Scheduling Well-Child Visits: Taking Demand for Acute Visits into Account

Image

By Robert L. Moore, MD, MPH, MBA, Chief Medical Officer

“The art of scheduling lies in balancing supply and demand.”

– Rosemarie Nelson, Medical Group Management Association

Note to readers: This month’s lead article is more quantitative than usual. I tried my best to make it accessible, but to fully grasp it, I do recommend reading it at that time of the day when you are most alert!

Many clinical quality measures lend themselves to year-end “sprints” where staff call up patients to encourage them to complete mammograms, cervical cancer screening, blood pressure checks, blood tests, etc. – typically from early October through December 31.

Theoretically, well-child visits could also be the focus of a year-end “sprint,” but this rarely works, for several reasons:

  1. Toward the end of the year, holiday plans mean families would rather wait until the following year to schedule the visit.
  2. Clinicians also take needed time off for the holidays, leaving the covering team understaffed while caring for acute problems with reduced capacity to deliver preventive care.
  3. By November and December, respiratory infections start increasing sharply, constraining the number of available appointments for well-child visits.
  4. So few well-child visits are completed within the first nine months of the year, that it causes many children to be overdue at the end of the year without enough time in the remaining schedules for them all to be seen.

The last scenario is common for Quality Improvement teams at Primary Care Provider (PCP) offices visited by Partnership’s Performance Improvement team. Several practices feel a sense of hopelessness towards the idea of catching up before the new year begins. (See Clinic A below)

Real data from three sites in 2024 shows this pattern of visits for Clinics A, B, and C, shown on the next page.

Cumulative Well Child Visits

Clinic A averaged just 2.1% of their total population with a well-child visit each month, steadily maintaining that rate throughout the year with no discernable effort to catch up. Their scheduling of well-child-visits was rigidly inadequate with possibility for flexing the schedule to catch up. When they analyzed their gap in September, they were so far from target that they had no hope of catching up, so they did not try.

Clinic B had a slow and steady rate from January through May, with a concerted effort to increase visits in June through August. From September through December, the rate continued to rise steadily, achieving the goal in December.

Clinic C averaged 3.4% of their total population through July. At that continued rate, they would never have reached their target. However, they began a big push for August through December, with an average of 9% for the last five months of the year, ultimately beating the target by 15%.

A practice that was determined to achieve the target, but to have a completely steady number of well[1]child visits per month, would have to see 5.1% of their pediatric patients aged 3-17 every month to achieve the goal of 61% by the end of the year. I could not identify any primary care office in Partnership’s 24 counties that had 5% per month or more of their pediatric patients with a well-child visit in the first few months of the year.

While Clinics B and C reached the target, they expended significant effort to catch up in the second half of the year, starting in June and August, respectively. This corresponds to the summer break from school, when scheduling well-child visits is a bit easier. However, in both cases, significant effort continued from September through December to achieve the full point target.

How does this scheduling pattern compare to the demand for visits for acute illnesses?

In their article measuring the demand for same day visits for acute problems in 2001, Forjuob et al (2001) describe that such visits varied significantly by month of the year:

In this normalized data, same day appointment demand ranges from a low of 80 to a high of 120 visits per day. Starting in late April, you may see a reprieve from the scheduling pressures due to seasonal upper respiratory infections.

The lowest demand for visits for acute problems is between May and August. November through March has the highest demand for such visits, corresponding to the typical pattern of seasonal respiratory illness.

Not shown in this graph is the variation by day of the week, with Monday having an average annual demand of 123 and Wednesday having an average annual demand of 91.

In developing a weekly schedule, fewer well-child visits should be scheduled on Monday. You can access an Excel spreadsheet with the daily data here.

Why don’t well-child visits start rising in April, as the respiratory infection season starts easing? This would seem to be a logical time to start increasing well-child visits, instead of waiting until the busiest month of the year (December) to heroically reach the target.

The answer is recency bias, in which our minds give greater importance to the most recent event. In March, when we are opening our schedules for the next few months, we are in the fourth month of very busy schedules, working late every day. It seems like it will keep going like this forever. We forget we are on a predictable downslope in demand and don’t start ramping up our summer schedule for appointments until we notice fewer people are calling in for same-day appointments; same-day appointments are not always full. We then adjust our schedules to accommodate more well-child visits, keeping this schedule into November or December to achieve our preventive-health[1]visit targets, even as the schedule starts getting busy again.

Planning ahead for the predictable decrease in demand for acute/same-day visits starting in late April, and then steadily increasing the number of well-child visit appointments from April through June, will help spread out the workload. This can make a big dent in the number of well-child visits needed, so an end-of-the-year sprint has a better chance of succeeding.

Planning your schedule for well-child visits at the beginning of the year, taking into account demand for same-day visits as well as staff time off, can set your office up for success in reaching the target! From late April through June, consider a mid-year sprint effort focused on scheduling well child visits before summer vacation schedules begin to limit appointment access.

Preparing Our Staff for Emergencies

By Robert L. Moore, MD, MPH, MBA, Chief Medical Officer

“When the pressure is on, we don’t rise to the occasion, we fall to the highest level of preparation.”

– Chris Voss, Author and Former FBI Negotiator

At the end of residency training, what knowledge do clinicians retain, and what tends to fade quickly over time?

