Dr. Farzad Mostashari is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aledade. He has spent his career at the forefront of healthcare policy and health information technology. Dr. Mostashari is the former National Coordinator for Health IT at the Department of Health and Human Services, and served as a distinguished expert at the Brookings Institute’s Engelberg Center for HealthCare Reform. In addition to his work at Aledade, Dr. Mostashari is the chair of the board of directors for Resolve to Save Lives – a global health organization that aims to save millions of lives from cardiovascular disease and infectious disease epidemics. He has spoken and written extensively on issues affecting health IT, ACOs, and health care policy and delivery with publications in the New York Times, the Journal of American Medical Association, and Health Affairs, among others. Dr. Mostashari received his MD from Yale University School of Medicine and his Masters in Population Health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. With such an esteemed background across so many different sectors, I was excited to talk with Farzad not only about his work with Aledade, but also his take on the larger challenge of primary care in this country. In this episode, we discuss the following: The fundamental problem in the healthcare system, namely misaligned financial incentives that do not deliver the desired outcomes. How bringing primary care providers together in a different business model creates shared accountability for the total cost and quality of care while resulting in substantial savings across all invested parties. The use of proprietary technology platforms to integrate data, make predictions, and surface insights to help practices identify and care for their most vulnerable patients. One of the things I most respect about Farzad’s approach is that he values outcome measures that make a real difference in patient lives – decreasing hospital admissions, improving clinical outcomes, enhancing patient experience and engagement. And the results speak for themselves – $800 million in Medicare savings and $548 million in savings shared across their provider groups! Farzad is an intensely outcomes driven, accomplished leader, and Adelade demonstrates the powerful potential of a value-based care platform. This is a wonderful example of creating a new healthcare. To find out more about Aledade’s services, please visit them at www.aledade.com.

In this engaging conversation, Erica Olenski, a patient care advocate and PR strategist with 15 years in healthcare tech, shares her harrowing journey as a caregiver to her son, a survivor of brain cancer and stroke. She emphasizes the crucial balance between technology and human connection in healthcare, and the often-overlooked needs of caregivers within hospital environments. Erica's insights into the healing power of art and storytelling reveal how creativity and narrative can profoundly transform the patient experience, inspiring hope amidst adversity.

David W. Johnson, founder and CEO of 4sight Health, discusses transformative changes needed in healthcare. With over 28 years in healthcare investment banking, he emphasizes that we should push for revolutionary rather than incremental reforms. He outlines a vision for decentralized, integrated health care accessible in communities and homes, pushing back against the inefficiencies of the current system. Johnson also draws insights from Portugal's community-based model, advocating for innovative approaches and improved payment policies to enhance care quality and accessibility.

This is the last episode of our Fall 2024 Season, and it’s a powerful one. On the show today is Andrew Molosky, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Chapters Health System. Under Andrew’s leadership, Chapters has redefined its position to become the nation’s largest not-for-profit, end-of-life care organization and a leading community-based, population-health organization. Andrew has served in executive leadership positions for over 20 years. He is a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives, a Home Care 100 advisory board member, and on the board of directors for the National Partnership for Hospice and Health Innovation.  When Andrew told me Chapter’s motto, “There are only two jobs here – taking care of patients or taking care of those that do,” I couldn’t help but think if every healthcare organization adopted this, we would be light-years ahead of where we are now.  What a powerful north-star.  Examples of how this motto drives their business include: Solving for the disease state first and then finding appropriate payment models. Prioritizing building a workforce that is scalable, adaptive, and responsive to new and innovative ideas – including the social determinants of health.  An explicit focus on longitudinal care, that is, staying with patients throughout their journey. Andrew even coins a new term for this…longevically. Utilizing outcome metrics that measure what’s meaningful to patients and their families, like ‘days-at-home’. Chapters and their technology subsidiary, CareNu, have been flying a bit under the radar until now, but that’s been on purpose. Andrew knows they’ve created something special. That is evident in his response when asked what problem he’s solving today: “Throttle control.” It would be easy to let this train run full steam ahead, but Andrew’s understanding of the need to balance their “yes” with equally strategic “no” underlies his tremendous leadership. This is an organization to watch and learn from.  To find out more, visit https://www.chaptershealth.org/

