For many executives, access is largely synonymous with growth. Investments to date have focused on adding in-person convenient access points: retail partnerships, urgent care, and walk-in clinics most notably. Increasing access to care remains foundational for any growth and patient loyalty strategy—but simply increasing the number of access points is not enough to inflect high-cost utilization patterns.

Under risk, the focus extends beyond the initial entry point, to more regular access to the care team for consistent patient engagement. Not only does this boost patient experience but these more frequent touchpoints also help improve treatment adherence and patient management—improving outcomes and lowering costs.

To do this, organizations must get patients the care they need when they need it, using all the access points they offer—of which in-person office visits are just one. A combination of virtual technologies—synchronous visits, remote patient monitoring (RPM), and digital therapeutics (DTx)—can be used to effectively educate patients, develop and share care plans, monitor symptoms, and manage medications. These are also important tools for collecting real-time data, increasing touchpoints, and reducing barriers to care.

Prioritize patients who lack frequent access to in-person care, especially those in high-risk zip codes. And, remember, these tools aren’t just for clinicians and patients. They can also be clinician-to-clinician to expand specialist capacity and avoid unnecessary high-cost care.

As physician burnout has spiked, so has interest in team-based care. Early pilots have focused on more “traditional” care team members like advanced practice providers and medical assistants who can help reduce physician workload and improve efficiency. Team-based care plays an important—albeit different—role under risk. Rather than just supporting the physician, team-based care is centered around the patient.

Under risk, the focus of care delivery shifts to addressing each patient’s unique biopsychosocial needs. Holistic care requires adding care managers, behavioral health specialists, and pharmacists to the team. Building an extended care team extends practice capacity to care for more patients in the near term and manage more complex patient conditions longer term.

But team-based care is expensive and the traditional payment system is not set up to support investment in non-reimbursable services. To scale team-based care sustainably, organizations need to align their investments with the amount of financial risk they’ve taken on—concentrating on at-risk patients covered under risk-based contracts. Said another way: Only some patients will get extended care team support based on risk level (both clinical and contract) until your organization takes on enough downside risk to scale broadly.

Below, is one of our favorite graphics we’ve ever published, that teaches this mindset shift: