Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders

Dr. Julian Harris developed a personal passion for home health and shifting care towards value watching his father and his grandfather serve as caregivers for his mother and grandmother, who both had complex health conditions. He started his professional life as a primary care doctor in community health centers and safety net hospitals, but with an interest in business, gravitated towards a career that has spanned the highest levels of provider, payer, government and many other organizations. He is now applying his knowledge and experience towards his passion for care at home, serving as chairman and CEO at ConcertoCare, a value-based provider of at-home, comprehensive care for seniors and other adults with unmet health and social needs.In addition to his role leading ConcertoCare, Dr. Harris is also an operating partner at the healthcare investment firm, Deerfield Management, and earlier in his career served as an advisor to Google Ventures (GV). He also led the healthcare team in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and before that, served as the chief executive for the Massachusetts Medicaid program. Most recently, before joining Deerfield, Dr. Harris worked at Cigna, where he led U.S. Strategic Operations and internal investment in technology and innovation, and then served as President of CareAllies, a group of Cigna-affiliated population health management and home-based primary care companies.In this episode of Healthcare is Hard, Keith Figlioli’s conversation with Dr. Harris covers a wide array of topics related to healthcare innovation and new care delivery, including:The levers of shifting care towards value. Drawing on his perspectives from clinical, innovation and policy roles (at both the federal and state level), Dr. Harris describes how he thinks about the different levers that can be adjusted to improve quality while ensuring that healthcare is affordable. He talks about the main goal of incentivizing providers to practice evidence-based medicine and adjusting key levers including the number of people covered, level of benefits, negotiated rates with providers, and utilization, and how they all impact each other.The VBC journey for each category of home care. Dr. Harris discusses the broad range of services delivered in the home – from PT and OT, to infusion services, palliative care, hospice, and even home-based primary care. He talks about how organizations focused on individual components of home care are finding their way towards value, how Medicare and Medicaid are driving the movement, and the end goal of combining all the pieces for comprehensive care.Thoughtful acceleration of digital tools. While there are many barriers for aging patients to engage with digital tools, Dr. Harris is seeing thoughtful and effective execution by companies addressing issues like remote patient monitoring, medication adherence, and chronic condition management. He sees the most success with patients utilizing these tools in an integrated model and talks about the increasing role digital tools will naturally play as people engage more as they age, or before they develop complex health conditions.To hear Dr. Harris and Keith talk about these topics and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.

As a self-described latchkey kid growing up in Los Angeles, Dr. John Halamka says riding his bike to Raytheon, Hughes Aircraft and Aerojet – and pulling integrated circuits and manuals from their dumpsters to learn how they worked – lured him into the world of technology. Not long after, he started developing his first healthcare-related IT system, which he sold to UCLA when he was 14.Those experiences kicked-off a career where Dr. Halamka has worked at the intersection of technology and healthcare for five decades. Trained in emergency medicine and medical informatics, Dr. Halamka has served in many roles, including chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for more than 20 years, where he oversaw digital health relationships with industry, academia, and governments worldwide. As the International Healthcare Innovation Professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Halamka helped the George W. Bush administration, Obama administration, and governments around the world plan their health care information strategies.In his current role as president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, Dr. Halamka leads a portfolio of platform businesses focused on transforming health care by leveraging artificial intelligence, connected health care devices and a network of trusted partners.In this episode of Healthcare is Hard, Dr. Halamka shares his perspective on the evolution of digital health and where the industry is headed through an in-depth conversation with Keith Figlioli. The topics they cover include:Mayo’s platform play. As president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, Dr. Halamka spends time explaining the organization’s view about what constitutes a platform and why it’s important. He describes it as an ecosystem that’s built to foster innovation at an extraordinarily fast pace. He contrasts the approach to other healthcare organizations where building collaboration is hard, and discusses how the Mayo Clinic Platform makes it easy for innovators to find mentors, access millions of de-identified patient records to test new technology, tap into thousands of clinical experts to address a problem, and so much more.The arc of healthcare IT. Dr. Halamka explains innovation in digital health – especially through the implementation of Meaningful Use over the past decade – with a quote from Winston Churchill: “Americans will always do the right thing. After they’ve tried everything else.” While it took a long time to arrive, he does not lament the journey and expresses optimism for the current state and future of digital health.Guardrails for AI and ML. Much like Google Cloud’s Aashima Gupta described in a past Healthcare is Hard episode, Dr. Halamka talks about the need for a standard set of metrics to measure the performance of AI models in healthcare. He views his career as seven or eight distinct periods of achievement including events like standardizing vocabularies or moving to APIs, and believes the next period will be about creating the guidelines, guardrails and transparency for machine learning in healthcare, and using it ubiquitously across the globe. Convergence of AI and ML models. Dr. Halamka says he is seeing an amazing array of startup activity creating models for niche purposes on multimodal data. He says there will be a huge number of model providers and talks about the importance of platform players being able to bring them together. He says data liquidity and a huge ecosystem of players coming together will be revolutionary in the ability for people to navigate their health care.To hear Dr. Halamka and Keith talk about these topics and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.