Knowledge is often retained when clinicians experience a high-stakes clinical syndrome firsthand – watching it unfold, making difficult decisions, and later second-guessing whether those decisions were correct. In contrast, information is often forgotten quickly when it comes to reading about a topic they have never personally encountered.

Memories are stronger when the neuronal connections associated with that memory are more myelinated and have redundant pathways. Memories become stronger with repetition, when memories are attached to emotion, if the memory involves multiple learning modalities (listening, reading, watching, and doing), if the information is repeated over time, and if it is associated with other memories.

Some clinical scenarios are rare, but the consequences of decisions are particularly impactful. Some examples include unexpectedly being a clinician responsible for the care of a person with cardiopulmonary arrest, major trauma, status epilepticus, or obstetrical emergency.

Being relatively calm and effective in these cases depends on the level of preparation and knowledge one has gained before being confronted with an emergency. The more automatic our actions are, the faster and more accurate they will be.

Simulations and case studies are two helpful resources to help prepare for high-stakes situations. If the scenario requires a manual skill, watching a video or practicing the actual skill with some repetition is essential (simulation). If the scenario involves high-stakes decision making, a deeper and more considered thought process is helpful (case studies). Watching attentively as one of our peers struggles with the manual skills or cognitive processes of an emergency also reinforces the neural pathway; so, learning as a team is better than learning alone.

What sort of emergencies might you encounter in an outpatient practice? One of the most common is a patient who unexpectedly loses consciousness or nearly loses consciousness. First, we must quickly assess the situation to determine the underlying severity of the situation. Is it a vasovagal reaction, a hypoglycemic episode, or a cardiopulmonary arrest? Subsequently, or sometimes simultaneously, promptly initiating treatments that will help or resolve the situation is key.

Training together as a team offers other major benefits, such as: deepening trust with teammates, developing shared mental models so that the actions of others can be anticipated, and strengthening communication to be as efficient as possible in an emergency situation. In the past several months, Partnership has been sponsoring trainings in obstetrical emergencies for hospital teams and found that the enhanced team effectiveness was a major unexpected benefit highlighted by the hospitals afterwards.

Unfortunately, as our health care delivery system has moved to the convenience of online training for Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS), Basic Life Support (BLS), etc., this becomes a missed opportunity to develop our team effectiveness, particularly with new staff. We might consider alternating or augmenting our online training with in-person scenarios to help the material resonate better and build team effectiveness. Another best practice could be to combine an in-person BLS training with clinic-specific customizations, such as treatment of vasovagal reactions, seizures, and hypoglycemia.

One final best practice is what our outgoing Physician Advisory Committee chairman, Dr. Steve Gwiazdowski, calls “high frequency, low fidelity” practice. Finding ways to do quick refreshers on key scenarios or skills every three months or so, has been proven to keep this knowledge fresh. The Banner Hospital system, with small rural hospitals throughout the rural western states, has institutionalized such quarterly re-trainings for their nursing staff and found that this approach improves both outcomes and teamwork. To better prepare for emergencies, please consider ways to incorporate these types of quick refreshers into your clinical setting.

Statewide Implementation of Justice-Involved Health Care Transitions

Dr. Robert Moore, MD, MPH, MBA, Chief Medical Officer

“To be 95% confident that a large-scale implementation will be successful, look for at least four independent small-scale tests all showing a significant benefit.”

– Summary from The Science of Using Science: Towards an Understanding of the Threats to Scaling Experiments (Al-Ubaydli, List, & Suskind, 2019).

The transition of integrating back into the community after being incarcerated marks one of the most dangerous periods in a person’s life. Overdose is the leading cause of death for people recently released from incarceration, with rates more than three times the national average for incarcerated populations. Building on a 2006 pilot in San Francisco that Partnership helped expand starting in 2012, California is now poised for state-wide implementation of an approach that transforms this vulnerable transition period from a health crisis into an opportunity for healing through comprehensive, coordinated care that begins before the prison gates open.

Justice-involved individuals typically face a constellation of health challenges. In California, approximately 35,000 people are released yearly from state prisons, while most of the 350,000 people booked into county jails are released within weeks. 66% have moderate or high need for substance use disorder treatment, while incarcerated individuals with active mental health cases rose by 63% over the last decade.

The racial disparities are stark: nearly 29% of incarcerated men in California are Black, while Black men comprise only 5.6% of the state’s population. This means health care interventions for justice-involved individuals must intersect with critical racial equity initiatives.

Origins: The Transitions Clinic Network

In 2006, the pilot project at a San Francisco community health center, partnering with San Quentin State Prison, launched what became the Transitions Clinic model. This evidence-based program included innovative components like community health workers (CHWs) with lived experience of incarceration as integral health care team members.

The model proved successful and expanded rapidly. By 2024, the Transitions Clinic Network (TCN) linked 48 clinics in 14 states and Puerto Rico, including 21 in California. Research demonstrates that the TCN model cut emergency department visits and hospitalizations in half.

Partnership HealthPlan of California recognized the potential early, embracing the pilot version with strategic use of reserves more than a decade ago. The organization ultimately funded three different sites, adding two locations to the original pilot in Vallejo, demonstrating how managed care organizations could collaborate effectively to serve justice-involved populations.

Based on the proven success of multiple pilot sites in the years that followed, the Transitions Clinic and Partnership discussed expanding this model state-wide with the California Department of Corrections, even before CalAIM existed.

