Jaime Murillo, MD, senior vice president and chief cardiometabolic health officer of UnitedHealth Group, spoke about the big trends in cardiovascular care during a recent episode of the Becker's Healthcare cardiology podcast.
Here is an excerpt from the podcast. Click here to download the full episode.
Editor's note: This response was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: How do you see heart care evolving over the next 18 months or so?
Dr. Jaime Murillo: One of the best things about healthcare is that we are finally catching up to other industries. We've started to see changes that are going to beneficially impact the consumer. One of them is a trend that we already have seen, which is more cardiovascular care being provided in the outpatient space. That's a big one.
We also see new and already existing nontraditional companies coming into the healthcare space with innovative concepts. We have to pay attention because the traditional model of healthcare today is not what it's going to be tomorrow.
The other aspect that I just alluded to is more consumer engagement. We have always practiced healthcare around where the physician establishes their modus operandi. The reality is we need to be more attentive to the consumer's needs. But we also need to be more attentive to how convenient it is for them and engage them and empower them to facilitate their own care.
The other trend that I think of, especially after having joined UnitedHealth, is the fact that payers and large employers can actually play a more active role in ensuring that members and their employees have better care. In the past, there's been a more passive approach to it. Now they can be more assertive in a positive way in terms of both cost containment and an outcomes-based approach.
One other I will mention is disparities of care. In our retrospective analysis of cardiovascular care, we actually started to see very vividly that Black Americans, for instance, are more affected by not having blood pressure well-controlled. We see glycemia — or sugar — is more elevated among Asian people, which is an interesting trend. We know that Hispanic people have that as well. So we're trying to identify gaps in care where we can target better care.
And the last one, which I think is an exciting one, is how virtual care can really impact care. It's going to build that ecosystem where people can connect directly to their care and not have to wait three to six months to see a physician or wait until they go to the emergency room or the hospital.