Qualis Health
Qualis Health Leveraging Health IT Expertise to Improve Population Health

Jonathan Sugarman is passionate about climbing mountains and, as the President and CEO of Qualis Health; he follows the same principles involved in this sport to grow his business. “Climbing a big mountain like Denali—the highest peak in North America—requires significant preparation, persistence, tolerance of risk, attention to detail regarding the things you can control, and the ability to endure and respond to challenging conditions you can’t control. Leadership of complex organizations, whether by CIOs, CEOs or others, requires many of the same attributes,” he reasons.

Headquartered in Seattle, WA, Qualis Health is pursuing the Triple Aim of delivering better care, improving population health, and decreasing per capita costs. The company’s work has focused on technology as increasingly central to the success of healthcare enterprises in today’s rapidly changing environment, from meaningful use of electronic health records to IT-enabled patient centered medical homes and supporting implementation of Medicaid Management Information Systems.

Given the increasing focus on accountability of care for populations, many of their services focus on facilitating integration among various entities— improving care transitions at critical junctures such as hospital discharge, supporting care coordination for people with complex chronic conditions, integrating data from various systems to assure appropriate utilization of services, and helping governments assure that large IT software implementations can effectively receive, process, and export data about individuals and populations.

“Over our 40 year history, we have developed a deep understanding of population health,” says Sugarman, “and we’ve assembled a leadership and implementation team with sophisticated expertise across many domains.”

Their care management services have resulted in net savings of over a quarter of a billion dollars over the past three years while assuring patient access to high quality, medically necessary services.

The Company’s work focuses on technology as increasingly central to the success of healthcare enterprises in today’s rapidly changing environment

As a Health IT Regional Extension Center, they helped thousands of providers plan or and implement strategies that not only helped them understand and improve their clinical quality, but also helped them qualify for over $80 million in incentive payments. And they led a five year initiative that helped 65 safety net practices in five states implement the medical home model.

While formulating solutions like these, Qualis Health believes that leadership is vital. “We need to evolve our products and services as the healthcare industry evolves,” says Sugarman. As Qualis works with state and federal agencies, their engagement with policy makers positions them well for remaining relevant to the needs of the private sector that are driven by public policy. In the long run, they would like to craft a more significant growth in several sectors. “Our primary and specialty care practice redesign consulting is growing substantially, and as the industry evolves, we anticipate further opportunities to assist medical practices in using HIT to improve care and control costs,” concludes Sugarman.