I Don't Care

A plan to strengthen a rural hospital is only useful if people can put it into practice. What turns a turnaround strategy into lasting change? On this episode of I Don’t Care, Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Ericka Beeler, CEO of Beeler Consulting, about rural healthcare leadership, accountability, and execution. Drawing on her experience in patient care and hospital administration, Beeler explain...

What happens between a clinician ordering a laboratory test and that test being paid for—and what might healthcare executives be overlooking along the way? On this episode of I Don’t Care, Dr. Kevin Stevenson welcomes Ashley Zarling, chief commercial officer of Doc Lab, for a conversation about the laboratory’s role in clinical care, operations, and financial strategy. Zarling explains how incompl...

A rural hospital’s impact reaches far beyond its walls. How can leaders protect that role while facing pressure on reimbursement, staffing, and access? On this episode of I Don’t Care, Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Corey Lively, CEO of Great Plains Regional Medical Center in Elk City, Oklahoma, about the realities of leading an independent community hospital. Lively describes how his team evalua...

What makes a healthcare leader’s influence last long after a title or a building project has changed? On this episode of I Don’t Care, Dr. Kevin Stevenson welcomes back Dr. David Schreiner, CEO of the National Center for Healthcare Leadership, to discuss the relationships and habits that shape a leader’s legacy. Schreiner reflects on his years leading a community hospital and his work helping heal...

Where will healthcare happen as more services move beyond the hospital? Michael Arvin sees outpatient and ambulatory care as part of a broader strategic shift, with real estate decisions tied to clinical needs, reimbursement, and the way care teams work. On this episode of I Don’t Care, Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Michael Arvin, Vice President of Strategy and Development at Oman-Gibson Associa...

What should a clinician do when a licensing-board complaint arrives? Kenda Dalrymple says the first response matters: stay calm, notify the professional liability insurer, and contact counsel experienced in licensing matters. A complaint can feel personal, but she recommends a careful, individualized response rather than reacting impulsively. On this episode of I Don’t Care, Dr. Kevin Stevenson sp...

Finding an available bed is only one part of helping a patient take the next step after a hospital stay. Finding a setting that can meet that patient’s needs is a different challenge. On this episode of I Don’t Care, Dr. Kevin Stevenson welcomes Lindsay Joseph, co-founder and CEO of BedConnect, to discuss a more informed approach to post-acute placement. Drawing on her experience in hospital finan...

What does it take to turn an AI strategy into meaningful change for a healthcare organization? On this episode of I Don’t Care, Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Deepak Mittal, founder and CEO of NextGen Invent, about moving healthcare AI beyond isolated pilots. Mittal explains why leaders should begin with a clear business or care-delivery problem, define what success looks like, and build governan...

Who is really running healthcare when the physicians delivering care no longer have a meaningful voice in how the system operates? On this episode of I Don’t Care , host Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Dr. Krishna Vedala, a practicing internist and obesity medicine specialist at Norman Regional Health System, about the economic and administrative forces reshaping American healthcare. Dr. Vedala ar...

Healthcare organizations are investing rapidly in artificial intelligence, but technology alone cannot create better decisions, stronger operations, or more compassionate care. In this episode of I Don’t Care , Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with international healthcare executive Dr. Julia Rehman about the leadership, governance, and trust required to use AI responsibly. Drawing on nearly two decades...

Healthcare leaders often blame financial pressure, labor shortages, and market forces for the industry’s challenges, but Mark Van Sumeren argues that one of healthcare’s biggest constraints is self-imposed: the inability to make decisions quickly enough. On this episode of I Don’t Care , Dr. Kevin Stevenson sits down with Van Sumeren, a healthcare strategist with more than four decades of experien...

Childcare has quietly become one of the biggest pressure points in the labor market, reshaping how people choose jobs, stay in jobs and build careers. What was once treated as a private family problem is now showing up in employers’ bottom lines through absenteeism, turnover, delayed returns to work and unfilled roles. The pressure is especially acute in industries like healthcare, where work is o...

