Misha Palecek, DaVita Kidney Care, on delivering value based care to patients with kidney disease

06/02/23 • 27 min

In this episode, Zaid Malhees sits down with Misha Palecek, who currently serves as the Chief Transformation Officer for DaVita Kidney Care, a leading provider of kidney health services for more than 250K patients globally. Misha joined DaVita in 2005 and has stood up several ventures under the DaVita umbrella, including serving as President of Paladina, a start-up primary care business affiliated with DaVita. In Misha’s current role, he’s focused on business growth through strategic value-based care partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, joint venture partnerships, and care delivery innovations across the kidney care continuum.

Previous Episode

Dr. Bassem Mikhael, Somatus, on realigning incentives to better serve patients with kidney disease

In this episode, I sat down with Dr. Bassem Mikhael, SVP, of the Clinical Enterprise at Somatus. Started in 2016 by Dr. Ikenna Okezie, Somatus partners with clinicians, health plans, health systems, and multi-disciplinary community-based care teams to improve health, quality of life, and cost of care for patients with kidney disease. Somatus employs over 1,450 team members and serves more than 150,000 patients across 36 states. Dr. Mikhael and I discuss:

1) The vital role that kidneys play in maintaining health, the issues that arise from diseased kidneys, and how these challenges translate into per patient costs that are 10x higher, on average, than those for patients without kidney disease, 2) The traditional model for treating patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) and how Somatus’ model realigns incentives to focus on integrated, preventative, and patient-centered care, 3) Why the federal government, CMS, and CMMI have prioritized investments in kidney care and what we’ve learned from their initiatives and care model tests, and 4) Clinical innovations that make Dr. Mikhael optimistic about the future for patients living with kidney disease.

Next Episode

Dawn Alley, Carebridge, on scaling value-based payment models at CMMI and beyond

In this episode, I sat down with Dawn Alley, President of Decision Support at Carebridge, a company that works with health plans and states to care for individuals receiving long-term support services. Prior to joining Carebridge, Dawn spent about a decade working in the federal government as Chief Strategy Officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), and before that as Deputy Senior Advisor for Value-based Transformation at HHS.

Dawn and I discuss:

The main initiatives she worked on at CMMI including the Accountable Health Communities Model and Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program
Lessons learned during her tenure about implementing and delivering healthcare models at scale
Why Dawn is excited about the future of long-term care services and why she believes in Carebridge’s model