“… If it’s garbage in, it’s gonna be garbage out.” Boy, am I familiar with that truth. And it prevails across so many areas of healthcare, but maybe none more so than the data we generate and our ability to distill something useful and usable out of that data.  On this episode of Creating a New Healthcare, I talk with Dr. Mitesh Rao, the Founder and CEO of OMNY Health. Dr. Rao is a Board-Certified Emergency Medicine Physician and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Stanford. He founded OMNY to revolutionize how healthcare organizations collaborate and advance science through the common language of data. Integrating real-world data from direct partnerships with IDNs, AMCs, specialty networks, and other providers across the US, OMNY Health’s proprietary platform provides the foundation for stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem to compliantly and efficiently share data, as well as pursue broader data-driven partnerships.  The core themes seem simple but are somehow still roadblocks: Healthcare data is critical for driving innovation, quality improvement, and better patient care, but the industry has historically struggled with accessing and using data effectively. Healthcare data is often siloed within individual provider organizations or systems, hindering collaboration between different healthcare stakeholders who could benefit from sharing and analyzing the data together.  Even when data can be accessed, it is often not in a clean, standardized, or usable format for research or it does not meet regulatory requirements. The available data does not adequately represent the full diversity of the patient population, limiting the ability to conduct inclusive research and develop equitable care solutions.  Dr. Rao and his colleagues at OMNY are working to combat these challenges by scaling the  harmonization of healthcare data across providers, payers, and other stakeholders to create a platform built specifically for collaboration and innovation. It’s a noble goal and one that could prove critically useful in advancing equity, improving patient safety, and powering research on new care pathways and treatment approaches. But the roadblocks won’t disappear on their own, so there’s definitely more work to do.

On the show today is Mike Murphy, a distinguished growth leader with over 30 years experience as a C-level executive, specializing in healthcare and insurance. Mike’s expertise spans M&A due diligence, post-merger integration, and turnaround strategies, consistently improving earnings and gross profit. Examples of some of his significant achievements include propelling a new insurance division from a cold start to $435M in revenues and $22M in EBITDA in four years and guiding successful product launches, most notably UnitedHealthcare’s inaugural national dental product portfolio. His leadership, strategic acumen, and deep industry knowledge make him a transformative force in high-performance teams and change management. Our conversation took a lot of twists and turns today, but in Mike’s words, here’s the 30,000 foot view. We covered the following: Mike’s take on the current state of the healthcare system, the powers that are keeping us entrenched in a “sick care” system, and the revolution that’s coming. When looking at how to succeed in the business of healthcare, the importance of asking the right questions and trusting cognitive dissonance instead of pushing through it. Why leadership must create an environment where everyone, at all levels, feels valued and heard.  How to adapt to a changing business environment where capital is hard to come by and point solution fatigue is real. The fatal flaw of the “Divine Right of Kings” mentality in leadership. I so enjoyed talking to Mike. His approach is down-to-earth, practical, and incredibly humanistic. There are so many organizations in healthcare today that could benefit from “looking under the hood”, as Mike says, ask the tough questions, and then crowd source the solutions from all levels of the organization, not just the C-suite. This is a must-listen episode about the current business of healthcare from someone who’s seen it from all sides.

When your guest starts a business in healthcare with the adage “Go where the competition isn’t”, you know it’s going to be an interesting conversation. On the podcast today, I’m honored to have Dan McDonald, Founder and CEO of 86Borders and Lauren Barca, VP of Quality for 86Borders. Dan co-founded the company in 2014 with a clear mission: to revolutionize communication dynamics within and beyond corporate confines. By 2018, he catalyzed a strategic pivot, channeling the company’s energy exclusively into healthcare. As a former nurse, Lauren is deeply passionate about enhancing the quality of care for economically disadvantaged and medically underserved populations, a passion reflected in the “empathy first” model they use to train care coordinators. 86Borders works with health plans to offer a service and a SaaS platform that puts the member at the center of the healthcare ecosystem. Their platform logs every encounter with a member, and connects members with the same care coordinator every time so that a trusting relationship can be built. Care coordinators help address social determinants of health to remove the day-to-day barriers that get in the way of preventive care and chronic care management.  With this model, 86Borders is highly successful at improving quality metrics like medication adherence and reducing expensive healthcare utilization like ER or urgent care visits for the health plan, but they prioritize an even more important outcome. Human-to-human connection.  This type of service is invaluable for our most under-resourced populations, but it is not only their work that has me so impressed. It is also their approach to leadership. It’s clear that Dan and Lauren care not only about the wellbeing of their members, but also about the wellbeing of their team. That is the type of humanistic leadership we need more of. To find out more, visit https://www.86borders.com/