At the beginning of the pandemic when nursing homes were a hotbed for COVID-19 infections and many untimely deaths, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) began hosting daily phone calls where hundreds of facilities joined to quickly get and share information that would improve their response. It led to a larger project over the next year that included every nursing home in the country sharing knowledge and information, and is an excellent example of how IHI achieves its mission of helping to improve quality and outcomes by learning and teaching best practices.IHI was founded more than 30 years ago to improve the safety and quality of healthcare by studying how leading companies in other industries systematize processes to apply learnings across the healthcare ecosystem. Don Berwick, IHI’s founder, and Maureen Bisognano, president emerita, talked about the genesis of the organization as guests on the Healthcare is Hard podcast in February 2019. Since July 2020, the organization has been led by our guest for this episode: IHI’s current president and CEO, Dr. Kedar Mate.In this episode, Dr. Mate talked to Keith Figlioli about his background as an Indian-American and how time spent in his youth traveling between both countries helped drive him towards a career dedicated to addressing health related injustice and inequities. They discuss many facets of the work he’s doing at IHI including:Questioning IHI’s relevance. After three decades of measurable success working towards its mission, one of Dr. Mate’s first decisions as IHI’s new CEO was to audit the organization and its relevance in a rapidly-evolving healthcare landscape. He describes three core value propositions – the organization’s methods, ability to inspire, and quest for driving results at scale – and how they apply today.Teaching – and learning – globally. With so many challenges around quality, outcomes and costs to overcome in the U.S. healthcare system alone, Dr. Mate talks about why IHI has chosen a broader, global focus. Much like the organization’s mission of bringing knowledge from other industries into healthcare, its involvement in healthcare delivery around the world enables it to identify and share strategies that are working across healthcare economies. Measuring outcomes vs. process. Dr. Mate shares his belief about the current flaws in measuring care quality. He talks about how outcome-based measurement is underrepresented in favor of process-based measurement, and how the industry has a tendency to continue creating new measures without sunsetting old ones. He also shares the important reminder that measurement itself is not the objective, and that we must not lose sight of giving organizations tools and methods so they can actually change their measures and create better results.Quality and new care delivery. With new sites of care and options for virtual care continuing to grow, Dr. Mate and Keith talk about the role quality measurements will plan in the future of healthcare. They discuss the imperative for setting standards and measurements for virtual care and technology-enabled services, and how quality can become the major differentiator when there are no limitations on geographic boundaries.To hear Dr. Mate and Keith talk about these topics and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.

