ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lumeris today announced the appointment of Seema Verma, MPH, to its Board of Directors. A national health policy expert, Seema Verma was the longest-serving Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator in modern history. She joins Lumeris as the company accelerates its efforts to enable health systems to deliver higher quality, personalized, coordinated care with improved access in communities across the US.
Confirmed with bipartisan support by the United States Senate in 2017, Seema oversaw health insurance programs for over 140 million Americans; oversaw a budget of $1.3 trillion, almost a third of the federal budget; and over 6,000 employees. Modern Healthcare ranked her as the “Most Influential Person in Healthcare” in 2019 and one of the nation’s Top 25 Women Leaders.
“Lumeris’ partnerships with health systems are accelerating a mass movement to Value-Based Care, which represents one of our best hopes to fixing an unsustainable system,” said Seema Verma. “Health systems are the largest provider of healthcare in the US, yet today the default payment model is volume-based that doesn’t incentivize quality and comprehensive care coordination. Value-Based Care provides those critical incentives, and Lumeris enables health systems to deliver a superior consumer experience at lower cost and higher quality. Lumeris believes a strong local presence and broad scope of services, represents the best opportunity for every American to get the healthcare they need.”
Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Lumeris believes the future of healthcare will be delivered by community-based health systems and their networks that take full responsibility for the cost, quality, and outcomes for the populations they serve. Consumers are searching for a lifelong partner for their health to ensure they get the right care, at the right place, at the right time. Lumeris’ comprehensive population health services and big data platform and workflow tools enable health systems to meet consumers’ needs whether they are part of Original Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Direct Contracting, Direct-to-Employer, Medicaid or Commercial populations.
“We are thrilled to welcome Seema to our Board of Directors. Her years of public service and commitment to providing Americans with high quality, affordable healthcare aligns squarely with our mission,” said Mike Long, Chairman and CEO of Lumeris. “Together we are committed to eliminating overpriced and uncoordinated healthcare, especially for vulnerable populations. Seema is a proven leader that will help our rapidly growing number of health system partners to adopt Value-Based Care to give consumers, physicians and care teams a clear path to co-produce better healthcare outcomes.”
Advances in digital health, like virtual care, have dramatically accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic and clearly improve cost and access. However, empathy, human touch and non-verbal communication between clinicians and consumers are proven to reduce pain, improve survival rates, boost the immune system, and improve diagnoses. Lumeris’ solutions for its health system partners leverage advances in technology like AI, telehealth, predictive modeling, and robotic process automation, while taking advantage of health systems’ extraordinary competitive advantage of having all the healthcare services a consumer needs located in the community. Health systems that become proficient at Value-Based Care represent the only solution that can scale to provide holistic care to consumers and eliminate fragmented, uncoordinated care in our country. As health systems move from volume and throughput to Value-Based Care, Lumeris’ partnerships with health systems are built around value creation and outcomes, creating the alignment necessary for sustained adoption and success.
“Seema Verma brings to Lumeris a powerful vision for high value healthcare, just as she brought to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as CMS Administrator,” said Dr. Denis Cortese, Lead Clinical Director on Lumeris’ Board and Emeritus President and CEO of the Mayo Clinic. “To accomplish this vision requires strong leadership, clear communication, and innovative systems thinking to create new models of clinical care and new models of payment. Seema exemplifies these characteristics and shares these goals with Lumeris’ mission and employees.”
About Seema Verma
At CMS, Seema Verma was the architect of CMS’s strategic vision, implementing over sixteen tactical initiatives aimed at transforming the American healthcare system to lower costs, improve quality, and increase access. During her tenure, Verma led federal government efforts to infuse market competition, empower consumers, and unleash innovation producing historic reforms. She also drove efforts to require price and quality transparency while ensuring consumers have ownership over their portable medical records.
Verma’s historic “Patients Over Paperwork” initiative reduced regulatory burden and saved the healthcare system billions of dollars. Verma also worked to accelerate value-based care transformation and address the social determinants of health by advancing new payment models throughout CMS programs, including models for drug pricing that resulted in lower insulin prices. Under her leadership, premiums dropped in Medicare Advantage, Part D, and the insurance exchanges. In response to COVID-19, she led industry-changing efforts to drive telehealth and remote care across the healthcare system while creating flexibility for health providers to augment the health care workforce, expand services and testing, and ensure access to vaccines and therapeutics.
Prior to CMS, Verma was the founder and CEO of a health policy consulting firm helping states and private industry on a range of healthcare issues. Verma received her BS in life sciences from the University of Maryland and her Master of Public Health (MPH) with a concentration in health policy and management from Johns Hopkins University.
ABOUT LUMERIS
Lumeris enables a new model for Value-Based Care. As the trusted partner for next-generation health systems, Lumeris helps providers deliver extraordinary clinical and financial outcomes. With health systems partners across the country, we align providers and payers with a proven model that coordinates operational processes, resources and technology to achieve high-quality, cost-effective care with very satisfied consumers and engaged physicians. Lumeris is a proven operating partner for health systems moving toward Value-Based Care and total cost of care management. Lumeris brings a broad set of best-in-industry operating capabilities, deep expertise in managing insurance risk, and a highly aligned business model to its health systems partners. Lumeris is focused on enabling health systems to create sustainable, scalable, high-performing healthcare delivery systems in local communities across the country.
