FAIR Health Presents at Grantmakers in Health Annual Conference
July 21, 2022
FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd delivered a virtual presentation at the Grantmakers in Health Annual Conference on Health Philanthropy, which was held in Miami, Florida, and virtually on June 27-29, 2022. Addressing attendees at the largest gathering of health funders in the country, Ms. Gelburd spoke as part of a presentation entitled “A National Initiative to Advance Cost Information in Shared Decision Making for Serious Health Conditions in Older Adults: Emerging Insights for the Future of Healthcare.”
Joining Ms. Gelburd in the presentation were Scott Bane, JD, MPA, Program Officer at The John A. Hartford Foundation, and Pamela Cacchione, PhD, CRNP, BC, FGSA, FAAN, Ralston House Term Chair of Gerontological Nursing and Professor of Geropsychiatric Nursing, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. All three presenters are currently involved in the project “A National Initiative to Advance Cost Information in Shared Decision Making for Serious Health Conditions,” which FAIR Health is conducting with generous funding from The John A. Hartford Foundation.
Mr. Bane spoke first, providing background on The John A. Hartford Foundation, its mission and priority areas, and the FAIR Health initiative. Ms. Gelburd then reviewed FAIR Health’s projects related to shared decision making, with emphasis on the most recent one funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation. Dr. Cacchione, who is on the Project Advisory Board for the initiative, discussed her perspective on shared decision making and how it affects the clinical care of older adults.
In her part of the presentation, Ms. Gelburd defined shared decision making as the conversation between the provider and the patient and/or caregiver regarding treatment options and care, balancing clinical evidence with patients’ preferences and values. She noted that decision aids (tools presenting clinical treatment options for a specific clinical condition or scenario) had typically lacked cost information until FAIR Health began integrating such information, based on its repository of billions of private healthcare claims. She explained how the new initiative will introduce five decision aids on hip osteoarthritis (nonsurgical treatment options), hip replacement, spinal narrowing (stenosis of the lower back), early-stage breast cancer and fast-growing prostate cancer. The initiative will also introduce three new FH® Total Treatment Cost scenarios, detailing the full range of costs on Alzheimer’s disease/dementia, heart failure and major depression.
Ms. Gelburd offered a preview of how the tools will appear when launched this September in a new, dedicated “Older Adults” section of fairhealthconsumer.org, FAIR Health’s free, award-winning consumer website. In addition to offering links to the shared decision-making tools and FH Total Treatment Cost scenarios, the section will highlight FAIR Health’s medical and dental cost lookup tools, as well as educational content for older adults and their families and caregivers.