Free, day-long forum Sept. 16 in Louisville will explore doing health care differently; registration almost full

A free one-day conference will be held Tuesday, Sept. 16, in Louisville to explore policy opportunities and challenges related to doing health care differently for a healthier Kentucky. The focus will be on the shift to a population-health approach, which emphasizes prevention and integration of services while treating the whole person within the context of their community.

This edition of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky's annual Howard L. Bost Memorial Health Policy Forum, Doing Care Differently: Journey to a Healthier Kentucky, will have experts on:

• Changing the health-care workforce 
• information-technology applications in health care;
• Measuring, and improving, quality 
• Payment changes that drive care-delivery changes

The keynote speaker will be Dr. Jason Hwang, chief medical officer and one of the founders of PolkaDoc, an "extremely affordable primary care" telehealth company. Other speakers include Dr. Craig Blakely, dean of the University of Louisville School of Public Health and Information Sciences; Brent Wright of the U of L School of Medicine; David Bolt of the Kentucky Primary Care Association; Travis Burgett of KentuckyOne Health; Mark Carter of Passport Health Plan; Fran Feltner, director of the University of Kentucky Center for Excellence in Rural Health; Dr. John Langefeld of the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services; Dr. Raynor Mullins of the UK College of Dentistry; Polly Mullins-Bentley of the Governor's Office of Electronic Health Information; Sheila Schuster, chair of the Kentucky Mental Health Coalition; and Connie White of the state Department for Public Health.

The conference is free to the public, but seating is limited and registration is nearly full. For more information click here; for an agenda, here; to register, here.