Dr. Meena Seshamani is responsible for the health care coverage of more than 63 million Americans and nearly one in every five healthcare dollars spent in the U.S. With the ultimate goal of keeping the people who rely on Medicare at the center of every decision, her role as the director of  the Center for Medicare at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requires her to balance the personal side of healthcare with the complexities of the healthcare system at large. And she has a rare combination of qualifications that give her a profound expertise with both.As an ear, nose and throat surgeon, Dr. Seshamani has worked at leading health systems delivering care at the patient bedside and serving in senior executive leadership roles. As a PhD in healthcare economics, she has decades of healthcare policy experience. She recently served on the leadership of the Biden Administration’s transition team at the Department of Health and Human Services and was previously director of the Office of Health Reform where she drove strategy and led implementation of the Affordable Care Act across the department.This diverse background as a health care executive, health economist, physician and health policy expert gives her a unique perspective on how health policy impacts the real lives of patients.In this episode of Healthcare is Hard, Dr. Seshamani spoke to Keith Figlioli about her expansive role and her focus on the key pillars at Medicare: advancing health equity, driving innovation in healthcare, maintaining good fiscal stewardship and delivering high-quality, person-centered care. Their conversation covers several topics including:A day in the life of CMS. While every day is different, one recurring theme Dr. Seshamani discusses throughout the interview is the importance of listening to patients, staff, partners and others. She says her education and experiences have given her the humility to understand that no one person knows everything and that listening to all stakeholders is a critical component to realizing the power Medicare has to positively impact healthcare in America.Pieces of the Medicare puzzle. Medicare Advantage plans continue to grow in popularity and now account for more than 40% of Medicare enrollees. And while that means more people are transitioning away from traditional Medicare, Dr. Seshamani shares her thoughts about the continued importance of every piece of the Medicare program. The main objective is providing people with options so they can find the solution that works best for them which in turn, drives the system towards achieving the vision of greater health equity.Helping people navigate Medicare. With so many options in the Medicare program, especially with the proliferation of Medicare Advantage, it creates challenges to help seniors navigate them all. But Dr, Seshamani looks at that challenge and sees it as an opportunity. She talks about ways to provide people with the data and information they need to make decisions and the changes CMS is making to the Plan Finder to make that process easier. She also talks about adding additional oversight over third-party marketing for Medicare Advantage based on direct feedback she received about the confusion it can cause for seniors nationwide.To hear Meena and Keith talk about these topics and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.

Aashima Gupta was a rising star in the financial technology world at organizations including Fidelity Investments and JPMorgan Chase, but after her father passed away suddenly due to health reasons, she turned her technical talents towards improving healthcare. After five years in leading technical roles at Kaiser Permante and two years leading healthcare strategy at the API and analytics company Apigee, she became director of global healthcare solutions at Google Cloud through its acquisition of Apigee. While historically big tech has had little insight into what is happening on the ground within vertical markets – including healthcare – that paradigm is shifting. As part of this evolution, cloud infrastructure companies are tailoring solutions to meet specific needs and advance digital transformation within industries like healthcare. This is the crux of Aashima’s role at Google Cloud where she focuses on applying Google Cloud technology, machine learning, artificial intelligence, mobile and APIs to help companies in the healthcare ecosystem identify new care models, improve patient experiences, generate new revenue streams and securely share data.In this episode of Healthcare is Hard, Aashima talks to Keith Figlioli about her journey from Fintech to Digital Health and shares insight into Google’s strategy to transform healthcare. Topics they discuss include:The pace of innovation in digital health. Aashima recounts her transition to healthcare and the biggest differences with the pace of innovation. She had often dealt with mission critical systems in past roles at some of the world’s largest financial services organizations, but recognized quickly after moving to Kaiser Permanente that she was now dealing with life critical systems. She talks about the shifts in culture and mindset that a career in healthcare technology requires.Google’s most recent healthcare news. Google’s core mission is to democratize access to information, and its recent announcements about integrating features for scheduling medical appointments directly into search results shows how that mission extends to healthcare. These new features aim to address one of the most significant barriers to getting care: the ability to find an appointment. Aashima discusses how these new developments fit into Google’s larger vision for healthcare innovation and the company’s ongoing efforts to expand partnerships with third parties.Democratizing AI in healthcare. As a platform that fills a critical infrastructure role for organizations across the healthcare ecosystem – from payers and providers, to life science companies, tech vendors and more – Google Cloud places an intense focus on empowering these companies through advanced technologies like AI. With years of experience building, deploying and maintaining machine learning for its own use and incorporating that institutional knowledge into its cloud platform, Google is helping to democratize AI and accelerate healthcare innovation. As an example, Aashima points to customers that can train AI models using 80% fewer lines of code than they would need otherwise.Responsible use of AI. Google recognizes the power of AI and the equally powerful questions it raises about using it responsibly – especially in healthcare. Aashima shares how Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pichai, has been directly involved with the company’s principles for responsible AI innovation. She talks about how the company uses tools like “model cards,” which describe AI algorithms in a similar way to nutrition labels on food packaging, and how it’s pushing for these to play a foundational role in the future of AI.To hear Aashima and Keith talk about these topics and more, listen to the full episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.  

