Christine Hale

VP Clinical Consulting

Lockton Dunning Benefits

Christine joined Lockton Dunning Benefits as Vice President in 2017 and serves as the medical director and lead strategist for the clinical consulting team. Christine is known as an innovator, collaborator and change agent, and is particularly passionate about utilizing data and creative solutions to reduce waste and improve cost effectiveness in health care. Upon completion of her MBA in 2005, she joined a major consultant agency where she remained for over seven years. During this time, she worked with hospitals and health systems both across the country and internationally in a variety of functional areas, including strategy, operations and organization. Christine was often sought out to facilitate in situations where building physician and administration alignment was key. She joined Tenet Health care in 2013 as National Director Clinical Performance Excellence. In this role, Christine was responsible for advancing a number of high stakes clinical performance improvement initiatives, including blood product utilization, sepsis identification and management, laboratory utilization, intensive care, palliative care and cardiac quality. She also oversaw fifteen Clinical Expert Panels which engaged across a spectrum of business issues relevant to their areas of clinical expertise.

Speaker Questionnaire

What is the biggest thing you learned in 2020?

What do you feel are the two most important benefits or areas that need to be a top priority in 2021?

Complex claims and pharmacy.

Can you share a story on an area of your healthcare program or employee benefits where you were able to create significant savings or stop costs from rising?

opportunity to move a patient's monthly specialty pharmacy infusions to the comfort and safety of her home, offering patients are usually very excited about. Instead, this patient stopped answering calls from her case manager when the option was mentioned. A review of some publicly available information on social media revealed the patient was a hoarder. Suddenly, the reluctance to allow someone into her homemade more sense. We worked with the employer's CFO to arrange for her to obtain her infusions (and a nice spa visit) at a local hotel once a month. Savings = $850,000 per year.

If you could automatically receive a 10-20% reduction in costs in three areas/programs, what would your dream list be?

Specialty pharmacy, cancer, and complex pediatrics.

What is the most innovative program you will focus on in 2021 and/or 2022?

Building out our referral partners. We started our first relationships with the Mayo Clinic over two years ago. We can expedite referrals of hand-selected complex cases for multispecialty evaluation, and the results have been astounding. Patients say we give them their life back. The right care translates into savings for plans. We are now pursuing similar relationships with select providers in the areas of cancer, neonatology, complex behavioral health, and more.

How are you re-imagining corporate culture & well-being?

The pandemic WFH mandate has caused us all to step back and rethink how we define corporate culture and well-being. Interactions have become more organic and fluid. We are focused more on getting the right result rather than the process of how we got there, understanding there may be more than one way from point A to point B.

What virtual care solutions did you roll out during the pandemic? How valuable were they and why?

We do not provide our virtual care solutions but were delighted to see restrictions lifted so we could get telehealth visits from world-renowned specialists to patients who desperately need them but can't or won't travel.

If you look at our 3 Moonshots - Costs, Culture, and Care; In one sentence, tell us what would be something positive for us to take from 2020 and bring into this new year?

The pandemic has forced us to rethink the possibilities of remote care. While it is certainly not a panacea, it will greatly improve our ability to service patients with customized, personalized, world-leading care, no matter where they reside.

What are your top priorities for employee health and well-being in 2022?

What are the most innovative programs that you will focus on in 2022 and 2023?

Looking at our three moonshots surrounding costs, culture, and care, which do you align with the most? What are you doing in this area?

If you could automatically receive a 25% reduction in costs in three areas/programs, what would your dream list be?

Is there an area where you were able to either create savings or stop costs from rising?

Are you doing anything to reimagine corporate culture and wellbeing?

If there were two physical solutions that could be turned into virtual or remote care instead, what would those be?

If you look at our 3 Moonshots - Costs, Culture, and Care; In one sentence, tell us what would be something positive for us to take from 2020 and bring into this new year?

The pandemic has forced us to rethink the possibilities of remote care. While it is certainly not a panacea, it will greatly improve our ability to service patients with customized, personalized, world-leading care, no matter where they reside.

Sessions Speaking

Self-Funding: Innovation or Science Fiction?

April 26, 2022

11:00 am

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11:50 am

Everyone says they are innovative and disruptive. This session will dive into the “mess” of evaluating hundreds of solution providers and trying to find which ones are actually going to work and which are pipedreams and pure science fiction. Take a look into the crystal ball to know which solutions you should be racing to adopt and which you should be running away from. Now is the time to reject the status quo and go all in.

View session details

1 Conference. 3 Moonshots.

Remember the mission to reach the moon? In 1962, President JFK set forth a vision. He initiated a movement that outlived him! Even in his death, the mission was accomplished seven years after his famous speech. Now we’re on a five-year mission, and it's not about us. This is a mission for you – the individual, the stakeholder, the employer healthcare and benefits professional. Join the mission to reduce costs, reimagine culture, and reinvent care.