California Builds a Statewide Model Using Medi-Cal

Fast forward to 2023, when California became the first state to receive federal approval to use Medicaid funds for services provided to people leaving jail or prison. This breakthrough came through a federal Medicaid 1115 demonstration waiver, representing a fundamental shift in approaching health care for incarcerated populations.

The Justice-Involved Initiative is part of California’s broader CalAIM transformation. When Medicaid was created in 1965, federal law barred the use of federal funds for services for incarcerated people. California’s waiver effectively bridges this gap, allowing continuity of care that was previously impossible.

Eligible individuals can receive targeted Medi-Cal services for up to 90 days prior to release, including:

  • Reentry care management services
  • Physical and behavioral health clinical consultations
  • Laboratory and radiology services
  • Medications and medication-assisted therapy
  • Services from CHWs with lived experience

Most importantly, qualifying members receive prescribed medications and medical equipment upon release, addressing the critical “medication cliff” that often leads to rapid health deterioration.

Justice-Involved Implementation and Early Success

The rollout began strategically with three pilot counties—Inyo, Santa Clara, and Yuba—on October 1, 2024. By July 1, 2025, 17 counties plus the state prison system will have launched services. For Partnership, three counties—Yuba, Sutter and Siskiyou—are included in this initial wave. Nevada County is tentatively scheduled for September 1.

Partnership’s Justice-Involved team is now seeing a steadily increasing stream of referrals coming in from ECM providers within the state prison system.

An example of how coordination of implementation is as follows: An incarcerated person with specific mental health needs and nearing release qualifies for 90-day pre-release services. They are assigned a pre-release care manager who develops a reentry plan. Before release, the individual is connected to a community psychiatrist through a “warm handoff” meeting. Upon release, the individual receives Enhanced Care Management (ECM) and subsequently gets a supply of medication to take with them.

ECM provides intensive care coordination for high-risk individuals, creating continuity that spans institutional and community settings. ECM providers address not just health care needs but social determinants of health including housing, employment, and transportation. Community Supports (CS) services complement ECM and address fundamental barriers to stability, including housing transition navigation, security deposits, and other services that promote community integration. Housing is perhaps most critical – homelessness rates among those being released from incarceration are extremely high, and unstable housing is associated with increased recidivism and poor health outcomes.

All counties must launch services by September 30, 2026. The initiative’s sustainability depends on demonstrating positive outcomes and cost-effectiveness. Success metrics include health care outcomes, community integration measures, and quality of life indicators for participants. Meanwhile, success in each county depends on local engagement activities and leadership commitment.

What Primary Care Providers Can Do

The initiative’s success ultimately depends on primary care providers’ willingness to serve justice-involved individuals effectively. Most importantly, providers must ensure that requests for initial appointments are addressed quickly. Discharged individuals typically receive only 30 days of medication and face complex medical and mental health issues. They’re at high risk of death after discharge, making rapid access to care a critical public health need.

Case managers from correctional facilities will reach out to schedule pre-release appointments. While members won’t be assigned to specific health plans while incarcerated, DHCS will make assignments retroactive to release dates. Providers should schedule these appointments immediately when requested—this transition period carries much higher mortality and recidivism rates without appropriate services.

Beyond rapid access, providers should anticipate that patients with complex needs will require comprehensive, coordinated care. This includes working collaboratively with ECM providers and community health workers, approaching patients without judgment, managing medication transitions carefully, and connecting patients to specialty care and community resources supporting long-term stability.

California’s Justice-Involved Initiative represents a fundamental shift in approaching the intersection of criminal justice and compassionate health care. Building on years of successful pilots, the state has created a model with a high likelihood of successfully spreading state-wide, which will help to transform outcomes for one of our most vulnerable populations.

Difficult, but Rewarding, Conversations

By Robert L. Moore, MD, MPH, MBA, Chief Medical Officer

“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.”

— Jane Goodall, English zoologist and primatologist

Disagreements about vaccinations, public health activities, and scientific research have escalated in the past few months, with an expanding chasm between the views and opinions of those with different political ideologies. Health professionals and public health leaders need to develop skills in communicating effectively with patients and members of the public who may have deeply held, but widely disparate views. Of course, this is easier said than done!

This challenge is exactly what Epidemiologist Dr. Katelyn Jetelina narrates in a recent post on her popular “Your Local Epidemiologist” Substack. She and several other famous U.S. public health leaders were invited to participate in a dialogue with leaders of U.S. Health and Human Services, Director Robert Kennedy’s, Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) coalition. Her summary of this meeting is introspective and very well-written, one of her best posts of the year. In the end, she gained a lot of understanding of the concerns and questions of the MAHA participants and found several areas of shared values.

In sharing her experience, Dr. Jetelina encourages us to find ways to have deep and meaningful conversations with those in our community who have different ideas about public health and science.

She concludes with three points:

“Fight for people, not institutions. Meet questions with empathy. Look for opportunity in the rubble— because it’s there, if we’re willing to see it. Even when it’s hard.”

Although her views expressed represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the official views of Partnership HealthPlan of California, there is value in her message for how we approach difficult conversations.

Enjoy!

 

Preserving and Restoring Rural Obstetrics Services

Image

By Robert L. Moore, MD, MPH, MBA, Chief Medical Officer

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

— Hellen Keller

Last year, another Northern California hospital maternity ward closed in the Partnership service area. The closure of the Mad River Hospital in Arcata (Humboldt County) leaves just 23 non-Kaiser hospitals with open maternity units in our 24-county service area. There are now 24 hospitals without maternity services across rural Northern California.