Dr. Mona Siddiqui says she loves solving problems at the intersection of health policy, strategy, data and operations. After earning a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, a master’s in public health with a focus on quantitative methods and data analysis from Harvard, and a master’s in engineering from Stanford, Mona has dedicated her career towards using this unique skillset to improve healthcare.She served as a resident at George Washington University Hospital, Innovator-in-Residence at CMMI, and a member of the White House National Science and Technology Council, among other prominent roles. She also became the first ever Chief Data Officer at the Department of Health and Human Services where she led the effort to connect the nation's health care data through a new technology infrastructure, organizational management of data as an asset, and an enterprise training program for data science and AI. In her current role as SVP of enterprise clinical strategy and quality at Humana, she’s applying the vast knowledge and experience she’s gained towards one main objective: creating a better consumer experience in healthcare.During her conversation with Keith Figlioli on this episode of Healthcare is Hard, Mona shared her thoughts on several timely topics including:The critical, yet unglamorous work of organizing data. Mona recounts how she experienced the pain of not having access to the right information at the right time throughout her career and in her initial role at HHS where she was tasked with thinking about new solutions in the opioid epidemic. She and her team realized the enormous amount of disconnected data at other government organizations such as the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor, and began integrating it to develop a new and unique lens into the challenges they faced. She talks about how infrastructure issues like this are not glamorous, but create incredible opportunities to make a meaningful and lasting impact.Humana’s evolution into a healthcare company. Over the past few years, Humana has forged partnerships with providers like Oak Street and Iora Health, acquired organizations including Kindred, the nation’s largest provider of at-home healthcare services, and grown many other new initiatives organically. As its track record demonstrates, Humana is considering all options in its transition to a “payvider” and remaining focused on the key objective of creating better consumer experiences and improving healthcare outcomes. Mona discusses how this long-term evolution is still in progress, while notably referring to Humana now as a “healthcare company.”Connecting in-person and digital experiences. With the digital transformation of healthcare, and especially advancements made over the past two years, technology is now an inherent part of consumer experiences in healthcare. Mona remembers her time as a clinician and how she often didn’t have the right infrastructure to give patients the support they needed. She talks about how Humana is in a unique position to think about a holistic set of experiences – not just for patients, put for providers too – and how to create them.Partnering with early-stage companies. For startups looking to make a difference in healthcare, Mona discusses what Humana is looking for in its partnerships and how to best work together. In clinical areas, she advises that Humana’s largest focus is addressing the needs of the sickest people. She also points to the need for solutions that bring caregivers and families into the conversation, and those that create integrated experiences in home and community-based settings. Overall, the goal is to become more efficient at providing the right care at the right time.To hear Mona and Keith talk about these topics and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.

Phoebe Yang holds one of the most instrumental roles at the intersection of tech and healthcare. As general manager for healthcare at Amazon Web Services, she leads a team focused on making healthcare better by enabling organizations to increase the pace of innovation, unlock the potential of health data, and develop more personalized approaches to therapeutic development and care. Phoebe also has a long history advising health systems at the board level. She previously sat on the board of Providence-St. Joseph Health and two ACO boards while in the C-suite at Ascension; and she is currently a member of the board at CommonSpirit Health, where she helps guide the $35 billion health system that has more than 700 care sites and 150,000 employees across 21 states. Phoebe also served as Chief Strategy Officer for Population Health at Ascension.Over the course of three decades, Phoebe’s career has spanned multiple industries and sectors from law and government – where she served two presidential administrations in technology and international diplomacy – to media, healthcare and technology. All that experience has driven her to a place where digital transformation in healthcare has become a central focus of her career.In this episode of Healthcare is Hard, Phoebe talks to Keith Figlioli about board dynamics in healthcare, while also sharing insight into her role at Amazon Web Services and her advice about how health systems should collaborate with tech