Relentless Health Value™

EP294: Building a Center of Excellence: A Playbook for Physician Entrepreneurs, With Steve Schutzer, MD, Physician Executive for the Orthopedic Service Line at Trinity Health of New England and Medical Director of the Connecticut Joint Replacement Institu

Lately, several of the Relentless Health Value episodes have focused on digital health companies and their disruptive potential on referral flows of traditional provider organizations. We also talked about other goings-on with the potential to encroach on hospital systems and independent docs alike. For example, we’ve got Walmart getting, in a big way, into the health clinic business. We’ve got VillageMD and Walgreens teaming up. We’ve got mergers in the on-site clinic space. There’s just a ...

EP293: Game Theory Gone Wild: Co-pay Cards, Co-pay Accumulators, and Co-pay Maximizers, With Dea Belazi, PharmD, MPH, President and CEO of AscellaHealth

Let’s cut to the chase here for our conversation about co-pay cards offered by pharma companies versus co-pay accumulators and co-pay maximizers deployed by health plans. This whole war of the co-pays started back in the day when PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) began to shake down Pharma for higher discounts. The prize that PBMs offered Pharma was lower co-pays for patients. It’s a well-known fact that the higher the patient out of pocket, the lower the market share of the drug—the old supp...

EP292.5: Teladoc Livongo Part 2

Welcome to Episode 292, Part 2. This is the second part of a two-part episode, but, in a way, you can listen to whichever part you want first. So, if you wound up here first, no worries. Just go back when you have a sec and listen to Part 1. There’s some good stuff there you don’t want to miss, including some background information that might be good to have.  This episode, as well as the last one, is about Teladoc buying Livongo. I am going to call the combined organization T&L because I ...

EP292: Teladoc Buys Livongo: What Are the Implications for Providers, Employers, and the Market? Part 1, With Bob Matthews and Dan O’Neill, MA, MS

This is episode 1 of a two-part show about the potential impact of the Teladoc acquisition of Livongo. To get started here, in deference to the fact that we’re all in the health care industry, let’s agree on an acronym, shall we—because I can’t keep saying Teladoc-Livongo. So, I’m going to go with T&L heretofore that will refer to the Teladoc acquisition of Livongo. What is the general merged T&L pitch? Here it is (I looked at their investor deck): T&L is going to use technology to transfo...

EP291: What Are Medicare Advantage Plans Up to Right About Now? With Betsy Seals, Cofounder of the Rebellis Group

Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollment has nearly doubled over the past decade. It grew 37% from 2016 to 2020. Right now, MA comprises nearly 40% of the Medicare population—and that number is only expected to grow. So, in case you’ve been out of the loop, at the beginning of 2020, CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) rolled out a third category of these “chronic supplemental benefits.” And these chronic supplemental benefits allow plans to offer basically services to attenuate social...

Encore! EP225: Why, Right Now, It Is No Longer Optional to Suck at Patient Centricity, With Joe Selby, MD, MPH, Former Executive Director of PCORI

There is a land grab going on right now, the likes of which the health care industry hasn’t seen before—at least in our generation. Spoiler alert: There’s a whole episode of Relentless Health Value coming up on the impact of the Teladoc-Livongo hookup. And that is totally relevant to the point I’m about to make. But let me just start with a little bit of background: American patients—let’s get real here—have no more money to spend on health care every year. Really. I mean, you look to empl...

EP290: COVID-19—Shining a Light on the Crafty Gambits Used by Some (Not All) Hospital Billing Departments, With Doug Aldeen

Here’s a couple of sentences ripped from the headlines recently: It is free to be tested for COVID-19 in the US, but the cost of treatment can be shocking. Even if you’re insured, the deductible and co-pay can add up to several thousand dollars. And if you’re uninsured, the financial toll is even uglier. That’s what Boston resident Danni Askini learned when she got a $34,927 bill after receiving treatment in a local emergency room for COVID. That’s from Time magazine. Episode 260 of the sh...

