In this episode, we hear the second half of the conversation between Kris Shepard, Senior Vice President at Advocate Health, and CHESS President Dr. Yates Lennon, as they discuss how physician networks and primary care services are the backbone of the value movement in healthcare.

So Chris, welcome back to the Chess Move to Value podcast. Look, look forward to continuing our earlier conversation.

Awesome. Well, had a good time so far and I'm expecting nothing less for the second, second-half.

OK, great. Well, let's start out the second-half here. Just let's talk a little bit about some of some business development goals, both from the lens of the MSOVSO and from Advocate perhaps as well as if I'm an independent physician in the market, whether that's the Carolinas, Georgia, Wisconsin, Illinois, what should I be thinking about? So come at it from both sides.

It's a great, great question. The, the starting point for me is really an acknowledgement that the healthcare industry is changing. And you know, we've, we've talked about change and transformation in healthcare for a long time. So this is I think part of that broad continuum in the future, I expect that there will be increasing, it would be increasingly important for the ambulatory enterprise to take on more of the care delivery then perhaps we have historically it's more and more expensive to build hospitals. I think you, you know, you see a lot of commentators talking about hospitals becoming more focused on kind of higher acuity, higher complexity things. And so you know, they're always going to be here. And we're, you know, we are building broadly in facilities across the advocate enterprise and investing in, in improvements in the facilities. And at the same time, it's going to be increasingly important for the ambulatory enterprise to take to take on more and more. Some of that is is is has a regulatory dimension to it. So for example, CON laws being loosened or removed in in South Carolina, North Carolina, perhaps other places. I think those those kinds of regulatory changes, reimbursement changes that that encourage certain certain types of procedures and certain care to move out of facilities into the ambulatory setting. All those I think point us toward a future where to for a health system we are going to need to be successful in that ambulatory space as well as as as with our facilities. So what does that mean from a physician you know, or a clinical enterprise development lens, a physician partnership lens? I think those relationships become even more important and and in some ways more challenging because there there are a lot of organizations, whether they're payer backed organizations or private equity backed organizations or public companies like an Amazon who are moving into that ambulatory space. There's almost nobody going into the facility areas, you know, not a lot of new money or new entrants, if you will, into in building hospitals, but they're definitely a lot of new entrants rolling up ambulatory practices. So, you know, from a strategic lens advocate can either, you know, choose to focus on, on the facilities or, you know, alternatively, what we've done is, is really geared toward building a significant ambulatory presence. And you know, we, we already have thousands of physicians employed, you know, hundreds and hundreds of clinic sites. We, we have a significant ambulatory presence already. But it's going to it's going to be increasingly important going forward to do that. And I think, you know, some of the some of the discussion we've already had about what's the right relationship within it with a given group and a given specialty is those, those questions become more significant when you think about how the industry is, is trending.

Yeah, Yeah. Let's let's head toward, I mean MSOs/VSOs are networks in and of themselves. But let's talk a little bit about physician...