companies. The topics they discuss include:Reshaping health system boards. Not long ago, board seats were largely occupied by health system insiders and other regional business owners in the communities an institution served. But now, a whole new set of competencies and perspectives is required, and among them, technology experience is a must have. Phoebe explains how it’s the board’s job to “look around corners,” anticipate every scenario and ensure the organization is thinking strategically in order to ensure near, mid and long term success. Without technology expertise at the board level, she says health systems will be disadvantaged in their efforts to engage patients and consumers as everyone’s digital lives expand.Two-way doors driving decisions. Phoebe believes the most mis-understood calculation in healthcare involves the notion of risk. She points out that everything in healthcare has traditionally been seen as a binary calculation of life and death, and shares an alternative strategy used by leaders at Amazon Web Services. She says they often look at whether decisions are a one-way door – one you can’t walk back through – or a two-way door. She says most decisions, even in healthcare, are two-way doors where you don’t need 100% of the information in order to make a decision. Acting on the information you have is better than being paralyzed and inactive. If something doesn’t work out, you pivot and adapt.Dealing with outside disruptors. From her role inside one of the biggest tech companies, Phoebe has sage advice for health systems. She says to remember that you are in the prime position and have spent decades building trusted relationships with your patients and communities. Remember that the biggest asset in healthcare is trust and think about how to use the trust you’ve built to better serve your customers. Most importantly, don’t obsess over what everyone else is doing because they would love to be in your position. What you should obsess over is your customers: it’s how Amazon Web Services operates and Phoebe says how health systems should too.To hear Phoebe and Keith talk about these topics and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Dan Michelson has held at least three to five zoom calls per day with hospital CFOs across the country. As the industry navigated the most disruptive and uncertain times in modern history, healthcare leaders turned to Dan for his insight and advice because of the unparalleled visibility he has into the market through his company, Strata Decision Technology. Strata provides financial planning and analytics software for more than 400 health systems and 2,000 hospitals – in other words, about half the U.S. healthcare provider market.While health leaders turn to Dan on an ongoing basis, he’s also become known for articles every January that analyze the top trends and topics discussed at the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. In fact this year, Dan published two articles – one in Fortune and one in STAT News – and for the third year running, joined Keith Figlioli to dive even deeper with a discussion on the Healthcare is Hard podcast.What surprised both Dan and Keith the most at this year’s event is the fact that COVID was not really a focus. CEOs and CFOs from some of the nation’s most prominent health systems that presented during JPM’s non-profit track barely mentioned it because it’s now become a normal part of every health system’s operating model. COVID is no longer a specific focus because it’s an intrinsic element in everything they do, and they’re prepared for it.But Dan’s articles touched on some of the other major topics from JPM that he and Keith talk about in this episode, including:Staffing. Staffing. Staffing. The headline of Dan’s article in STAT News captured the mood best: “Covid-19 is no longer the biggest issue facing hospitals. Staffing is.” Workforce issues dominated JPM this year and most presenters recognized these issues as their biggest focus and challenge. Dan and Keith discussed how health systems are thinking about staffing differently and how they’re thinking about deploying technology differently to ease staffing demands and burnout. They also discussed some of the new challenges providers are facing as the market evolves – such as competition for new talent from virtual care companies, specialty providers, payers and many others – and new strategies for training, recruiting and retention a result.Top strategies for the future. With COVID becoming a normal part of operations, health systems are finally thinking about the future again with a clear eye towards strategy. In Dan’s Fortune piece, “The greatest comeback in the history of health care,” he talked about the severe financial strains health systems faced over the past two years, with volumes down 30% to 40% in the early days of the pandemic. But now that the industry has weathered the storm and proven how critical and resilient it is, the focus is the future. From what Dan heard at JPM, he sees strategies falling into five critical areas that he and Keith discussed: M&A, investing in innovation, value-based care, creating destination centers, and deploying virtual care platforms.To hear Dan and Keith talk about these topics and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.