Zack Cooper, an Associate Professor of Public Health and Economics at Yale University, delves into the pressing issue of rising healthcare costs. He reveals that increasing hospital prices are the primary driver of these costs, directly impacting insurance premiums and, consequently, worker wages. The discussion highlights the disparity in healthcare experiences across income levels, particularly affecting low and middle-income workers. Cooper argues for systemic changes to alleviate these burdens on working Americans and emphasizes the necessity of awareness in addressing economic inequality.

Our guest today is Naama Stauber Breckler, Co-Founder and CEO of Better Health, a medical supply and support platform that bundles peer coaching, education, and delivery of medical supplies to help people manage their chronic conditions at home. Naama is a true humanistic rebel leader dedicating her entire entrepreneurial journey to creating human-centric solutions that cater to underserved populations. Naama started her career as a software engineer in the Israeli military. She holds an MBA from Stanford GSB and a B.Sc in computer science from MTA, Israel. Better Health is a fascinating model that pairs something we typically see as mundane and transactional, the acquisition of medical supplies for patients with chronic conditions, with a real opportunity to connect with them on a personal and humanistic level. Through their services, Better Health aims to: Connect patients with peer support specialists who have lived experience with the same conditions to provide emotional support, education, and help with self-management. Simplify the process of obtaining the right medical supplies and devices, and manage insurance and payment. Coordinate with healthcare providers and payers to ensure patients receive the necessary care and support. Work to address social determinants of health, such as food insecurity, that can impact patients with chronic conditions. Aim to improve health outcomes, reduce unnecessary ER visits and hospitalizations, and enhance overall quality of life for their members. During our discussion, we talk about real-life examples of how the peer-to-peer relationships built into their model have helped members identify ways to utilize certain or different medical supplies to not only improve their health, but also their quality of life.    As with many of the #HRL’s we talk with, Naama’s personal and familial story of resilience has served as a guiding light in her work. She graciously shares the story of her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, and how she risked her life to help others.  Better Health and Naama herself are such pivotal examples of how we have an opportunity to humanize every aspect of healthcare, even down to medical supplies. I encourage you to take a listen. I promise you will be inspired by this story.  To find out more about Better Health, please visit their website at www.joinbetter.com.

Our expert guest on this episode is Brian Esterly, who was appointed CEO of TimeDoc Health in August 2023. Brian brings more than 25 years of healthcare leadership experience to this role. Prior to this he served as the Chief Growth and Strategy officer at Centria Healthcare.  Working with healthcare systems, primary care providers, FQHC’s and Medicare Advantage plans, TimeDoc Health provides virtual care management services primarily targeting the Medicare population. Their three main services include: Chronic Care Management Remote patient monitoring Behavioral health integration During our discussion, Brian made it clear that TimeDoc Health serves as a seamless extension of the primary care provider and their team. In that role, however, they can help address some major challenges within our healthcare system. Brian shares some examples of how they provide chronic care management and behavioral healthcare services in between provider appointments, relieving the provider group from having to manage that in-between visit care. Additionally, by screening for and addressing quality care gaps and social determinants of health gaps, their services improve patient care outcomes. Finally, their outcome data suggests utilization of TimeDoc reduces ED visits and readmissions, thereby improving quality scores, and providing health insurers and Medicare Advantage plans with the opportunity to improve their STARS ratings.  From a patient care perspective, chronic disease management, particularly for our older Americans, is a growing challenge, especially as the number of primary care providers continues to decline. Services like TimeDoc Health could literally be a lifeline to address some of the most common and insipid conditions plaguing Seniors.  To find out more about TimeDoc’s services, please visit their website at https://timedochealth.com/.