Creating a New Healthcare

Last week, we talked about the six key drivers of personal health with Dr. Tom Frieden. But how does that factor into our conversation about the value (or not) of wearables and supplements? This week, Dr. Zeev Neuwirth and Producer, Jess Greenwood, are back to unpack that for you. We discuss the role wearables do and potentially could play in helping each one of us achieve and maintain better heal...

“Healthcare, in my opinion, is the ultimate team sport.” I love this quote from today’s guest. And it reminds me that patient experience is not just about the patient; it starts with every member of that patient’s care team. If they do not feel respected, trusted, and valued, it will absolutely impact the experience of their patients. Brian Carlson, VP of Patient Experience of Vanderbilt Health, k...

Can design be a determinant of health? We often think about the quality of the clinical care patients receive in our hospitals, the outcome metrics that determine funding and quality and safety rankings, the readmission rates that tell us how well we’re helping people get healthy and stay that way. But one thing we overlook is the quality, accessibility, and care in the buildings those same patien...

Let’s talk PBM’s.  What even is a P-B-M? Pharmacy benefit managers have been around since the 1960’s, although back then, they were basically claims processors. Things changed in the 80’s and 90’s following the first iteration of ERISA when employers saw PBMs as potential cost containment strategies. The industry continued to explode until 2007 when CVS acquired Caremark, and now the market is rea...

Ambulatory Surgical Centers (ASCs) have been around in concept for the past fifty years, but their recent explosion has caught the attention of healthcare systems and, frankly, patients. Why? Today’s guest, Adnan Qureshi, is a Managing Director with the Mergers and Acquisitions practice at Kaufman Hall. He provides strategic advisory services for healthcare providers and investors around the merge...

We’ve been talking a lot about healthspan and longevity in our recent episodes, but how do we get there? What changes would it take in the way we practice medicine to move towards a system that helps maintain wellness instead of a system that diagnoses and manages disease? This is the fundamental challenge that our guest today and her company, Radence, are tackling. Dr. Julie Chen is the Chief Med...

Dr. Daphne Bascom earned a DPhil/PhD in physiological sciences at the University of Oxford, a medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh, and completed fellowship training in microvascular and reconstructive surgery of the head and neck at Oregon Health Sciences University. She has more than two decades of executive leadership across health systems, health technology, and community health. Mos...

In the last decade of a person’s life, we spend 7x what we spend on taking care of them in all the years that came before. SEVEN TIMES! That’s not only unbelievable, it’s unsustainable, particularly as our aging population grows and life span increases. So, if it’s not just about increasing life span, or the number of years someone lives, what is it about? For Dr. Tzipi Strauss, Founde...

Without intervention, in 2050, everyone in the US population will either have Alzheimer’s disease or be caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease. That’s the state of where we’re at with cognitive decline. Right now, if you reach the age of 85, your chances of developing cognitive decline are 1 in 2. That’s right, 50%. But, BUT, new research is helping us understand the hidden drivers of cogniti...

“Health doesn’t just happen within the four walls of the hospital.” Or, at least, it shouldn’t have to. The work of our guest today, Dr. Eve Cunningham, and her team at Cadence, ensures that patients with chronic conditions can continue to live and thrive at home. Through remote patient monitoring but also behavioral support, medication titration, and relationship building, they ensure that patien...

We’re quick to blame genetics for our health and wellness issues, but the reality is that genetics only makes up 18% of our health destiny. That means the rest is up to us.  Our guest today, Dr. Grant Zarzour, has seen that first hand in his own family. When his son was diagnosed with moderate autism, he and his wife refused to accept the predictions for his future. They dove head first into the d...

Forty percent of the time, oncology care is not being delivered in concordance with guidelines. FORTY PERCENT! As our guest today explains, that’s not because of bad doctors. It’s because oncology care changes rapidly and because almost eighty percent of patients are being seen by a community oncologist, a physician who is responsible for treating ALL types of cancer, instead of a specialist. How...