Biotech is living through a paradox: the science has rarely looked more powerful, while the institutions behind it have rarely seemed less trusted. The sector that helped accelerate vaccines, advance cancer treatment, and open new frontiers in brain disease is now facing public skepticism, political pressure on science, and rising competition from countries that see biotech as a strategic national...

Modern healthcare is caught between extraordinary clinical possibility and an increasingly strained delivery system: patients have more treatment options, data and information than ever, while hospitals and physician networks must coordinate care amid workforce pressure, rising complexity and limited tolerance for waste. That pressure is only expected to grow, with the Association of American Medi...

For years, nutrition has sat awkwardly between personal responsibility and medical care: important enough for doctors to mention, but rarely supported like a real treatment plan. That gap is becoming harder to defend as diet-related diseases continue to strain patients, employers and the healthcare system. A study in JAMA Network Open found that expanding medically tailored meals in the U.S. could...

Healthcare leaders spend their careers designing better systems for patients, but the work looks different when they have had to move through those systems themselves. For Patrick Makarewich, a diagnosis of HPV-related head and neck cancer transformed familiar operational issues — scheduling, access, support services, staff flexibility, and communication — into deeply personal lessons. His experie...

Primary care in America is under pressure from nearly every direction: physician shortages, long appointment wait times, rising patient demand, and a care model still built around physical offices. The U.S. is expected to face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, according to projections from the Association of American Medical Colleges, while federal shortage-area data continues to show...

Emergency departments have become the place where nearly every fracture in the healthcare system eventually shows up: behavioral health gaps, delayed primary care, staffing shortages, transfer disputes and inpatient bottlenecks. As demand rises and care becomes more complex, the ED is no longer just a clinical entry point — it is a pressure test for the entire hospital. Research has linked ED crow...

As healthcare access strains under specialist shortages, long wait times, and rising administrative burden, some physicians are looking backward to move medicine forward. Patients can wait months for specialty care, doctors are often asked to see dozens of people in a single clinic session, and new care models are emerging around a simple but disruptive idea: bringing the physician back into the p...

Artificial intelligence has moved from experimental promise to boardroom priority, but healthcare leaders are still trying to understand what is real, what is risky and what is just clever marketing. In emergency medicine, where patient status changes minute by minute and operational bottlenecks can ripple across an entire hospital, the stakes are especially high. The core challenge is not simply...

Access to clean water is still out of reach for a staggering number of people—and it’s not just a distant problem. According to estimates from WHO and UNICEF, over 2 billion people still don’t have safely managed drinking water at home, a reality that impacts everything from health to education and economic opportunity. As pressure from climate change and population growth builds, there’s increasi...

Electronic medical records (EMRs) have moved from a back-office upgrade to a frontline determinant of care quality, clinician burnout, and hospital economics. With U.S. hospitals often spending tens to hundreds of millions—sometimes exceeding $100 million—on EMR implementations, the stakes have never been higher for getting both the technology and the human adoption right. As healthcare continues...

Healthcare systems are under pressure almost everywhere, but the strain is especially visible in lower-resource settings where demand is rising faster than infrastructure. In Pakistan, that pressure is playing out across a system that has to serve more than 250 million people with limited public investment. Public health spending remains below 1% of GDP, making the need for smarter, more scalable...

Medicine isn’t what it used to be—not for the people practicing it. Independent physicians are becoming the exception, not the norm, as more doctors move into hospital systems, corporate groups, and academic networks. At the same time, the pipeline of specialists isn’t keeping pace with growing patient needs, particularly in complex fields like vascular surgery, where workforce models show demand...

Healthcare isn’t short on strategy right now—it’s short on people, access, and experienced leadership where it matters most. In Texas alone, more rural hospitals have closed than in any other state over the past decade, leaving entire communities with limited access to care. At the same time, many health systems are realizing they haven’t built strong pipelines for the next generation of leaders—m...