Brian Klepper
is a health care analyst and commentator, Principal and Chief Development Officer for WeCare TLC, LLC, an onsite primary care clinic and medical management firm based in Longwood, FL, and Managing Principal of Healthcare Performance Inc., a consulting practice based in Atlantic Beach, FL.
He is an active author and speaker, and has provided health care commentary to CBS Evening News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He has published articles on Kaiser Health News, Medscape, Healthleaders, The New England Journal of Medicine, Modern Healthcare, Business Insurance and newspapers nationally.
He is a columnist for Medscape, focused on business of medicine and primary care, as well as a regular contributor to the Health Affairs Blog and other expert health care blogs. With his wife, he maintains Elaine’s Journey, which details their struggle against Primary Peritoneal (Ovarian) Cancer.
He recently served on the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Primary Care Services Valuation Task Force, and is a reviewer for Health Affairs and The Journal of Ambulatory Care Management. He serves on the Board of the Consortium for Southeast Hypertension Control (COSEHC), dedicated to translational medicine for vascular disease. He is an Advisor to the Lundberg Institute, the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, which advocates for medical homes, and the Center for Value Health Innovation, which helps business identify and implement approaches proven to improve quality while reducing cost.
In January 2011, with David C. Kibbe MD, he began a campaign, Replace the RUC!, that focuses on the most important driver of inappropriate health care cost. That effort has resulted in a lawsuit by six Augusta, GA primary care physicians against the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) over its longstanding inappropriate relationship with the AMA’s Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC).
In is spare time, Brian is an offshore sailor.
Contact him at 904.395.5530 (o), 904.343.2921 (c), bklepper@gmail.com.
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Author Archives: Brian Klepper
Physicians, Health Systems and the Drive for Market Dominance
Brian Klepper Posted 5/23/13 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog Several physicians have reached out recently to discuss attractive employment offers from health systems. They are invariably conflicted. They understand the trade-offs, that they’ll give up the autonomy they’ve become accustomed … Continue reading
Using Strong Carrots and Sticks To Drive Health Care That Works
Brian Klepper Posted 5/09/13 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog On a recent call with a large manufacturer, my company’s team expected to describe how we develop primary care medical homes that become platforms for managing comprehensive health care clinical and financial risk. But … Continue reading
Why Aren’t Primary Care Physicians More Ticked off about the RUC? An Interview with Brian Klepper
Brandon Glenn Published 4/30/13 in Medical Economics If primary care physicians have a bigger enemy than the RUC, Brian Klepper, PhD, hasn’t heard about it. The American Medical Association’s (AMA) Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) is a 31-physician panel that wields enormous influence with … Continue reading
How Physician Practices Can Prepare for a Health Care Marketplace
Brian Klepper Posted 4/21/13 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog What is the path forward for physicians who want to remain in private practice, outside the constraints of health system employment? How will the environment change and what new demands will … Continue reading
Seriously Testing the Waters
Brian Klepper Published April 2013 in Accountable Care News If necessity is the mother of invention, then tentativeness and ambiguity are the parents of procrastination. In health care, fee-for-service remains the dominant paradigm, so the ACO movement, lacking almost any semblance of … Continue reading
When Employers Get Serious About Managing Health Care Risk
Brian Klepper Posted 4/07/13 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog Last week I visited with Gary Rost, an unassumingly knowledgeable man and the Executive Director of the Savannah Business Group (SBG), arguably one of the most effective health care coalitions in the … Continue reading
Why EHRs Really Haven’t Made Us Healthier: A Response To Glen Tullman
Brian Klepper Recently-fired Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman waxed progressive in a self-promotional Forbes article last week, describing the ways past and forward for electronic health records (EHRs) and health information technology (HIT). He may have been trying to recover from a damning New York … Continue reading
Truth at the End of Life
Elaine Waples Posted 3/5/13 on TEDMED Most of us have spent some time thinking about our own deaths. We do it with a sense of dreadful curiosity, but then we push it aside with “well, we’ve all got to go sometime.” Unlike … Continue reading
A Broader Approach To Managing Health Care Risk
Brian Klepper Health care’s purchasers crave certainty. But complexity – and therefore uncertainty – rules. Assurances are hard to come by. The most common question asked by prospective clients of my onsite clinic/medical management firm is how much less their employee health … Continue reading
The RUC, Health Care Finance’s Star Chamber, Remains Untouchable
Brian Klepper Posted 2/1/13 on The Health Affairs Blog On January 7, a federal appeals court rejected six Georgia primary care physicians’ (PCPs) challenge to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) 20-year, sole-source relationship with the secretive, specialist-dominated … Continue reading
Hospitals: Are We All Talking?