It’s rare that an article title alone makes me want to stop what I’m doing and read it, but that’s what happened when I saw the title of Jess Craig’s recent article, “ Why More Doctors are Billing Their Patients Like it’s the 1920’s. ” In this article, and subsequently, our conversation here on the podcast, Jess explains what she means, citing the growing number of physician practices organized ar...

With the recent explosion of GLP-1 drugs, the war on obesity seems to have taken a new and potent turn, but many are concerned about the recidivism, the side effects, and our reenergized obsession with being thin. Our guest today, Dr. Laure DeMattia, is a board certified family medicine physician and obesity specialist. For her, obesity is personal, as she has struggled her entire life with this c...

“It doesn’t matter what is going on in your life, nutrition is relevant.” And, at least for most Americans, getting help with their nutrition is covered by their insurance. So, why isn’t working with a dietician a normal part of every American’s care plan? Our guest today is trying to address that question. Noah Kotlove, the CEO and Co-Founder of Berry Street, went through his own nutrition journe...

“As an internist, we are always focusing on risk factors. Instead, in lifestyle medicine, we are focusing on root causes.” We’ve heard this before – nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, toxins, community – so it should be no surprise that these are also the six pillars upon which lifestyle medicine is based. The difference is that in this discipline, these six pillars are the prescripti...

What if employers just stopped offering healthcare benefits to their employees? Could that happen? If the astronomical cost of healthcare keeps expanding, some employers will have no choice. That’s where our guest this week comes in. Shawn Gremminger is the President and CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions. His organization works with regional coalitions of employers to...

Decreasing cost. It’s the Holy Grail. The thing we all know must happen in order for healthcare to become sustainable and usable for the majority of Americans. We know data analytics help. They help to identify those who are at the highest risk and who are the highest cost. But, what if we were able to look at those who are currently low cost and predict who might become high cost? Taking it one s...

When employers look at all of the point solutions that are out there to add to their list of employee benefits, the top three should be… Primary care Primary care Primary care As a family medicine physician with an extensive background in advanced primary care, our guest today knows how true this is not just in theory, but in practice. Her work these days is getting employers to see the import of...

“Let’s inspect what we expect.” What a powerful statement. If we expect cost transparency, let’s inspect what those costs have been to date. If we expect freedom of choice, let’s evaluate how that has worked for employees up to this point. And let’s expect an “and” approach instead of an “or” approach. As I say often these days, the devil is in the details, so it only makes sense that we put some...

Medicare for all. Not socialized medicine, just a single, government-run system that provides healthcare.  Is it possible? Or even viable? Our guest this week on the Creating a New Healthcare podcast believes so. In fact, he sees it as the only way to ultimately address the affordability problem with healthcare, particularly for high cost conditions like cancer. In today’s episode, we talk with Dr...

Last week, we talked about the six key drivers of personal health with Dr. Tom Frieden. But how does that factor into our conversation about the value (or not) of wearables and supplements? This week, Dr. Zeev Neuwirth and Producer, Jess Greenwood, are back to unpack that for you. We discuss the role wearables do and potentially could play in helping each one of us achieve and maintain better heal...

As a society, and as an industrial complex, we’ve made health complicated…and expensive. But, epidemiology suggests that what we need to do to achieve and maintain personal health is really quite simple. Dr. Tom Frieden returns to the show to talk about the second half of his book, The Formula for Your Health. Through extensive research and review of hundreds of epidemiological studies, he distill...

It’s the start of a new year, and that means resolutions and recommitments to personal health and wellness. Undoubtedly, there were thousands of wearable devices purchased as presents over the holidays and many more in the post-holiday sale madness. Supplement commercials and social media ads are going strong as we start this new year. But, are these things actually necessary for health?  Today, w...

As we close out the year, Dr. Zeev Neuwirth steps away from his usual interviews to share a heartfelt, personal message directly with you, our listeners.