Last spring, Advancing Health in Rural California published a research paper by Harvard master of public health student Sara Howard, describing several underlying drivers of the steadily worsening maternity care access crisis in rural California:

  • Birth volume has decreased by 20% in the past decade, which has cascading impacts on financing and operations for hospitals providing obstetric (OB) services.
  • Financial stability of rural hospitals is decreasing due to a variety of factors besides OB volume.
  • A trend toward RN training programs that focus on specialized care limits the foundation of cross-training experiences, which subsequently limits nurses’ abilities to pivot into OB care when needed.
  • Regulatory barriers prevent flexibility in staffing models that could optimize the capacity for low volume rural hospitals to meet the local service needs
  • Statutory regulations on Alternative Birthing Centers prevent most of these centers from billing Medi-Cal, and consequently they are unable to serve the Medi-Cal population.
  • A pervasive shortage of trained maternity care providers, especially obstetrician-gynecologists (OB/GYNs), midwives, family physicians who do obstetrics (FP-OBs).

In Partnership’s service area, 40% of births are covered by Medi-Cal. This rate grows to over 60% in smaller and rural counties. Partnership has a responsibility to participate in and lead actions addressing this issue to help ensure our members receive the care they need.

Partnership has a wide range of working relationships with a diverse group of stakeholders whose collaboration can drive policy change and implement local initiatives to meet the maternity care needs of rural communities. The stakeholders include:

  • County and state public health agencies
  • Hospitals
  • Rural health centers
  • Tribal health centers
  • Department of Health Care Services (DHCS)
  • Government regulators
  • Elected government representatives
  • Community-based organizations
  • Mental health care teams
  • Trade organizations serving various health care delivery systems

Partnership holds a unique position to address complex, multi-faceted challenges, such as OB access and quality of care, with multiple interventions and projects across different domains, all working towards a common goal. Over the years, Partnership has had a key role of cross-sector collaboration and innovation to enact change in order to improve health outcomes of the communities we serve. Our experiences in addressing opioid overuse, palliative care, substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, transportation, pay for performance, social determinants of health (SDoH), complex care management, and others can be leveraged to address the large and complex maternal health problems in our service area.

Expanding access to safe and high-quality obstetrical care aligns with Partnership’s mission: to help our members, and the communities we serve, be healthy. Safe, accessible, local maternity care serves the entire community. Building key local and regional partnerships improves both the quality of care and member satisfaction. These are foundational components of Partnership’s strategic plan.

Improving access to high-quality maternity services in our service area requires a portfolio of synergistic interventions in these broad categories:

  • Policy changes: governmental, health plan, and local health systems
  • Educational programs that optimize local health care workforce capacity
  • Adjustment of reimbursement models to support diverse settings of care
  • Deepening community partnerships that reinforce collaboration
  • Better data collection and analysis to guide thoughtful decision making

Much has been accomplished in the two years since Partnership’s focus on obstetrical access and quality began. Here are the policy proposals pending in 2025. Additional details on other activities will be referenced in a future newsletter.

Legislative Proposals

In the past two years, state and federal policymakers have been stepping forward with legislative proposals to address the maternity care access issue. Some proposals are more applicable to urban areas, and others propose solutions that target rural areas. Here is a summary of bills introduced in 2025:

  • California Senate Bill 669 (McGuire, 2025) would allow for a pilot project designating  a “standby perinatal unit” in a remote, rural hospital. This model contrasts the standard model of continuous OB unit staffing used in hospitals. This pilot will provide an example of a solution that emphasizes a well-trained, capable local team of professionals who provide high-quality maternity and labor and delivery care. Emphasizing the training and systems required in this model, we believe we can garner support for SB669 by all stakeholders.

•  A key concept for this bill is that family physicians with specialized, supplemental OB training are critical to the success and sustainability of this staffing model in rural hospitals. Urban specialists may be unaware of the enhanced skills and experience that family physicians bring to rural settings; rural communities’ needs are different than urban areas. Our current health systems, policy, and regulations are based on serving dense, urban populations with a broad network of resources. Urban specialists often drive the standard and models of care beyond the city limits. However, when an urban mindset drives solutions for rural areas, the unique rural circumstances and resources may not be fully considered.

  • California Assembly Bill 55 (Bonta, 2025) would change the requirements related to licensing alternative birth centers in California. Medi-Cal requires that birth centers be licensed, but private patients may deliver in non-licensed facilities, which are often accredited by the Commission for the Accreditation of Birth Centers (CABC). To our knowledge, only three licensed birth centers in California exist, compared to dozens of accredited birth centers. The state licensing requirements inherently promote inequitable access to birthing centers. This bill makes multiple changes in licensing requirements, which would allow many accredited birthing centers to start accepting Medi-Cal, making obstetric care more accessible in California.
  • California Senate Bill 228 (Cervantes, 2025): Reassigns responsibility for the California Perinatal Services Program (CPSP) from the California Department of Public Health to DHCS. The original statutory details creating the CPSP program were codified in the 1980s. There are further updates in the CPSP program which might be considered, but more stakeholder input would be valuable. Because of this, just focusing on this change in responsibility to DHCS will be the optimal route to take this year. The transition of these services to managed care plans allows a more seamless and flexible approach to perinatal services that can expand access for patients and improve provider satisfaction with these services.
  • California Senate Bill 626 (Smallwood-Cuevas, 2025): Requires Medi-Cal managed care plans to ensure pregnant patients have care coordination and case management. This would also ensure support for mental health for these patients, and to report on the rates of use of these services on their public website, starting in 2026. The current local codes used by CPSP capture this data nicely, but any change to the use of national billing codes (without ensuring that CPT or HCPCS codes with more specificity are created by the American Medical Association), will make the specificity envisioned by this bill impossible. We believe a coalition that coordinates efforts to develop specific, prenatal case management codes accepted nationwide would improve access to data to assess and adapt perinatal services.
  • United States S. 380 (Hassan, 2025) is a bill which would allocate up to $20 million in grants to support development of training in obstetrical emergencies and newborn stabilization for rural hospitals without dedicated obstetrical units. Some grants would also support the implementation of telehealth services for such rural hospitals.