Elaine Waples Complications from my cancer sent me to the hospital again recently. The news that I was in trouble came unexpectedly from my oncologist’s office Thanksgiving eve, following a routine blood test. “Your liver numbers are out of whack.” … Continue reading
Them, Not Us
Brian Klepper Posted 1/7/13 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog “How many businesses do you know that want to cut their revenue in half? That’s why the healthcare system won’t change the healthcare system.” Rick Scott, Governor of Florida Former CEO, Hospital … Continue reading
An Archipelago of Health Information Islands
Brian Klepper Posted 12/27/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog My wife Elaine was hospitalized for 6 days recently with an array of ailments related to her advancing cancer, so diagnosing and addressing her problems required a multidisciplinary approach. In addition … Continue reading
When Employers Collaborate To Manage Health Care Costs
Brian Klepper Published 12/09/12 in the Eau Claire, WI Leader-Telegram Note from Brian: This piece appeared last weekend in the Eau Claire, WI newspaper, and was written with the encouragement of employers in that community who, rightly, believe they’ve been raked over the … Continue reading
Following the Money
Brian Klepper Posted 12/06/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog On The Health Care Blog, veteran analyst Vince Kuraitis reviews a report from the consulting firm Oliver Wyman (OW), arguing that the trend toward reconfiguring health systems to deliver more accountable care is more … Continue reading
How Primary Care Became The Job Nobody Wanted (And How To Fix It)
Brian Klepper Posted 11/21/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog Here a link on SlideServe to my plenary presentation on CMS’ relationship with the AMA’s Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC), and how/why it has undermined American primary care. I delivered this … Continue reading
Arriving at the Beginning
Brian Klepper Posted 11/12/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog The most striking aspect of the election was that it decisively clarified the philosophical preferences of most Americans. And because the outcome was largely determined by minorities, women, and the young, … Continue reading
Irresistible Forces
Brian Klepper Posted 10/28/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog At our first meeting years ago, Tom Emerick, Walmart’s then VP of Global Benefits, told me, “No industry can grow indefinitely at a multiple of general inflation. It will eventually become … Continue reading
Walmart Moves Health Care Forward Again
Brian Klepper Posted 10/12/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog Walmart’s sheer size makes almost any of their initiatives newsworthy. That said, despite being a lightning rod for criticism on employee benefits and health care, they have introduced initiatives with far-reaching impacts. … Continue reading
Are You Ready for Intense Price Competition?
Note from Brian: The article below describes my recent keynote address to a large meeting of imaging center administrators, and appears in the Sept 2012 Radiology Today. I’m reposting it because it accurately reflects, in depth, the message that I … Continue reading
Getting Engaged
Elaine Waples Posted 9/21/12 on The Doctor Weighs In We hear inspiring things about patient engagement. The very concept has a hearty, spirited, “do-right” sound to it. I spent many years in human resources. I remember the conversations we had … Continue reading
The Wrong Battles
Brian Klepper Posted 9/20/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog This week the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) issued a new report describing its vision of primary care’s future. Not surprisingly, the report talks about medical homes, with patient-centered, team-based care. More … Continue reading
Primary Care’s Dilemma
Brian Klepper Posted 9/12/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog Early in the new documentary, Escape Fire, which provides detailed portraits of US health care’s craziness, we meet Erin Martin MD, a young primary care physician in The Dalles, OR, … Continue reading
Demanding More From Medical Homes
Brian Klepper Published 9/4/12 in Medical Home News Never confuse motion with action. Benjamin Franklin A reporter called the other day to tell me that several local health systems now had medical homes. “I don’t think so,” I said. She was emphatic. … Continue reading
Attitude
Elaine Waples Posted 8/31/12 on The Doctor Weighs In I’ve come to believe that seriously sick people are often subject to some very interesting comments from well-intentioned non-sick people. They are frequently inspired by #platitudes from self-help-books, Google chat rooms (heaven forbid), … Continue reading
Who Will Speak For Physicians and Their Patients?
Brian Klepper Posted 8/29/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog Dr. George Lundberg has an important article on Medpage Today that deserves the thoughtful consideration of every American physician. He argues that the American Medical Association, a successful and representative organization for many … Continue reading
Will the Bubble Burst?
Brian Klepper Posted 8/19/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog My recent 3-hour outpatient prostate biopsy generated nearly $25,000 in charges. My health plan will probably settle for four to five thousand dollars – this is the real market value – … Continue reading
