Colorado Springs Health Partners CEO passionate about keeping patients healthy

Debbie Chandler is the CEO of Colorado Springs Health Partners, the largest multi-specialty, physician-owned practice in Colorado.

She came to Colorado from Florida six years ago, where she spent 10 years building one of the largest multi-specialty physician groups on the East Coast, including primary, specialty and urgent care. She was attracted to CSHP because she wanted to work with a group that had been together a long time.

Until Chandler's arrival, CSHP was functioning under the same business model that was established 68 years ago. Chandler saw the opportunity to transform the business into a more collaborative style rather than hospitals, primary care doctors, specialists and laboratories all working independent of each other.

Chandler is a native of Florida, and has an associate degree in nuclear medicine technology, a bachelor's degree in business from the University of South Florida and a master's degree in business administration from Crummer Graduate School at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla.

Question: What is the business of Colorado Springs Health Partners?

Answer: CSHP is a multi-specialty, physician-owned group practice with 144 physicians and 35 nurse practitioners. We manage patients across the continuum of care. We have our own clinical blood lab, imaging center, sleep lab, infusion center and two urgent care (clinics). We manage hospital care for CSHP patients, and also provide that same service for non-CSHP patients that are admitted to any of the four local acute-care facilities. Currently we take care of 108,000 patients in Colorado Springs, and we have a total of 650 employees including doctors, nurses, clinical staff and support staff.

Q: What is the fastest growing part of your business?

A: The fastest-growing part is the transformation of our organization to more of a care coordination facility. The goal is to transform CSHP to be more of a cutting-edge, physician-driven delivery system, working closer with hospitals. Part of that is this whole idea of not just taking care of a patient when they call us, but also reaching out to the patients that we haven't seen. We reach out to our high-risk patients who have been in the hospital and emergency room, such as diabetic patients and patients with high blood pressure, and bring them in to do med reconciliation, make sure they get their tests scheduled.

Q: How is CSHP's patient management process unique?

A: We've been working intensively for the last five years on our electronic health records. We get claim data from our payers, (insurance companies like Anthem, Kaiser and Humana) and combine it with our own data to create a more comprehensive picture of our patients' care histories. This allows us to see what happens when a patient receives care from other places, such as a specialist, and we use this information to identify gaps in care for individual patients so we can manage risks and educate our patients on the disease process.

Q: Is there another benefit to sharing data with the insurance companies?

A: Yes, in addition to identifying the gaps in care, we also get data on how we're doing, which most doctors haven't had before. Colorado is a pilot state for the comprehensive primary care initiative, and the data coming back from that shows that we are in some cases 30 percent below market for cost on care, but the quality remains high. In some cases, we've got a database of 60 million patients from 50 other practices across the country in our analytics tool, and we can see we're in the top 10 percent.

Q: Is CSHP focused on preventative health care as well as maintenance health care?

A: The most rudimentary level of health care is prevention and maintenance. If you see your patients regularly, you have to engage them, so we do a lot of engagement training with our staff and physicians. The annual exam is really important for prevention and management of chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes and cholesterol because that's an opportunity to educate the patient on how to manage their diet and exercise, and for diabetics, how to keep their blood sugar on track. We also have a health maintenance department staffed with dieticians and registered nurses who help patients with smoking cessation programs, weight management programs and nutrition programs. We use those services with our doctors and specialists who refer into those services. Our goal is to keep our patients out of the hospitals.

Q: Do you have a personal formula for success?

A: Over time it has changed. I used to work, work, work, do, do, do. But, I figured out, particularly after I had kids, that it's important to work hard and play hard too. I believe in hard work, I believe in collaborating, and I love to mentor people and bring them along. I tell them it's OK to give your passion 150 percent, but you can't forget about your personal life. You can do both, but you have to be better balanced and make sure you take those breaks. I know I'm much fresher on both sides of my personal and business life when I do that. You won't remember all those business meetings, but you will remember the time you took with your family on vacation.

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Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.