Warren Skea
Executive Director for Belmont Collaborative for Health Systems Innovation & Clinical Assistant Professor | Fellow | Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer, Axenic Health Solutions
Thomas F. Frist, Jr. College of Medicine, Belmont Collaborative for Health Systems Innovation
PhD, MA
warren.skea@belmont.eduBiography
With a near 30-year healthcare career, Warren Skea, has become a distinguished leader in the healthcare industry. His academic credentials include a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Health Policy and Research Methodology that has provided him with deep policy insights along with the capability to incorporate statistical research methods that he has fiercely applied to his work throughout his career. He is currently the Co-Founder, Chief Science Officer and member of the Board of Directors at Axenic Health Solutions – a startup company that focuses on innovative technologies to reduce healthcare infections.
Warren started his career by leading the development of Case Mix reimbursement tools such as DRGs, RVUs, and Length of Stay (LOS) for both acute care and ambulatory care that were designed for payments to the utilized for hospital and physician reimbursement. This led him to be a member of several high-level funding policy committees across designed to introduce theses Case Mix Tools (DRGs, RVUs) into funding models. This integration of activity and cost data represents the necessary foundation to deploy a sustainable, equitable and accountable healthcare financing model.
However, this exclusively macroeconomic approach and understanding is insufficient. It was clear to Warren that gaining a deep understanding of how different healthcare clinical delivery models operationally function and optimally integrate was critical. Warren’s career then took a turn directly into the healthcare provider world and, specifically, into the provision and measurement of quality care. As a hospital administrator at an integrated healthcare system, he contributed his expertise in the topics of reimbursement methodologies and applied it to physician alignment strategies, quality and performance improvement as well as the procurement of new technology as the trusted advisor to the CEO and the entire executive team. This experience with healthcare operations led him to the consulting world where for 15 years he was a Partner in both PwC’s Healthcare Advisory Practice as well as in Guidehouse’s (formerly Navigant) Healthcare Strategic Advisory practice. Leveraging this expertise, he designed, managed and lead over 100 engagements with many large teams at U.S. hospital, payer, and physician clients on strategy and implementation of several CMS and private payer-based reimbursement initiatives.
Moreover, he is an extensively published researcher on the topics of emerging population health models such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) - including a chapter on governance models with physicians in the Dartmouth-Brookings National ACO Toolkit (Mark McClellan et al). Skea was a pioneer on new reimbursement models and has worked with clients on their strategy, development and implementation of U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Medicare Bundled Payments, Pioneer ACO and Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACO programs as well as their commercial insurance risk bearing contracts.