Integrated Care: Breaking Down the Workers' Compensation and General Health Care Silos

Healthcare delivery in the United States is currently expensive and fragmented. Public funds support healthcare for disabled poor, the elderly, and uninsured, and employers fund most of the healthcare for the working age population. This disjointed approach contributes to system inefficiencies. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) provide renewed opportunities to integrate the various healthcare delivery systems. Integrated care is an idea that has been vetted in the past and is ripe for current implementation. This roundtable discusses this issue with various stakeholders with an interest in healthcare delivery, including representatives from social insurance, group health insurance, and workers’ compensation. Speakers will address prior experiences with integrated (24-hour) care, barriers to its implementation under current federal and state law, Medicare offsets and how they could be streamlined, and practical strategies for moving forward to provide better healthcare for all.

• Fred Fung, MD, Medical Director, Occupational Medicine, Sharp HealthCare: Barriers to integrating care, recent provider experience
• Frank Neuhauser, University of California, Berkeley Survey Research Center: Medicare set asides, overlapping issues
• Bernyce Peplowski, Chief Innovation Officer, U.S. Health Works: 24-hour care from a provider’s perspective
• Paul Heaton, Director,  RAND Institute for Civil Justice; Senior Economist: How changes to the Health Care System under the Affordable Care Act affect Workers' Compensation
• Moderator: Rupali Das, MD, Executive Medical Director, California Division of Workers' Compensation

Co-Sponsored by Safeway and U.S. Healthworks