 

Wisdom: Elders Versus Evidence

By Robert L. Moore, MD, MPH, MBA, Chief Medical Officer

“The only true wisdom is to know that you know nothing.”

— Socrates

Wisdom of the Elders

Tribal community members often hold respect for elders as one of their core values. This respect is shown in many ways such as allowing elders to eat first at communal meals, valuing elders’ knowledge of native languages and traditions, and listening to their wisdom expressed through stories passed down for generations.

These demonstrations of respect were evident at a cultural event recently at the Karuk Kahtishraam Wellness Center in Yreka. Teenagers and young adults watched attentively as one elder taught them how to carve traditional wooden cooking paddles. Another elder displayed his tight-weave basket[1]making skills using willow twigs and aged spruce roots. When lunch was served, tasty frybread tacos and fruit, the elders were invited to serve themselves first. During lunch, several elders recounted stories from their lives, gently conveying the life lessons these stories contained.

Many in the United States use a different word to describe older residents: elderly. Although the difference is subtle, elderly is often used in association with a sense of responsibility to provide care, food, shelter, and entertainment. There is less of a sense respect for the wisdom of their life experiences, more of a sense that interacting with the elderly is necessary from time to time. This is a barrier to older adults feeling a sense of purpose as they age. Dr. Victoria Sweet’s excellent book, “God’s Hotel,” about San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital elaborates on the evolution of modern American society’s conceptualization of our older residents.

Of course, there are exceptions to this. In his famous study of communities around the world where substantial populations live to over age 100, author Dan Buettner found that, in addition to a healthy diet, regular exercise, and six other factors, centenarians had an ongoing sense of purpose for their lives, usually including providing advice and support to the younger members of their families. The term “Blue Zones” is used to describe such communities in the Nuoro province of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica, and Loma Linda, California.

In our early lives, our brains are wired for “fluid intelligence”: the ability to reason and think abstractly and flexibly. This allows us to learn everything from kinesthetic skills like sports or playing a musical instrument to mental reasoning skills involving creative solutions to mathematical or logical problems. As we age, the integration of what we have learned in our lifetimes — from books, other people and from our own experiences — can be manifested in “crystalized intelligence,” sometimes known as accumulated wisdom. Fluid intelligence generally peaks in our 20s and 30s and then declines steadily, whereas crystalized intelligence peaks in our later decades of life. Crystalized intelligence is helpful for teachers, with history professors actually reaching peak intellectual productivity in their 60s and 70s. Interestingly, our ability to learn new words and even new languages can persist well into our older years because the hippocampus, the seat of memory, continues to grow throughout life.

In his book, “From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life,” economics professor Arthur C. Brooks notes that high-achieving younger professionals who start to decline in their career should intentionally make the jump from the declining fluid intelligence curve to the rising crystalized intelligence curve.

American society celebrates the success of young entrepreneurs, young performing artists, and young scientists who make important breakthrough discoveries that require fluid intelligence. Success in early life, with its attendant public recognition, can make it hard to give it up to make the jump to the second, crystallized intelligence curve. Interestingly, societal belief systems that emphasize the idea that deceased ancestors support those who are living sometimes have more formal ways of recognizing the development of wisdom as a high goal in the second half of life. Confucian stages of life include the ideas of early education, social engagement with accumulation of wisdom in the middle of life, and tapping into the wisdom of elders, sages, and ancestors. As noted earlier, writings summarizing historic and current-day Tribal community values and beliefs include respect for the wisdom of the elders, and the important influence of one’s ancestors on those living today.

A more codified version of these stages is found in the ancient Hindu theory of Ashrama. Ashrama specifies that life should be lived in four stages, each lasting roughly 25 years:

  • The first, in childhood and young adulthood, is devoted to learning.
  • In the second phase, one focuses on working to build a career and financial stability, as well as to building a family and social connections.
  • In the third phase, one retires from personal and professional duties to consolidate their wisdom through teaching and spiritual practices. Moving from the second phase to the third phase is analogous to the shift from the fluid intelligence curve to the crystallized intelligence curve, noted above.
  • The fourth phase (if one lives long enough!) is devoted exclusively to spiritual understanding.

Clinician Wisdom

What are the implications of this framework to clinicians?

The scientific framework of evidence-based practice, where activities are tested objectively and rigorously, is at odds with a framework that draws on “ancient wisdom.” In fact, the current standard of care is evolving rapidly. The half-life of medical best practice is roughly five years. Put another way, half of today’s best practices for a given disease condition (e.g., which medication or surgical treatment is the safest and most effective) will no longer be the best practice in five years.

