Rethinking Psychiatry With Dr. Steve Levine: Episode 5

There are many misconceptions about the role of payers in medicine.

For starters, many when they think of payers, they think of major insurance companies making life and death decisions based on finances.

But the fact is, reality is much different.

In this episode of Rethinking Psychiatry with Dr. Steve Levine, Dr. Levine is joined by Marketa Wills, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Johns Hopkins Health Care, to discuss the ideal role of the payer in medicine and how they can help reduce some of the access gaps and inequities in medicine that are commonly found.

The 2 doctors talked about the common misconceptions that payers are preventing better medical care and getting access to high quality health care.

“As payers we are a very important piece of the health care value chain and managed care came into existence to help provide discipline to the enormity to the rising health care costs,” Wills said. To try to bring principals related to consistency of care and ensuring that medical necessity was met.

In the episode, Dr. Wills shared her life story and how she went from a psychiatrist to a payer and what she is doing to promote equity.

“I became interested in macro issues in health care and something about the funding and the business side of medicine really felt for me as an area where I can make a big impact in the health care system,” Wills said. “It was a response to some of the perverse incentives the fee for service model provides.”