Health care utilization is not dropping, but shifting toward a greater focus on outpatient care, Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO Bernard Tyson told CNBC on Friday.
"In our environment, when you're in the hospital, we're already preparing to care for you in the outpatient setting," he said in a "Squawk Box" interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "We can get someone out of the hospital faster. However they are handed off to the outpatient side of the organization, so the continuity of care continues, its just in a very different setting."
Tyson said that model helps make health care more affordable for Kaiser Permanente and marks a change from the industry's mindset 30 years ago, when people came to providers, he said. "Now we're distributing care out," he said.
