On this week’s episode of The Healthcare Plus Podcast, host Quint Studer is joined by special guest Dr. Riya Pulicharam, a pediatrician by training, certified clinical trials investigator, and co-founder of Caret Health. Over her 20+ year career, Dr. Pulicharam has led more than 500 studies and a number of initiatives focused on reducing total healthcare costs for chronic disease management programs. Dr. Pulicharam shares about her experiences in designing clinical care pathways, particularly for high-risk patients with complex chronic conditions, and emphasizes the need for user-friendly platforms and industry-wide innovation.

Dr. Pulicharam also highlights the challenges faced in scaling population health programs to larger organizations and stresses the importance of a centralized approach, advocating for automated data reconciliation and task management. Her ultimate goal is to reduce hospitalizations and emergency room visits while improving patient satisfaction through informed clinical decision-making and by addressing social determinants of health. The discussion underscores the crucial role of data and technology in improving patient care.

To learn more about Dr. Riya Pulicharam’s population health platform, visit www.CaretHealth.com.

About Dr. Riya Pulicharam

Dr. Riya Pulicharam is the co-founder of Caret Health, a clinical execution platform for value-based population health. For more than 20 years, Dr. Pulicharam has served as the National Medical Director for Population Health at Legacy Healthcare Partners (now Optum Care).

A pediatrician by training, Dr. Pulicharam was a research fellow at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Harbor UCLA Medical Center, and later founded the Clinical Research, HEOR, and population health departments for the Legacy Healthcare Partners. Dr. Pulicharam has led more than 500 research studies and is widely recognized as a certified clinical trials investigator.

Dr. Pulicharam's primary focus lies in population health, where she addresses social determinants of health and designs clinical care pathways for high-risk patient populations managed within value-based organizations. Notably, her work has been instrumental in various quality improvement initiatives aimed at reducing total healthcare costs for chronic disease management programs, which have been prominently featured in several publications.

Driven by a commitment to improving healthcare outcomes, Dr. Pulicharam is currently dedicated to reducing hospitalizations and ER visits for high-risk patients. Her work emphasizes the integration of healthcare technology, automation, and machine learning. Notably, Dr. Pulicharam has invented and patented a groundbreaking population health platform (Caret Health), which achieved a remarkable 57% reduction in hospitalizations and ER visits for high-risk elderly patients with multiple comorbid conditions.