As the leader of consulting services for COPE Health Solutions, Evan King has been instrumental in developing the company’s key service lines, competencies and skilled workforce that have helped clients across the country, including California, Texas, Washington and New York. King has directed the strategic planning, design and implementation of complex engagements that have allowed COPE Health Solutions’ clients to prepare for health care reform by focusing on areas such as clinical integration, physician-hospital alignment, financial modeling, population health analytics, health information technology and ambulatory network development. King is also one of the select few with deep knowledge and expertise in Medicaid 1115 Waiver Demonstration Projects. His success in helping to establish value-based integrated delivery models with greater coordination across the continuum of care has earned his clients state and national recognition.
King has been instrumental in the design and development of all payer IPAs in markets facing significant consolidation and transformation around payer change, such as Medicaid expansion, integration of dual eligibles into managed care and Exchange products.
With a Master’s degree in Public Health (Healthcare Management) and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, King also brings international expertise and perspective to his role at COPE Health Solutions. He has both studied and worked abroad, in Mexico and South America—including six months in Brazil and seven months in Chile.
King, who first joined COPE Health Solutions as an intern, recently shared his thoughts on consulting, connecting with clients and building clinical leadership.
On what led him to a career in health care consulting:
King: I chose health care because I wanted the opportunity to improve the system in terms of how people access care and to improve their wellbeing and to reduce the inefficiencies and waste that have driven unnecessary costs and artificial barriers to access. There’s still a lot of room for improvement and ways that we can do things better to make better use of limited resources and increase sustainable access to care for vulnerable populations, and further reduce disparities in care. I also like consulting because of the new challenges, diversity of the engagements and the opportunity to build and work with amazing teams, both internally and with the clients. There’s the chance to learn and build on knowledge gained from each engagement and to constantly improve on products and services while being able to have touch points across different types of providers and different markets.
On connecting with clients:
King: I engage with executives and physician leadership to determine their pressure points, goals and vision. We then create a process around that conversation to make the vision more tangible across the organization and attainable from an execution perspective. Often, clients know where they want to go but not how to get there or how to organize the business case to unify the various stakeholders around a common endpoint, so it’s my job to craft and refine that vision so it aligns with organizational strategy and core business. I then determine what the steps are to get there, how to organize work, bridge resource gaps and build competencies. We have to listen to what our clients want while paying attention to what’s happening in the market and what’s realistic, so we can create timely, meaningful and responsive solutions.
On the importance of clinical leadership:
King: We appreciate the role of physician and clinical leaders and we see them having a greater influence on strategies and models to deliver sustainable, value-based care and within a population health model. It’s a two-way street though, getting physicians and clinical staff meaningfully engaged and getting hospital or health system leadership to truly open the decision-making and strategic planning process to the perspective of physicians. There was a barrier in the beginning to bringing physicians into the discussions and we got a lot of pushback. But now, a larger proportion of clients are taking lead from national best practice physician-led organizations, and integrating increasingly the clinical perspective, and defining roles for physician leaders within governance and recognizing the value of this transformation in thinking and business planning. Without physician leadership and on-the-ground clinical perspectives on realigning care delivery and financial models, strategies will underperform and fail to make a competitive offering in the market.
Contact Evan King at eking@copehealthsolutions.com and read his full bio here.