EP289: The Right Amount of Oncology Screening and Care—In a Pandemic and Not in a Pandemic, With Bishal Gyawali, MD, PhD

You may or may not know (I don’t know why you would, honestly), but I speak Swedish. I mention this because there’s this famous and really culturally emblematic Swedish word which is this: lagom. It means “the exact right amount.” In Swedish culture, the exact right amount deserves its own word. For example, “Did you have enough watermelon?” “Why, yes, I had half a slice. It was lagom.” Lagom has no direct translation in US English because, in the United States, we don’t need a word for “t...

EP288: The "Big Three" PBMs Spinning Up GPOs—What? With Mike Schneider, Principal at Avalere Health

Disclaimer before we get started here: This show is probably a 300-level class in pharmaceutical/PBM relations. If you are tuning in for the first time and you aren’t pretty familiar with the role of PBMs, I would go back and listen to, say, episode 241 with Vinay Patel or episode 166 with Tim Thomas from Crystal Clear Rx.  OK, now that that’s out of the way, if you’re still with me, this episode is like a ride on a roller coaster. In this health care podcast, I talk with Mike Schneider, w...

EP287: The Time for Entrepreneurial Physician Leaders Is Right Now, With Dan O’Neill, MA, MS

In this health care podcast, I’m speaking with Dan O’Neill, MA, MS. Dan says that, in many ways, this is a fantastic time to be an entrepreneurial physician leader. We are in a place to reinvent the practice model, meaning finding ways to increase value while losing bloated business practices in labor and capital. It’s more possible than ever to make a medical practice more efficient and effective with less overhead and, at the same time, meet the needs of patients in ways that are, you kn...

EP286: Advice for Health Systems in the Face of Consumerism and Value-based Contracts, With John Rodis, MD, MBA

John Rodis, MD, MBA, is an OB/GYN specializing in high-risk pregnancies. He’s been a board examiner and a department chairman. He’s been a COO and a CEO of a 600-bed Level 1 trauma center. He’s also an author working on a book to help consumers make better choices. Dr. Rodis has said he feels an inflection point is coming in the transition to value. First, we have the pressure of large employers. Second, we’ve got doctors themselves who are being crushed by the current environment and who ...

EP285: The Fascinating Story of Billions of Dollars Going Missing When the Back Office Pays Health Care Bills, With Dawn Cornelis, Cofounder and Director of Transparency at ClaimInformatics

I’m going to summarize some points that Dr. Marty Makary made in his manifesto for why he wrote his most recent book. The Price We Pay is its name. You can hear this manifesto in his own words—in Dr. Makary’s own words—on Relentless Health Value episode 242, but here’s his point: He said that the 2007 banking crisis, writ large, resulted from complexity that kept onlookers confused. So, when people questioned the banks being overleveraged and selling mortgages to, you know, those who couldn’...

EP284: When Prescribers Know How Much a Drug Will Cost Patients at the Point of Prescribing, With Carm Huntress, CEO and Cofounder of RxRevu

There is a transparency zeitgeist kicking off right about now. In June was the biggie, the one where health systems now have to divulge their contracted rates with insurance carriers starting January 1, 2021. But this zeitgeist is flowing into drug prices as well. Surescripts just released their real-time prescription price transparency tool. This price transparency tool allows detailed cost and alternative drug information to be seen in real-time. Surescripts, by the way, is owned by severa...

EP283: Your Telehealth Success May Be a Launchpad for Health System Innovation and Human-centered Health Care, With Sylvia Romm, MD, MPH, Chief Innovation Officer at Atlantic Health System

At the end of the day, health care should be about helping patients find their way to health while doctors, nurses, and other clinicians don’t burn out in the process. It’s becoming increasingly indisputable that the way to get to this North Star efficiently is through human-centered health care. Human-centered health care is a term coined by Dr. Sylvia Romm, and it’s a play on the term customer-centered design. How do we innovate? How do we use technology to intensify the human experience...

