Sarika Aggarwal, M.D. is Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Fallon Health, and it’s her job to make sure all plan members get appropriate, effective and high-quality care. We caught up with Dr. Aggarwal for an interview, and she talks about how she came to spend the last 26 years practicing medicine in Massachusetts, what the new partnership between Fallon Health and PatientsLikeMe means for members, and a bit about her work—especially her focus on helping seniors stay and get care in their own homes whenever possible.
A bit of background: Dr. Aggarwal graduated from Grant Medical College at Bombay University and then completed her residency at UMass Memorial in Worcester, Massachusetts. Before joining Fallon Health in 2012 as Vice President of NaviCare Clinical Programs, Dr. Aggarwal was Medical Director in the Office of Clinical Integration at UMass Memorial Medical Care and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at UMass Medical School.
Dr. Aggarwal, we know a little bit about your background in India. What made you decide to come to the United States?
My husband had been studying in the U.S. for about six years and went back to India to visit his parents. [That’s when we met, and] … I came to the United States three days after we got married. I finished my fourth year medical school clerkships here before starting my residency program.
What drew you to Fallon Health? How have things been going since you took over the role of Chief Medical Officer?
I was Medical Director of Clinical Integration of an academic health system on the provider side during my last job. I realized with the advent of the accountable care organizations (ACOs) that the providers needed to learn to manage risk and develop health plan capabilities, such as utilization management and population health management capabilities—things that the health plans had mastered for many years.
As Medical Director, I was working closely with Fallon on one of its programs for seniors called NaviCare. When I learned of a position to lead the program, it was the opportunity I was waiting for.
The role of Chief Medical Officer has been challenging but exhilarating. It is a work in progress, building new programs to improve member heath, looking for opportunities to reduce waste in the system, and building a culture of continuous process improvement.
How are you bringing your experience with nursing home alternatives for seniors to your new role?
NaviCare was a good training ground for learning about taking care of seniors with multiple chronic diseases. Since about 10,000 baby boomers are turning 65 every day, and a large number of them have more than one chronic disease, we spend a lot of time working on ways to give this population the best care, in the right place, at the right time. A lot of my work in NaviCare involved transition of care models to keep the patients independent at home, and out of the hospitals and nursing homes. We are now using some of these successful care management best practices with our other populations.
What’s your favorite success story during your time at Fallon?
In 2013 we started a pilot with a government provider-payer program. This program involves helping the providers with care coordination for the members we share together, efficient sharing of data and successful embedding of case managers and navigators in the provider sites. We have grown membership in this program, and our care team now participates in the provider team office meetings. We have had a lot of member success stories in this program, which shows what collaboration between the different healthcare entities can achieve.
We’re very excited to be partnering with you and bringing PatientsLikeMe to Fallon members as a free online resource. How do you think your members will benefit from an online community and health-tracking site like PatientsLikeMe?
I think when patients are diagnosed with a new medical condition, whether it is rare or common, they need more than clinical care from their provider. In this complex medical environment, they need support and knowledge from a reliable source. PatientsLikeMe is a great tool that can provide a family of support beyond your own family – a family of support that “gets it.”
Even as a provider, it is hard for me to completely understand all the ramifications of an illness in a patient’s life, since I myself do not live with this illness. PatientsLikeMe is a group of people, a forum where you can meet people to talk to, who understand you and who are just like you. In addition, you can track your progress and learn more about your condition from a reliable source, all in partnership with your providers. It is a win-win situation for all in the healthcare system.
