Health integration is about more than creating a better healthcare system—it’s about improving health outcomes, lowering costs, and improving experiences for everyone. At the Texas Health Institute’s Health Integration Leadership Convening in October 2024, leaders from various sectors collaborated to identify key priorities for transforming health systems. These priorities included reducing friction between payers and clinicians, changing the way we measure improved health and developing clear, actionable strategies. Addressing these challenges is critical for advancing health integration.

Attendees identified payment systems as a major obstacle, which hinder efforts to scale and sustain healthcare systems. Payers and clinicians often struggle due to perceived misaligned incentives, complicated administrative processes, and lack of trust. These issues make it hard to move forward with integrated care.

Key Themes and the Need for Texas-Specific Strategies

National strategies—such as value-based payment models and improved data sharing—address some of the challenges payers and clinicians face. However, these strategies often lack specific guidance on how to facilitate change, address real-world challenges, and promote the relationship-building necessary for sustainable change. Given Texas’s size and varying regional needs, developing strategies tailored to our state is vital for transforming care delivery.

Key ideas from other initiatives around the nation include:

• Building trust and relationships between payers and clinicians to encourage collaboration.¹
• Simplifying administrative tasks to reduce the workload for primary care providers.²
• Creating initiatives that are straightforward and relevant to systems’ needs.³
• Offering financial incentives that focus on better outcomes and sustainability.¹
• Open and transparent communication channels to prevent misunderstandings and align goals.³

These ideas are a great starting point, but they need to be adjusted to meet Texas’ unique needs.

Health Integration Recommendations Committee

We are pleased to announce the launch of a recommendations committee, a new collaborative effort to advance health integration. The committee will spend six months co-designing recommendations to align payers and clinicians through trust-building and collaboration to turn these ideas into real solutions. The committee will include clinicians, payers, community leaders, and administrators working together to:

• Address the unique needs of Texas.
• Build trust through open communication.
• Create action items that reduce friction between payers and clinicians in Texas.

The goal of this work is to create clear, actionable recommendations that offer sustainable solutions and transform the healthcare system in Texas. If you are interested in participating in the recommendations committee, please contact Kara Hill at khill@texashealthinstitute.org.

Working Together for Change

Texas Health Institute is committed to advancing health integration through collaboration and partnership. Together, we can create solutions that build a better healthcare system for all Texans. To learn more about how you can get involved in our work to advance health integration, please visit our health integration webpage.

References

1. BMC Primary Care. (2023). Primary Care Engagement in Health System Change: A Scoping Review. Retrieved from https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-023-02117-2

2. Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS). (2023). Supporting Complex Care Models through Strong Provider-Payer Partnerships. Retrieved from https://www.chcs.org/supporting-complex-care-models-through-strong-provider-payer-partnerships-key-considerations/

3. National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). (2024). Cross-Sector Collaboration: New Research and Recommendations. Retrieved from https://www.ncqa.org/blog/cross-sector-collaboration-new-research-and-recommendations/