INBW27: Two Metrics to Measure the Value of Care Delivered

This past March, I was looking forward to giving a keynote at the Arizona Technology Council. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. COVID happened. But in the process of figuring out what I was going to talk about during my keynote, I came up with an idea and I wanted to share it. It’s the idea of how to measure value in health care delivery, because might as well go big or go home, right? The metrics that we use to measure value is critical, and not just because what gets measured gets managed...

EP282: Do You Know How Much Cancer Centers Get Paid to Put Patients on Drugs? With Aaron Mitchell, MD, MPH

In the April issue of Value-Based Cancer Care (that’s a journal), there’s an article talking about a keynote presentation and a study highlighting a big problem for patients with cancer: toxicity. It’s a fact that some chemo agents are pretty toxic, but in this health care podcast I am talking about financial toxicity. The financial burden of cancer care has a seriously negative influence on patients’ quality of life. This keynote speaker quoted in the Value-Based Cancer Care article implo...

EP281: COVID-19—Badly Managed Health System Supply Chains Steal From Patients and the Providers Who Let This Happen, With Rob Austin From Guidehouse

You know what the second biggest cost line item is on most health systems’ profit and loss report: supplies—buying things like artificial knees, stents, service contracts. It’s estimated that an average hospital can save more than $12 million a year if they manage their supply chain better. And interestingly, oftentimes care actually improves as a result. For context, that wasted $12 million could pay for 165 more nurses or 50 more PCPs. It’s the cost of 3100 knee replacements. (All this, ...

EP280: COVID-19—Will Currently-in-Use Technology Advancements Wind Up Disrupting Traditional Models of Health Care Delivery and Reimbursement? With Yauheni Solad, MD, and Rahul Dubey

In this health care podcast, I am talking with Yauheni Solad, MD. Dr. Solad is one of the top minds in data and data exchange. He’s medical director of digital health and telemedicine at Yale New Haven Health, and he has a mission to lead digital transformation toward accessible and affordable high-quality care that’s enabled by technology. Dr. Solad also does a lot of work with NODE—the Network of Digital Evidence. In the conversation we’re about to have, Dr. Solad represents the provider p...

EP279: COVID-19—How Did Health Systems Get Addicted to the Inflated Prices They Charge Employers and Some Patients? With Peter Hayes, President and CEO of the Healthcare Purchaser Alliance of Maine

Let me explicitly state an implicit theme that’s been running through a bunch of the latest Relentless Health Value podcasts talking about if and how the COVID-19 pandemic could possibly serve as a flash point in the health care industry—a flash point where egregious and self-interested financial pursuits take such a toll that politicians notice. Why do these legislators notice? Because the patients (also known as voters), the ones that we all serve, begin to break under the weight of a sy...

EP278: COVID-19—Will COVID-19 Result in a New Normal for Value-based Pharmaceutical Pricing? With Maura Calsyn From the Center for American Progress

In this health care podcast, I’m speaking with Maura Calsyn from the Center for American Progress—or CAP—and we’re talking about value-based drug pricing and the impact that COVID-19 may have on its definition, operationalism, and broad adoption. I remember a situation (kind of years ago, actually) where a pharma company decided to lower its price on an infused product. Normal supply and demand would dictate that if you lower your price, you will get more overall business, which will resul...

EP277: COVID-19—Is Now the Time When Value-based Payments Overcome a Fierce and Sticky Fee-for-Service Overlord? With Eric Weaver, Executive Director of the Accountable Care Learning Collaborative

Look, bottom line, value-based care has to be the future of health care delivery in this country. That’s just inarguable at this point. Nobody disagrees except for health care industry stakeholders trying to reap as much reward as possible while the going is good. And they’ve been really successful with their reaping thus far. Here’s the thing, though: There’s speculation that health insurance premiums may go up, like, 4% to 40% next year if the status quo remains the status quo. Is this t...