Bryony Winn is a Zimbabwe native and Rhodes Scholar who says her background growing up in the developing world contributed to her innate desire to pursue a career with an element of social impact. And she says that background had a fundamental impact on the voice she brings to the U.S. healthcare market and to her leadership style.Bryony spent the first decade of her career at McKinsey & Company providing strategic and operational counsel to a wide variety of clients across Europe and Africa. After relocating to the U.S. in 2011 and being named a Partner in McKinsey’s Chicago office, she worked with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMM) and advised numerous healthcare CEOs and government leaders seeking to improve systems of care and transform payment models.After leaving McKinsey, Bryony spent two years as Chief Strategy Officer at Blue Cross North Carolina and then joined Anthem as Chief Strategy Officer. In September 2021, she was named President of Anthem Health Solutions where she is now responsible for ensuring that the more than 45 million consumers in Anthem’s family of health plans have access to high-quality, affordable care.On this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders, Bryony shared her perspective with Keith Figlioli on a number of topics, including:The Fundamental roles of a payer. In Bryony’s view, there are two central issues that define a healthcare payer and its ability to deliver higher quality, lower cost care: how it partners, and how it pays. She points out that organizations signal what they value by the way they pay for care. For example, how paying for care that drives affordability and quality incentivizes collaboration.Innovation inside incumbents. There’s a misconception that innovation is not occurring inside large incumbent healthcare organizations, according to Bryony. She says startups do not have a monopoly on smart people taking thoughtful approaches to the complexities and challenges of the U.S. healthcare system that have developed over decades. While the journey may be slower in these organizations, she says the difference is that they have a longer track record for sustainability – one of the most important factors in U.S. healthcare. She believes in approaching the market with a deep sense of humility for the people and companies that have come before us.Advice for entrepreneurs. Bryony says so many potential partners and vendors looking to do business make promises on issue like financial savings or Medicare star ratings. She jokes that if she added up these promises, Anthem would be a 23-star plan. When asked how entrepreneurs and startups can work best with Anthem, she warns of the importance of honesty – but says it needs to come from both sides of the table. Startups should expect honesty from a large company on things like payment and implementation cycles. But they need to be honest about what they have actually delivered versus what they hope to deliver. Don’t pretend you have a track record when you do not, because if you’re honest about what you hope to deliver, a company like Anthem could work closely with you to help make it happen.To hear Bryony and Keith talk about these topics and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard.

Walmart is the world’s largest retailer with revenues surpassing $120 billion and more than 10,000 locations across the globe. With nearly 5,000 locations in the United States, 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store.No conversation about the role retailers are playing in healthcare disruption would be complete without including Walmart. So to close a thee part series of retail interviews that also included the Chief Medical Officer at Walgreens and Chief Strategy Officer at CVS Health, Keith Figlioli spoke with Walmart’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. John Wigneswaran, for this episode of Healthcare is Hard.Dr. Wig, as he‘s known, says he never expected to be working at Walmart when he was in medical school. And in fact, even though his father was a pediatrician, a career in medicine seemed to be a remote possibility early in life when he was following his passion for music and signing a record deal. But since then, Dr. Wig has led an impactful career with a variety of roles in the pharmaceutical, medical device and healthcare services industries, after more than a decade of clinical experience as a practicing nephrologist.Before joining Walmart this year, Dr. Wig was CMO at Express Scripts. He also served as CMO at DaVita Rx, VP of Market Development at Fresenius Medical Care, and Medical Director in medical affairs at Johnson & Johnson (Scios Inc.), among other roles.Dr. Wig’s conversation with Keith Figlioli about Walmart’s growing role in healthcare covered a number of topics including:Meeting people where they are. Dr. Wig says that finding ways to fit health care into peoples’ day to day activities is a core focus for Walmart. This allows people to avoid rearranging their lives around traditional healthcare structures, and also expands the type of care available to them. Walmart’s omnichannel capabilities can provide the flexibility that people need – especially when it comes to complex and costly interventions around chronic diseases. For example, this could include a person with diabetes being educated about healthy foods or a telepharmacy encounter for someone with an educational need.Building community trust. Most retail settings are about more than just shopping, according to Dr. Wig. People go to their local Walmart store for many reasons, some to simply walk indoors for the exercise, but overall for a sense of community. Dr. Wig says trust is becoming much more local and recognizes the opportunity and responsibility Walmart has to be a place where people can turn for their healthcare needs.The power of data. Walmart has long been known as a pioneer in the way it uses data to improve operations and better serve customers. The company can apply that same know-how and discipline to using data in way that can improve healthcare. Dr. Wig says the company is very focused on the privacy and security aspects of healthcare data and determining how to bring its many sources of data to bear in a safe and responsible way.To hear Dr. Wig and Keith talk about these topics and more, listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard.