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For Medicaid health plans, improving outcomes begins with a fundamental challenge: you cannot support a member you cannot reach. In a recent MedCity News article, “Medicaid’s Next Performance Test: Can Plans Reach the Members They’re Accountable For?”, MedZed Co-Founder and CEO Scott Schnell explores why finding and engaging high-risk members is becoming an increasingly important measure of health plan performance.

During National Nurses Month, there is a tendency to celebrate nurses in broad and deserved terms: compassion, resilience, dedication, sacrifice. All of that is true. But in today’s healthcare environment, especially in Medicaid, it is also incomplete.

In Medicaid, a small group of members accounts for a disproportionate share of spending — and exposes the limits of how care is delivered today. Roughly 5% of the population drives nearly half of all Medicaid spending. These are the members most likely to cycle through emergency departments, experience repeated hospitalizations, and struggle with unmanaged chronic and behavioral health conditions.

Scott Schnell, Cofounder and CEO, built  MedZed by reaching the people healthcare can’t — and staying long enough to change outcomes. He leads a team of compassionate, hardworking caregivers who help our country’s most vulnerable Medicaid patients.

On March 19, MedZed had the privilege of being honored with a Certificate of Recognition for our commitment to community health, presented by Guillermo Hernandez, District Representative for Senator Stephen Padilla.

Most performance frameworks assume members can be reached, guided, and retained in care through conventional channels. But for a meaningful share of high-acuity populations, that assumption simply doesn’t hold. When engagement breaks down, quality scores fall, utilization rises, and financial pressure compounds.