EP276: COVID-19—Advice for Self-insured Employers and That Prediction of a 4% to 40% Premium Increase in the Fully Insured Market, With Brian Scott From Point6 Healthcare

In this health care podcast, I talk with Brian Scott. Brian has a background which is perfect for the question of “Will employer health care costs go up or will they go down as a result of this pandemic?” First, Brian was an underwriter at United. Then he was in a dedicated complex claims group for Lockton that managed self-funded plans. And now he’s at Point6 Healthcare, where he works to put together the best-value plan for employers, including getting stop-loss. Brian works with TPAs (thi...

EP275: COVID-19—Will Self-insured Employer Costs Ultimately Go Up? The Why and How to Protect Your Company From Predatory Health Care Pricing, With Brian Scott, From Point6 Healthcare

I have the same burning question that I think many of you have: If I am a self-funded employer, as a result of this pandemic, will my health care costs go up? This question boils down to an equation that has two parts: the additions and then the subtractions. In the Additions column, how much will an employer spend on COVID-19 treatments—you know, both the ICU visits but also employees who haven’t been to the doctor in 15 years, get a cough, go to the doctor, and get diagnosed with some un...

EP274: COVID-19—What Telehealth Means After the Pandemic, With Jonathan Thierman, MD, PhD, From LifeBridge Health System

Everybody’s talking about the surge in telehealth usage. I wanted to talk to someone who has been ramping up their telehealth capabilities for a while to get a sense of what it takes to do it well. And, as has been said by many, doing telehealth isn’t just about technology. It’s about training clinicians, patients, and accounts receivable and other staff. It’s about rearranging workflows and processes. So, I was super pleased to have had the opportunity to speak with Jonathan Thierman, MD, P...

EP273: COVID-19—At What Level Will Telehealth Survive After the End of the Pandemic? With Jonathan Thierman, MD, PhD, From LifeBridge Health System

Everybody’s been talking about the surge in telehealth usage—how it would have taken, like, ten years to get as far as we’ve gotten in the past ten days. I wanted to talk to somebody who has been ramping up their telehealth capabilities for a while to get a sense of what it takes to do it well. As has been said by many, doing telehealth isn’t just about technology. It’s about training—clinicians and patients and accounts receivable and other staff. It’s about rearranging workflows and proces...

EP272: COVID-19—Why This Pandemic Is a Game Changer for PCPs and the Employers and Plans Who Pay Them, With Guy Culpepper, MD

A lot of people are wondering why independent PCPs are furloughing nurses and talking about shuttering their practices in the middle of a pandemic. Conventional wisdom would assume that PCPs would be just fine if they stand up telehealth and can take some sort of majority of their patient visits virtually. After all, it would make a lot of sense that a lot of patients are calling their doctor right now. In this health care podcast, I interview Guy Culpepper, MD. Dr. Culpepper sets us strai...

EP271: COVID-19—A Surprise Billing Defense Strategy for Patients AND Employers in the Middle of a Pandemic, With Al Lewis, Rachel Miner, David Contorno, and Doug Aldeen

In this health care podcast, I’m talking to Al Lewis from Quizzify. This episode also guest stars Rachel Miner from Thrive Benefits, David Contorno from E Powered Benefits, and Doug Aldeen, a health care attorney in Texas. This episode started out being about surprise billing in the emergency room (ER) and a potential defense strategy that patients and employees can use to protect themselves from egregious billing practices. Surprise bills are when a patient gets “balance billed” for a sum...

EP270: COVID-19—How to Save Primary Care Practices With the Marshall Plan for Prospective Payment Models, With Dave Chase, Cofounder and CEO of Health Rosetta

Let’s talk today specifically about primary care physicians (PCPs) and family medicine doctors. Data was reported in USA Today, saying that an estimated 60,000 family practices will close and 800,000 of their employees will lose their jobs by the end of June. It’s hard for any practice to just snap its fingers and transfer patients over to telemedicine regardless of the reimbursement rate and/or how many payers are actually paying any reimbursement for telemedicine or remote patient monitori...

