Commonly Well is growing

A healthcare innovation and behavioral health integration specialist joins Commonly Well to grow the Recovery Capital Index.

Commonly Well is thrilled to announce its first hire. Patrick McGowan has joined Commonly Well as Head of Growth. Patrick will lead our efforts to grow the adoption of the Recovery Capital Index (RCI) in the behavioral health, addiction care, mental health, and recovery field.

In the spring of 2020, there were very few people who knew I was planning a new endeavor. One of those people was Patrick. He got the first glimpse of the vision, strategy, and fears. He gave me the type of feedback only good friends and long-time collaborators could give.

I was walking into an abyss knowing nothing about pretty much everything.

I was grateful for our sweeping and deep conversations while I paced my driveway under the warming Adirondack spring sun.

This wasn’t just a moment of me taking and Patrick giving. He was undertaking a transition and new endeavor of his own. It was exciting but also comforting to help one another craft these new journeys.

Two years later, the RCI is gaining traction and we must start building the team to accomplish the vision.

I have known Patrick for almost 10 years. We first met when our respective organizations began collaborating on a CMS Innovation Award to integrate behavioral health practitioners, processes, and assessments into primary care clinics. This collaboration resulted in the addition of a peer coach to primary care behavioral health teams. A big win in 2015!

While working inside two large integrated health systems, Patrick has navigated the adoption of biopsychosocial approaches for patient care and population health and helped standardize technology across regional hospitals.

Patrick is a forever learner. He recently completed Michael Porter’s “Value Measurement in Healthcare” course through Harvard Business School.

The shift to value-based care in behavioral health and addiction care is slow but on the way. At the heart of that shift will be how we implement and rigorously measure change and patient success. We will also need a standardized measure of success. We believe that the Recovery Capital Index is the instrument that can meet this challenge for behavioral health.

Given Patrick’s background and experience working on very hard problems in healthcare, you can see why I asked him to join me and Commonly Well to advance the Recovery Capital Index.

More importantly, he’s someone I like and like working with. He sees things I don’t and has skills I likely won’t have.

In the coming month, we plan to host a conversation live on LinkedIn. We’ll talk about Patrick’s experience in healthcare and explore the importance of subjective measures like the RCI in measurement- and performance-based future. Keep an eye out for that invitation.

For now, please join me in welcoming Patrick to Commonly Well.

MEET PATRICK MCGOWAN

Patrick has spent his career as an inside change leader in several organizations, first in business then in healthcare. He specializes in aligning teams on a common path to achieving better results. For the past decade he has led several system-level change initiatives inside two major Midwest health systems. His work on a CMS Innovation Award resulted in the integration of behavioral health practitioners, processes, and assessments across 33 primary care clinics – an innovation which saw the adoption of a biopsychosocial approach to patient care for thousands of people. He also worked to realign 14 service lines on five strategic aims and two population health goals – collaborating with executives and physicians on both practice and technology standardization across multiple regional hospitals.

Patrick brings a keen understanding and appreciation for how data can be used to change people’s lives. Even before starting in healthcare, he was incredibly curious about how people change. Subsequently, Patrick has developed considerable know-how in Adaptive Leadership, Immunity to Change, and Patient Activation. He holds a Master of Business Administration as well as a BA in Journalism. Most recently, he completed Michael Porter’s “Value Measurement in Healthcare” through Harvard Business School.

Patrick is based in Sioux Falls, SD.