business executives, Eric graduated from the University of Illinois with a BA in psychology and earned his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.


02:30 The disintermediation of health systems and employers by insurance carriers.
02:56 “... the facilitators of payments …”
04:09 How does the move away from the best interest of the buyer and seller in health care manifest?
06:31 “Health care eats wages.”
08:31 The variances in health care.
08:55 Cost and quality in health care.
09:32 An employer-driven economy in health care vs an employer-paid economy in health care.
11:20 Defining ACO—accountable care organization.
12:49 The two forms of moving to a more value-based care—carrier-based ACOs and direct ACOs.
13:43 The use of direct ACOs.
14:47 “30% of employers are ... considering a direct-contracted ACO.”
17:03 How Collective Health’s direct contract with employers works.
17:58 Why providers choose to take risk and move toward value-based care with ACOs.
22:33 Are ACOs a direct threat to insurance carriers?
27:31 Providers taking initiative to go directly to employers.
30:17 Setting up measurement framework.

healthcare,aco,collective health,value-based care,direct-to-employer,
|
|

Episode Support Provided By

Special Thanks to Our 2026 Sustaining Monthly Donors

Marilyn Bartlett, Kimberly Carleson, Dylan Yahn, Benjamin Light, Matt McQuideAnn Kempski, Spencer Allen, Scott Tromanhauser, 
Steven Elkins, Matthew Bunte, and Lori Smith.

Recent Episodes

EP525: PMPM vs FFS—The Perverse Incentives Plan Sponsors Sometimes Miss, With Cristin Dickerson, MD
Relentless Health ValueAugust 19, 2026
525
16:3315.14 MB

EP525: PMPM vs FFS—The Perverse Incentives Plan Sponsors Sometimes Miss, With Cristin Dickerson, MD

Listen on Your Favorite App So, this one's gonna be a little bit different. Back last year, I sat down with Dr. Cristin Dickerson. She is the founding partner of Green Imaging , which is a physician-led radiology network doing direct contracting for imaging. And we talked about how imaging can run 6...

EP524: Beating Provider Network Pricing Games by Thinking About Buying Healthcare Like a Manufacturer Supply Chain, With John Quinn
Relentless Health ValueAugust 12, 2026
524
17:0215.59 MB

EP524: Beating Provider Network Pricing Games by Thinking About Buying Healthcare Like a Manufacturer Supply Chain, With John Quinn

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. First off here, I would like to thank Casey Cormier for the really nice recurring donation. Thank you so much, Casey Cormier from  Stratis Group . Lately, traditional provider networks are increasingly being called into questi...

EP523: The Sleeping Giants of Healthcare—Why Self-insured Employers and Clinicians Keep Missing Each Other, With Suhas Gondi, MD, MBA
Relentless Health ValueAugust 05, 2026
523
35:1632.28 MB

EP523: The Sleeping Giants of Healthcare—Why Self-insured Employers and Clinicians Keep Missing Each Other, With Suhas Gondi, MD, MBA

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. Before we dive in today, I just wanted to give a quick but massive thank you to Alex Sommers, MD, ABEM, DipABLM, from Astia Health for his generous gift, which we are going to use to help fund a camera for the podcast here to level...

EP522: How Exactly Does GoodRx Make Money? With Ge Bai, PhD, CPA
Relentless Health ValueJuly 29, 2026
522
13:4512.58 MB

EP522: How Exactly Does GoodRx Make Money? With Ge Bai, PhD, CPA

Listen on Your Favorite App Arielle Bose: Hi, Stacey. This is Arielle Bose from EHD Insurance . Big fan of the podcast. We were talking about GoodRx the other day, and it occurred to me that I’m not exactly clear about how they make money. So, Stacey, how does GoodRx make money? For a full transcrip...

EP521: How Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Became an Over $200 Billion Healthcare Hot Potato, With Andrew Tsang
Relentless Health ValueJuly 22, 2026
521
36:1333.15 MB

EP521: How Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Became an Over $200 Billion Healthcare Hot Potato, With Andrew Tsang

Listen on Your Favorite App Hey, welcome to Relentless Health Value. Okay … so, on today's show, we are talking about (Andrew Tsang and I) revenue cycle management, which—I say this with real affection—is maybe the least sexy phrase in all of healthcare. It sounds like a back-office spreadsheet prob...

EP520: Cash-Pay Generic Drugs Are a Functioning Market in Healthcare—Policymakers Beware and Be Careful
Relentless Health ValueJuly 15, 2026
520
32:1829.56 MB

EP520: Cash-Pay Generic Drugs Are a Functioning Market in Healthcare—Policymakers Beware and Be Careful

Listen on Your Favorite App In the pachinko machine that is the healthcare industry, with just so many intermediaries, with so much regulatory capture and conflicts of interest that may or may not be visible, so much margin that is shrouded in mystery in an ecosystem as messy as this with so many va...

EP519: The Current State of Primary Care—Inevitable or Fixable? With Lisa Rosenbaum, MD
Relentless Health ValueJuly 08, 2026
519
40:0036.61 MB

EP519: The Current State of Primary Care—Inevitable or Fixable? With Lisa Rosenbaum, MD

Listen on Your Favorite App Hello, all you Relentless Tribe members. Today, let's start here. Right now, we are watching a very visible exodus of brilliant, consummate primary care (and other, honestly) physicians leaving traditional practice for concierge medicine or otherwise. For a full transcrip...

Listen and Follow

Sponsored by Aventria Health Group
©2026 BD Bridges LLC. All Rights Reserved.