EP269: COVID-19—Prepping for the Next Wave: What Payers and Providers Should Be Doing Right Now to Get Ready, With Eric Bricker, MD, From AHealthcareZ

The first wave of this COVID-19 pandemic has been totally reactionary. Don’t get me wrong: That does not detract from the Herculean effort made by hospitals and clinicians who have thrown everything they have at this—and more. But I don’t think that anyone would disagree that if we had enough PPE (personal protective equipment) and ventilators—you know, like, proactively—we’d be in better shape. So let’s stay ahead of the second wave of this pandemic, which is going to happen when, as Mart...

AEE11: COVID-19 Billing, With Doug Aldeen and Al Lewis

On Friday, March 27, President Trump signed into law the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act—otherwise known as CARES. This CARES Act covers the whole $2 trillion megillah stimulus package, but in this health care podcast episode, we’re talking quickly about a provision in that Act. I speak first with Doug Aldeen, an attorney specializing in helping employers settle hospital bills. Doug works with clients across the country. And then at the end of the episode, you will also ...

EP268: COVID-19—After June: Action Steps for Hospitals, Payers, Employers, and Pharma, With Marty Makary, MD, MPH

The reaction of some hospitals and health care systems to the COVID-19 pandemic has been truly breathtaking. Doctors, nurses, first responders, other staff at hospitals and elsewhere have worked hard—so hard—to support the national effort. The same can be said to some tech entrepreneurs and other businesses who have snapped into action in order to provide PPE (personal protective equipment) and artificial intelligence to the frontline health care workers. In this health care podcast, I’m t...

EP267: COVID-19—From Now Until June: Action Steps for Hospitals, Payers, Employers, Pharma, With Marty Makary, MD, MPH

Marty Makary, MD, MPH, is a surgeon at Johns Hopkins. He’s a professor of surgery and health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University. And he’s also the author of The Price We Pay and Unaccountable. I had the honor of speaking with Dr. Makary last week, and I learned a lot. For one, the worst is between now and June. For two, it’s all about ramping up capacity as fast as possible in our hospitals. We talk a lot, Dr. Makary and I, about what that looks like and what other stakeholder...

EP266: When the Scrubs and the Suits Partner Together, Everybody Is Happier … Except Maybe Those Looking to Exploit Patients, With Matt Anderson, MD, MBA

This episode was recorded prior to COVID-19 hitting our shores. Irrespectively, it is incredibly relevant. Right now, more than ever, we need physician leadership and we need partnership across organizations and within organizations so that good decisions can be made as fast as possible. Look, we don’t have time to mess around right now. We need to be making good decisions—and fast. And these decisions on digital health solutions and other technologies and processes and workflows need to r...

EP265: The What, the How, and the Questionable Why of Digital Therapeutic Formularies, With Randy Vogenberg, PhD

There is a lot going on with digital health tools these days. Which ones are the good ones and which ones are nothing burgers packaged up in beautiful marketing? That’s a good question, and it would be nice to have a go-to source for such information. Some parties — mainly PBMs [pharmacy benefit managers] and to some extent payers and providers — recognize that this actually would be nice, and they see that creating digital formularies could be an opportunity to grow revenue for their shar...

EP264: How Prior Auths Collide With Trust, With Ron Wince, CEO of Myndshft

It’s kind of a vicious cycle. Payers don’t trust providers to do the right thing and provide appropriate care. And OK, there’s some logic there considering that 25-ish% of health care delivered is low-value or unnecessary. On the other hand, some patients actually need the care and now it’s painstaking for them to get it—and that painstaking part of the sentence is borne by providers, at least logistically. So then the providers learn how to expedite getting their patients care by copying an...

