Oct. 1, 2019

The leadership team opening three new medicare care facilities in North Carolina were at the Forum to tell their story, make some connections and pitch the idea that changing the incentives in medicine is a shorter path toward cost containment and better health.

Grant Walker, a regional vice president for Chicago-based Oak Street Health, said two sites for Charlotte patients would open within weeks on Freedom Drive and Harrisburg Road. A third will open even sooner in Greensboro.

The concept is not new, but this for-profit company appears to have found a niche, serving adults on Medicare, providing not only physician and health care services, but offering transportation to doctor visits and promising more time with health-care professionals than most consumers might expect in today’s medical care environment.

The star of the show was Dr. Tuwanda Williamson, a family physician by experience from near Chicago who will be the first physician working at the Freedom Drive office.

In the video below, presentations begin at minute 7:15. The Q&A begins at minute 26:20.

This page originally included a handout offered to Forum participants, and slides from a PowerPoint shown during the presentation and reproduced here with permission. The handout and slides were removed Nov. 11 at the request of Erica Frank, vice president of public relations for Oak Street Health. Her request read in part: “I’m hoping you can take down the flyer and powerpoint slides. The flyer is a bit outdated and we typically only show those slides in closed meetings.”

All meetings of the Forum are open to the public. The public will decide what to make of this request.