New graduates of physician residency programs, better trained than previous generations in evidence-based practice, will view some of the practices of older physicians as out-of-date. In some ways, though, the skills and experiences of older clinicians integrate knowledge that is not out of date and which younger clinicians would benefit from. Physical exam skills, for example, are becoming a bit of a lost art, resulting in over-use of radiology studies. Surgical skills for non-laparoscopic surgery of older physicians are often impressive, as they had a large volume of such cases before the newer surgical methods became available. Conversely, younger surgeons often have more robust experience with robotic surgery.

Clinicians need to track the evidence base for the conditions they commonly treat. Having a sense of curiosity and skepticism when reviewing the medical literature is key to critically evaluating new knowledge. As clinicians age, the wisdom reflected in their clinical judgement can continue to grow, if they systematically keep up with new knowledge.

Leadership Wisdom

This is also true for clinician leaders, although the nature of new knowledge related to leadership is very different.

Our understanding of the psychological and sociological aspects of human behavior is more scientific than previously, both through more advanced social science research methods, and with greater understanding of how this relates to underlying brain structure and function. The book, “Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst,” by Robert Sapolsky is an impressive integration of these fields.

However, clinician leaders generally learn new leadership lessons more slowly, since we are often spending time maintaining our clinical knowledge while concurrently learning business operations and health care policy.

Fortunately, some core leadership wisdom is timeless, and so can be gained through literature, movies, and reading philosophy. An additional vital resource is the crystallized intelligence of our “medical elders,” experienced clinician leaders, such as Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Fitzhugh Mullen, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as local clinical leaders in your communities.

To grow and age wisely as clinician leaders, we must embrace the opportunity to absorb the wisdom of elders even while we systematically strive to integrate new evidence-based knowledge!

Reemergence of Influenza as a Public Health Issue

Image

By Robert L. Moore, MD, MPH, MBA, Chief Medical Officer

“The waves are going to keep coming, so you might as well learn to surf.”

— Jon Kabat-Kinn, PhD, Founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

Partnership data from 2024 showed a significant drop in Influenza vaccination in adults and children, representing part of a larger national trend. Partnership clinicians report an increased hesitancy to receive the flu vaccine, somewhat associated with residual concerns about the COVID vaccine, is the major driver for this decrease.

Since the beginning of 2025, Influenza has overtaken COVID as the major cause of hospitalization and death from respiratory disease, as seen visually in the graph below. In the first week of February, there were three times as many deaths from influenza as from COVID in California, and four times as many hospitalizations. In California, 11 children died due to influenza over the last past seven months; three children died of COVID during the same period.

Source: California Department of Public Health 

The low vaccination rate, combined with a less-exact match of the vaccine to the currently circulating strains of influenza, are contributing factors to this increase in influenza concerns. While hospitals and emergency rooms are especially busy, there have not been widespread cancellations of elective surgeries; emergency room diversions and patients boarding in areas not usually used for acute patient care have been far below what was seen at the peak of COVID infections and during the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009.

Amid the spread of influenza, bird flu (H5N1) is ravaging chicken farms leading to occasional infections of agricultural workers in the dairy and poultry industries. Fortunately, the bird flu strain appears much less virulent for humans than the Influenza A currently circulating.

Strategies for Addressing Influenza Vaccine Hesitancy

  • De-couple messaging about influenza vaccine recommendation with the recommendation for COVID vaccination booster infection. Instead of recommending COVID and Influenza and getting a “No” for both, look at the patient history of vaccination and vaccine hesitancy to customize your recommendation. Depending on the pattern, you might try recommending influenza alone or a combination of vaccinations, i.e. RSV and influenza, or pneumococcal and influenza.
  • Discuss the current high rates of influenza hospitalization and death to make the case for getting vaccinated. This year’s influenza vaccine can still be given, and it is particularly important for children younger than 24 months who have not completed their primary series of two influenza vaccinations. Remind parents that vaccinating children against influenza helps keep them healthy and provides better outcomes for a full recovery.
  • Set realistic expectations: The CDC recommends framing the flu vaccine as a vaccine for the reduction of the severity of influenza, not complete prevention. If patients believe the vaccine is supposed to prevent all infections, they will lose faith in vaccinations if they contract influenza after getting vaccinated.

Thank you for passing this message along to your clinicians!

Chief Medical Officer Message: Guest Article

Image

By Elizabeth Morrison, Co-Creator of The Lay Counselor Academy

“Let us build bridges rather than barriers,
openness rather than walls.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Referrals to Nowhere: How Mental Health First Aid Fails in a Broken System

The United States is in the midst of an escalating mental health crisis fueled by increasing demand for services and a severe shortage of licensed clinicians. Over 149 million Americans live in areas designated as mental health professional shortage zones. This crisis disproportionately affects rural areas and underserved communities, where there is fewer than one mental health provider for every 30,000 residents.

Addressing the root causes of this crisis—such as systemic inequality, discrimination, poverty, gun violence, child abuse, toxic stress, social media dangers, and pervasive loneliness—can feel overwhelming, especially now, as the new administration assumes office.

We can, however, address current suffering by dramatically increasing access to one of the best treatments for mental health conditions: mental health counseling.

Mental health counseling is one of the most effective treatments for mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, addiction, and trauma-related disorders, yet access to mental health counseling is at an all-time low, particularly for people of color.