EP263: How Population Health Leaders Use Artificial Intelligence Right Now, With Andrew Eye From ClosedLoop

Here’s the thing: All the top-performing Medicare Advantage plans are using, today, right now, some form of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to risk-stratify their populations and predict which members will, without intervention, become high cost in the near term. The idea is then to intervene to mitigate risk and stop bad things from happening—bad things that stink if you’re the patient and also cost a lot if you’re the plan. That’s what population health management is al...

EP262: The Ease of Doing Business, With Brian Van Winkle and Rishab Shah From Johns Hopkins Medicine and Working With NODE.Health

The World Bank had a revelation a few years back. Some very smart people working there realized that countries that were easy to do business with thrived. Within these countries’ business ecosystem, the best and the brightest entrepreneurs and investors grew not only their own businesses but also positively influenced other businesses and the community around them. Brian Van Winkle and Rishab Shah, both executives at Johns Hopkins, had their own revelation: Health systems who are easy to d...

EP261: Six Essential Steps to Get Population Health Right, With Fred Goldstein, President and Founder of Accountable Health, LLC

Today I speak with Fred Goldstein. Fred knows a lot about population health. His credentials, in fact, are about as long as my arm, so I’m just going to call him president and founder of Accountable Health, LLC and also co-founder and lead co-host at PopHealth Week—a podcast you should check out. Today Fred and I get into not just what ‘good’ looks like when it comes to population health, but also the six steps to achieve it. If you are looking to deploy some population health or if you are ...

AEE10: An Update on the Snowball of Drug Pricing Initiatives in Washington Right Now, With Josh LaRosa, MPP, Policy Director, Wynne Health Group

In this health care podcast, Josh LaRosa from the Wynne Health Group is back to give us an update on the snowball of drug pricing initiatives zigzagging their way around Washington right now. For the details, listen to episode 243. That’s where we really drill into the details. This conversation is more of a status report. (Note: This episode was recorded on February 6.)  You can learn more at wynnehealth.com or reach out to Josh at [email protected]. Josh LaRosa, MPP, is a policy dire...

EP260: The Latest Shkreli Awards for the Worst Examples of Profiteering and Dysfunction in the Health Care Industry, With Shannon Brownlee and Vikas Saini, MD, of the Lown Institute

EP259: What Are Payers Looking to Solve For Right Now? With Rahul Dubey of Percynal Health Innovations

Rahul Dubey is the founder of Percynal Health Innovations. He’s also the former chief innovation officer at AHIP—that’s America’s Health Insurance Plans. AHIP is a trade group for insurance carriers, health systems, best-in-breed solution providers, and others. Rahul has created what he calls strategic working groups, in which he gets together essential stakeholders within a regional geography to collaborate and figure out innovative best-in-class emerging solutions and approaches. The fir...

EP258: Areas of Promise, With Seven Health Care Thought Leaders

In this health care podcast, seven thought leaders talk about the areas of promise they see in health care in 2020. Seven thought leaders include: Kimberly Noel, MD, from Stony Brook Medicine Eric Weaver, from Innovista Health Solutions Suzanne Delbanco, from Catalyst for Payment Reform Sue Schade, from StarBridge Advisors Naomi Fried, from Health Innovation Strategies Joe Grundy, from Grundy Consulting Adrian Rubstein, from Merck Just a couple of comments up front here. I don’t wa...

EP257: Rating the Raters of Hospital Quality, With Karl Bilimoria, MD, From Northwestern Medicine

In this health care podcast, I talk with Karl Bilimoria, MD. Dr. Bilimoria is a surgical oncologist and a VP of quality over at Northwestern Medicine. Plus, he is also a John B. Murphy professor of surgery. The second I heard that Dr. Bilimoria and his colleagues had worked on an initiative to “rate the raters” of hospital and physician quality, I reached out to get him on the show. I had just had about four conversations with various people about the difficulties of judging quality. And I h...

