Premise Health Leaders Featured in May Issue of The Self-Insurer

In the May issue of The Self-Insurer, Premise Health’s National Medical Director Dr. Steven Hinitt and Executive Vice President of Data and Insights Austin Scott were featured in separate articles titled, “The Consequences of Delayed Care,” and “Solving Fragmented, Flawed Healthcare Data.”

In “Consequences of Delayed Care,” healthcare executives and providers were asked for their perspective on the topic, exploring the reasons why it occurs, what that means for the health of employees and their families, and ways to address it. Drawing on recent survey data, the number one recurring reason many Americans elected to delay care was cost, followed by factors such as long appointment wait times or lack of access to care.

For Dr. Hinitt, those factors often show up early on, “As a physician, I see firsthand how delayed care affects patients long before it shows up as a high-cost claim. Any perceived barriers to care, be they access to quality care or financial disincentives, can delay preventive care and early treatment.”

As Dr. Hinitt highlights, self-insured stakeholders, such as employers, play an important role in addressing these issues head on since they occupy a unique position with their ability to encourage people to seek care. Their focus, Dr. Hinitt emphasizes, should be on removing barriers, providing easy access to preventive care, “By making care easy for their people, employers can combat the costs of emergency and urgent care, specialty referrals, and reduce overall healthcare costs for both their people and the organization.”

The strategic priority for employers is prevention, helping members avoid trading low-cost prevention for catastrophic claims down the road. Dr. Hinitt confirms this approach by adding, “Simply put, preventive care helps people stay healthy and productive. It is critical to early detection and when people delay routine screenings or physical exams, conditions like hypertension, diabetes or cancer can progress unnoticed for years. When individuals don’t receive the timely care they need, their health can worsen, increasing the risk of severe illness and leading to more complex, intensive and costly interventions later on.”

In “Solving Fragmented, Flawed Healthcare Data,” researchers and data executives grapple with not only the importance of accurate healthcare data, but a unified, clinically informed intelligence layer behind the scenes, capable of interpreting what fragmented data actually means for clinical decision making, risk exposure, and downstream costs.

Premise data and insights EVP Austin Scott shares his firsthand experience with data fragmentation, supporting the claim that inaccurate data leads to revenue loses for self-insured plans, “Having navigated data fragmentation across multiple healthcare organizations, I’ve seen firsthand how destructive it can be — not just operationally, but strategically. Data silos don’t just slow things down; they obscure the full picture of a person’s care, leaving clinical and operational leaders without the insights they need to act decisively.”

Solving the problem requires a well-architected data integration strategy according to Scott. In the case of Premise Health, Scott shares that the approach is foundational to how the organization delivers whole-person care, “When data flows seamlessly across our ecosystem, the employers we work with gain a clearer view of their populations, our care teams can coordinate more effectively, and members receive better outcomes at a lower cost.”

Continue reading both articles in this year’s May issue of The Self-Insurer.