Mental Health First Aid: A bridge to nowhere

Since its introduction in the U.S. in 2008, Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) has trained over 4 million individuals to identify signs of mental health crises and connect those in need with professional support. MHFA has made invaluable contributions to our communities, increasing mental health awareness and reducing stigma, with research confirming that MHFA training enhances empathy and helps to dismantle stereotypes about mental illness.

While MHFA has effected meaningful progress in destigmatization, its “recognize and refer” protocol exposes a critical flaw: it assumes the availability of adequate, accessible mental healthcare services. This assumption is faulty. In most communities in the United States, stretched-thin systems lead to months-long waitlists for care; finding someone who speaks the same native language is often impossible.

When MHFA-trained individuals attempt to refer someone to non-existent or inaccessible services, this ‘bridge to nowhere’ results in frustration on both sides. The person in crisis may feel abandoned, and the helper may feel powerless, sometimes even exacerbating the mental health challenges they aimed to alleviate.

No more referrals: Increasing access to treatment

We have the resources to make mental health counseling widely available.

Even in the most severe mental health shortage zones, there are professionals already embedded in communities, such as community health workers, peer specialists, case managers, school personnel, promoters, faith leaders, first responders, and more.

These folks regularly interact with individuals experiencing mental health challenges.

What if, instead of referring to nowhere, some of these frontline workers were trained to provide evidence-based mental health counseling? What if instead of trying to find help, these workers are the help? Equipping these individuals with mental health counseling skills can substantially expand access to care, dramatically increasing the number of providers who are able to offer mental health support within a community. These individuals are often more reflective of the communities they serve, sharing their language, cultural background, and lived experiences, which enhances the quality and relevance of care.

Does that even work?

The concept of training “lay” counselors to deliver mental health treatment is not new. Many countries have successfully utilized lay counseling models for decades, with numerous studies showing that trained lay counselors deliver outcomes on par with licensed clinicians. These programs have proven effective across diverse cultural contexts, from treating depression in rural India, PTSD in war-torn regions, depression in seniors in the U.S., and more.

Our data reinforces these findings. Our team consists of two-thirds lay counselors and one-third licensed clinicians. Across four studies on patient-reported satisfaction and outcomes, we’ve consistently found virtually no outcome differences between the two groups. These results underscore the potential of lay counselors to expand access without compromising quality.

Isn’t that dangerous?

Understandably, the idea of unlicensed individuals providing mental healthcare raises concerns. Fears about unqualified helpers causing harm are valid and must be addressed (it is also important to acknowledge that while degrees and licenses are often considered benchmarks of expertise, they do not always reliably indicate the quality or safety of care provided). Carefully selecting lay counselors for traits like self-awareness, empathy, interpersonal skills, and humility, combined with comprehensive training in evidence-based strategies and ongoing clinical supervision, is a multifaceted approach to managing these risks. Lay counselors can deliver safe, effective, and scalable mental health services when embedded within supportive teams.

No more referring…let’s start treating!

We need more than ‘recognize and refer’ to address the crisis we face. Programs like MHFA have laid a crucial foundation- we must now build on that foundation with solutions that expand direct treatment options. Empowering lay counselors to provide care can revolutionize a system that too often leads to dead ends, and instead create one that delivers genuine, relationship-centered mental health support for all.

Shared with express written consent of the author, Elizabeth Morrison, of The Lay Counselor Academy. This article and others are published in the LCA Blog.

“The Magic Third”

By Robert L. Moore, MD, MPH, MPA, Chief Medical Officer

“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”

– Author Malcom Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell’s first book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, published in 2000, was one of the earliest popular books in the field now called behavioral economics. Classics that followed include Freakonomics, written by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in 2005, Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely in 2008, Nudge by Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and Thinking Fast and Slow, written by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman in 2011. Collectively, these books combine elegant psychological experiments and data analysis using novel economic methods to dispel age-old assumptions about motivation and human behavior.

In his just-released eighth book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell examines the factors leading individuals to dramatically change their beliefs and values in response to the people around them. The many healthcare examples alone make it a worthwhile read for Medical Directors.

A particularly thought-provoking chapter is Chapter 4, The Magic Third. He presents a series of studies that show that 25-33% of a group of people can sway the rest of the group to the same set of beliefs/behaviors/values – the “Magic Third.” Examples include studies of the number of women on corporate boards, the number of Black children in mixed-race kindergarten classes, the percentage of Black residents in a neighborhood, and an elegant psychological experiment involving groups of people agreeing on names of random people in images. The “tipping point” in which major changes in the group cascaded rapidly was between 25 and 33 percent of the group. Gladwell goes as far as calling the Magic Third a “Universal Law,” a term social scientists and philosophers use in a way that is disconcerting to physicists.

One interesting experimental finding is that if 25-30% of a group are coordinated in trying to sway an entire group to their view (say on length of two lines, or the number of objects in a picture), they will generally be successful, even if the view they are agreeing on is demonstrably untrue! Social pressure is powerful!

On the other hand, the current political environment in Washington D.C. demonstrates that deeply held beliefs are not as susceptible to the “Universal Law” of the Magic Third.