EP256: A Major Health Care Cost Driver Revealed: Misdiagnoses in Radiology, With Ron Vianu, Founder and CEO of Covera Health

You know how in JAMA recently it said that 25% or more of health care spending is frittered away wastefully? Some of that wasteful spending comes from unnecessary care. And some of that unnecessary care happens when a patient is misdiagnosed and then, based on that misdiagnosis, gets care for the wrong thing. And “wrong thing” care obviously isn’t going to fix the actual problem because its intention is to fix something else. How do some of these misdiagnoses occur? Considering all of the ...

EP255: UCHealth: A Short List of Hospital Innovations Rolled Out in 2019, With Richard Zane, MD, From UCHealth

Dr. Richard Zane is the chief innovation officer at UCHealth. He’s also the executive director of emergency services there. Besides that, he chairs emergency medicine at the medical school and he’s a professor at the business school and at the medical school. At the recent NODE Digital Medicine Conference, I asked Dr. Zane to talk about the 2019 innovations that he is most proud to have rolled out in their hospital system. We talk about three of these innovations, and then we get into the ...

EP254: How to Achieve Outcomes That Matter to Patients, With Nadine Jackson McCleary, MD, MPH, BSN

Everybody knows about evidence-based medicine, especially evidence-based medicine around the use of pharmaceuticals—and especially in oncology. Provider and payer organizations, many of them, strive to standardize care pathways around that evidence-based medicine. Here is the thing: I’ve heard it said that doctors and patients at the point of care are not particularly interested in evidence-based medicine. What they want right then is medicine-based evidence: If this patient takes this medic...

INBW26: A Three-Prong Plan to Find Areas of Promise and/or Promising Companies in Health Care

I was asked by a group of students from Michigan University’s Ross School of Business to identify what I would consider companies or areas of promise in health care. It’s a good question. I’m going to take a stab at the answer in this health care podcast, but let me foreshadow coming up next month, there’ll be a second episode of Relentless Health Value dedicated to this same exact topic. I have asked a panel of people from across the industry to weigh in on this same exact question. So, h...

EP253: How to Use Health IT to Help Patients and Providers Collaborate, With George Mathew, Chief Medical Officer at DXC Technology

Right now, I am in the middle of rereading The Innovator’s Dilemma—that seminal work by Clayton Christensen. I’m at the chapter right now where he talks about resources (human and otherwise), processes, and values. These three things are the trifecta that determines what any organization can manage to achieve—or not achieve, as the case may be with disruptive technologies. Here’s where this is relevant to health IT. You can have the most dedicated team who has built out and proven a digita...

EP252: The Not-So-Obvious Thing That Musculoskeletal Care and a 4-Minute Mile Have in Common, With Chad Gray, CEO of Integrated Musculoskeletal Care

Musculoskeletal issues, otherwise known as MSK issues, account for something like 20% of the cost to any given health plan or employer or anyone else who is paying the bill for health care. That’s like one in every five dollars, which is meaningful when you consider million-dollar drugs and diabetes and all the other things that a purchaser of health care can write checks for. MSK is a big cost kahuna. In this health care podcast, I talk with Chad Gray, who is the CEO of IMC, Integrated Mu...

INBW25: Behind the Marketing: Preparing Account Management for Successful Selling Into Health Systems, With Co-Hosts Stacey Richter and Dave Dierk, Co-Presidents of Aventria Health Group

I was listening to The #HCBiz Show!, featuring hosts Don Lee and Shahid Shah, earlier this year—specifically, their two-part series entitled “Selling Into Health Systems” [part 1 and part 2]. Besides being co-hosts of The #HCBiz Show!, Don Lee is the founder of Glide Health and VBP Forward [which stands for value-based payments], and Shahid is a serial entrepreneur; one of his companies is Netspective. Shahid can be found doing HIT keynotes all over the country, too. Both of these guys, Don ...