Morgan Health, started by JPMorgan Chase in 2021, aims to incite innovation by pinpointing employer-based health-care system’s inadequacies and discomforts. As the chief technology officer of corporate responsibility at Morgan Health, Tiffany West Polk states the company’s primary focus is on enhancing healthcare outcomes, affordability, and equality while constructing its efforts on data. Polk accentuates the importance of procuring insights from an extensive amount of data, as well as securing and optimizing analytical platforms, making sure the company remains HIPAA and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) compliant.
According to Polk, the present U.S. healthcare system seems incapable of balancing high-quality medical care and positive health outcomes with increasing expenses.
- When analyzing the broader United States context, a considerable part of the healthcare safety net is composed of employer-sponsored insurance. Employers invest significantly to provide healthcare benefits to their employees, making it an important aspect for prospective employees when considering potential employers.
Exploring innovative ways to deliver healthcare, Morgan Health was established due to JPMorgan Chase’s interest in improving employer-sponsored healthcare, including for its 165,000 employees. Providing healthcare is a significant part of employment in the U.S. with nearly 160 million U.S. citizens having employer-provided health insurance according to KFF, a non-profit organization that researches health policies.
Morgan Health has significantly contributed to the medical sector by investing $130 million in five innovative healthcare firms over the past 18-plus months. These companies include Vera Whole Health, Embold Health, Kindbody, LetsGetChecked, and Centivo. Each of these firms introduces unique approaches to deliver remarkable healthcare, and their partnerships with Morgan Health serve to explore the impact of these changes on outcomes, equity, and pricing in healthcare delivery.
Polk emphasizes the existing challenges in the U.S healthcare system. Even with employer-sponsored insurance, several Americans still struggle to access quality and affordable healthcare. There is a need to break away from healthcare delivery’s current incentive model, which pays providers for services but does not appropriately consider patient outcomes.
- The existing incentive model rewards medical providers based on the number of patients seen or services performed, not based on improvements in patient health and wellness. Such a model accentuates volume, not value, compounding disparities in healthcare and negatively affecting individuals with employer-sponsored insurance.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are crucial to Morgan Health’s approach to problem-solving in healthcare, claims Polk. Despite the popularity of AI across sectors, Polk reminds us not to overlook data accessibility and quality. Polk believes the challenges of data quality and accessibility make this a thrilling and transformational period to be a chief technology officer and a technologist. Enhancing healthcare’s future is impossible without better data, and that is what the team at Morgan Health, including Polk, working on data and analytics is aiming for.