I have observed cases where less than one third of a group can sway the entire group. In the 1980s, vintners in different areas of California formed local trade groups to promote wines from their region. They sometimes held charity fundraisers, combining marketing of their products with philanthropy. In one case, the Napa Valley Vintners, the target of fundraising shifted substantially from supporting local hospitals to focus on supporting the farmworkers and their families who worked in the region. This change occurred when just two board members (former publisher John Shafer, owner of Shafer Vineyards, and Bill and Kathy Collins of Conn Creek Winery) worked together to sway the views of their fellow vintners. For approximately 30 years (even after the deaths of Shafer and the Collins’s), vintners throughout the valley would all say that the focus of their wine auction and other philanthropic activities was to care for the farmworkers who worked in the fields, making their wine possible. Vintner groups in surrounding counties did not develop the same shared goal.

A key lesson from the Napa Valley Vintners is that two charismatic leaders, working together, can shift the views of an entire group, even if they initially comprised less than 25% of the group. However, it takes a bit of effort and time to get to the tipping point and beyond.

A look at major public health initiatives in California and other major health policies find this pattern repeating: two passionate dedicated individuals focus their energy to changing the framing or narrative, gradually swaying the larger group (or even the whole population) to their frame/narrative.

If one person has an innovative policy idea, their first important task is to find a second charismatic person who will support the idea. Together, with time and attention, these two can often sway the rest of the group.

Patience and focus are key. Having too many priorities means that insufficient attention goes to any one of them, and success will be limited. Partnership HealthPlan of California tracks the public health priorities of all 24 of our counties. In some counties, there are so many priorities that the health officer cannot remember them all without looking them up. Lake County has adopted a different model inspired by a framework called Collective Impact. The health department is mobilizing all major county stakeholders to focus intensively on one high priority issue: nicotine consumption in youth. I have no doubt that this approach will have a substantial impact.

So, don’t make too many New Year’s Resolutions. Choose no more than one difficult-to-achieve goal and stick with it. If your goal requires changing the behavior or views of people around you, first find a partner to work with you.

As we look ahead to 2025, which may bring many changes, finding ways to make meaningful differences in our communities can provide resilience. We at Partnership look forward to working with you to make our local healthcare system as functional as we can, providing care and comfort to the communities we serve.

Promoting Rural Health Equity and Obstetrical Access

By Robert L. Moore, MD, MPH, MBA, Chief Medical Officer

 “I am often reminded of the adage, ‘If you are not at the table, then you could be on the menu.’ If I am not getting out and having my voice heard by those who make decisions, I am not doing my job.”

– Pat Rusk, elementary school teacher and former president of the Utah Education Association

 

In an energetic meeting marked by some controversy, California physicians debated priorities for supporting health care in rural parts of California and ensuring access to safe obstetrical services at the California Medical Association (CMA) House of Delegates (HOD) meeting in Sacramento, October 26-27, 2024.

CMA membership is dominated by physicians working in urban and large suburban areas, especially those working at large medical groups such as Kaiser and Sutter. Although the two issues under discussion were especially important for rural clinicians most CMA members expressed support for their colleagues who have chosen to practice in rural settings.

For rural health, 14 recommendations were adopted by the HOD, including:

  • Supporting public health-funding allocation models to ensure adequate funding for small rural counties.
  • Calling on congress to increase the number of visa waiver slots available in California for physicians practicing in rural areas.
  • Calling on Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to remedy the systematic undercounting of American Indians in Medi-Cal data.

One area of controversy was a proposal to create a Section of Rural Physicians with influence at the Board of Trustees level. The executive leadership and governance committees agreed to take up this topic at a future meeting.

To kick off the OB access topic, Surgeon General (OB/GYN) Dr. Diana Ramos presented up-to-date data on serious maternal morbidity and mortality in California and unveiled her pre-conception screening program, “Strong Start & Beyond.”

For obstetrical services, 18 recommendations were adopted by the HOD, including:

  • Support for funding low volume hospitals using mechanisms such as standby capacity payments.
  • Alignment with increasing the support for training clinician workforce to provide obstetrical care, including perinatal case managers.

The role of family physicians (FP) that are trained to provide operative obstetrical services in rural areas generated some controversy, with urban/academic OB/GYNs expressing skepticism that FP[1]OBs can provide safe care in rural areas, while family physicians working in rural areas spoke up to defend their role in providing rural obstetrical care. This is not a settled issue; continued advocacy is needed to educate urban OB/GYNs on how OB care is provided in rural areas.

The other important action of the HOD was that in a tight, three-way race, pediatrician Dr. Rene Bravo of San Luis Obispo won the election for president-elect. He presented an excellent understanding of rural issues and primary care; representatives from district X and XI were pleased with his election.

Many physicians from Partnership’s 24 counties enthusiastically participated in the activities, including seven Partnership medical directors. County medical societies in CMA districts X and XI represent 23 of Partnership’s counties (Marin is served by district VIII). These districts were especially active in presenting amendments and debating the proposals.

The medical directors at Partnership strongly encourage all physicians in our service area to join the CMA and their local medical society to ensure representation and a voice in CMA policy decisions. Ideally, the organizations hiring these physicians would support the membership dues because physician advocacy complements other mechanisms for influencing health policy in Sacramento, such as trade organizations and specialty organizations.

In addition to being a member of your local medical society, if you have interest in influencing health policy, the first step is to attend the county medical society events and executive committee meetings, volunteering to be a delegate or alternate delegate for the HOD.

The next HOD meeting will be on October 18-19, 2025, in downtown Los Angeles. If you want to learn more about how to influence our health care delivery system and support policies that support the health care system in rural California, we encourage you to consider attending!