Creating a New Healthcare

Our focus in this episode is on healthcare quality & safety.  Quality - its measurement, reporting and accountability - is one of the most significant, impactful and lasting healthcare movements, literally spanning the past four decades.  It is a core element of the ubiquitously adopted “Triple Aim”. And yet, it continues to be one of the most challenging problems plaguing healthcare delivery in o...

Dear Friends and Colleagues, These past few weeks have been both exciting and incredibly busy with the recent publication of my book, Reframing Healthcare .  As such, I’m taking a very brief hiatus from our typical podcast interviews to focus on sharing the message of the book across the country.  So - in this episode, we are going to do something quite different.  I was recently interviewed by Gr...

This week we’ll be discussing some of the groundbreaking transformations being developed by the North Carolina Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) under the leadership of Dr. Mandy Cohen.   The North Carolina DHHS is charged with the health and wellness of over 10 million people. This healthcare system, with an annual budget of $20 billion, is one of the largest state healthcare systems i...

Is there a senior leader in your organization with the sole job of eliminating “customer friction points”?  Well, there is at Banner Health.  Valerie Monet is the Senior Director of Customer Experience Strategy at Banner Health.  This demonstrates a remarkable commitment to the consumerist mindset from one of the largest and most forward-thinking integrated healthcare systems in the country.  Bann...

William Gibson, the noted science fiction author wrote, "the future is already here, it’s just not widely distributed yet."  Our guest this week describes a future revolution in healthcare that is, in fact, already here.  Digital health therapeutics are transforming the delivery and experience of medical care and rapidly gaining traction in healthcare delivery. Anand Iyer , the Chief Strategy Offi...

Dear Friends & Colleagues, The phrase, “Last Mile of Healthcare,” is used to describe a number of situations in healthcare.  First, it’s been used to describe the value-laden interface between a provider and a patient.  Second, it describes patients in the context of their life - as individuals making healthful as well as unhealthful decisions.  It is in these so-called ‘last mile of healthcare’ m...

The topic we’re going to cover in this podcast episode may be one of the most disruptive changes in hospital care to come along in over a century.  It’s the movement of ‘hospital at home’ - literally shifting hospital-based care to people’s homes. It might sound a bit futuristic, but it’s already an established practice in other countries; and it’s rapidly gaining traction here in the US. Our gues...

Dear Friends & Colleagues, Today’s brief podcast is not our usual bi-weekly interview episode.  Instead, I’d like to share some exciting news.  It’s regarding the publication of my book, ‘ Reframing Healthcare - A Roadmap for Creating Disruptive Change’,  which is now officially available for pre-order on Amazon.com, with a publication date of April 23rd. In this brief podcast I’ll discuss: What ‘...

Dear Listeners, Healthcare consumerism is on everyone’s mind these days. It’s a growing movement being taken up across the industry - from entrepreneurial start-ups, to retail and dig-tech giants, to leading hospital systems and healthcare insurance companies. This is a big shift for an industry that has been woefully behind other sectors in understanding its customers’ needs and expectations. The...

There are numerous reasons to focus on caring for our aging population.  First, it’s the right thing to do.  Second, the utilization of care and medical costs in the older population with more complex and chronic medical conditions are tremendous.  For example, the budget for Medicare jumped $300 billion between 2007 and 2017.  In fact, Medicare costs are the 2nd largest federal expenditure, next...

Trust - or the lack of it - is a critically important issue in healthcare these days. This issue has tangible impact on the care of patients and the work life of providers. There is no question that trust in our medical system has declined. The Gallup poll shows a massive drop in public trust of the medical system from 76% in 1977 to 36% in 2018.. Another highly respected index, the Edelman Trust...

Welcome to the first 'Creating a New Healthcare' podcast of 2019! This is an incredibly timely topic.  At the start of each year, most of us resolve to discard bad habits and take up new, healthier ones. We all struggle with the perennial challenge of getting motivated, avoiding frustration; and sustaining new behaviors beyond just a few days or weeks.  In this interview we discuss a new approach...

Dear Listeners, I promised you a lively interview to close out the year on Creating a New Healthcare, and thanks to the assistance of my colleague, Dr. Lisa Gualtieri, I hope this one won't disappoint.   In this episode, the tables are once again turned - as Lisa interviews me on how my expectations for healthcare in 2018 have played out, and what I see as trends in 2019. It's a bit anxiety-provok...

We’re now in the last month of this year.  It's the holiday season and the New Year is almost upon us.  It’s the time of year when most of us pause to evaluate the past 12 months, to reflect on our accomplishments, and to ponder our hopes and expectations for the future.  It’s a wonderful moment to reconsider our values and priorities, and to set new goals for the future.  It’s also a perfect time...

Dear Listeners, Thanksgiving is a holiday for sharing all that you're grateful for, so I wanted to take a few brief moments to do just that. I hope you enjoy this 6-minute episode of Creating a New Healthcare.   Wishing you all a happy and healthy Thanksgiving Holiday!

Dear Listeners, Welcome to Part II - the continuation of our interview with David Contorno - an expert in employee benefits and employer-based health programs. David is a founding member of Health Rosetta and has over 20 years of experience in the field. If you haven’t listened to Part I yet, you may want to start there. In the first half of our interview, David described the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’...

What is happening in the employer healthcare market is astounding - perhaps revolutionary.  Most of the experts I have spoken with agree that it’s the employers who will be the primary disruptors in the healthcare delivery ecosystem.  One only need look at Amazon and it’s new collaboration with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, or Apple or Google or Comcast or General Motors, or hundreds of o...

It’s become increasingly apparent that large employers are rapidly becoming the most disruptive force in American healthcare today. Think Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JP Morgan Chase, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Comcast, CVS Health, Walgreens, Walmart, and so on... The reasons are readily apparent: Employers are feeling the most pain due to the unsustainable and rising costs of healthcare, the paucit...

The major theme of this interview is how a traditional healthcare insurance company - Aetna - is redefining what it means to be a payer. They are reorganizing healthcare delivery to be much more engaging of consumers, and they’re doing it with numerous collaborators, in non-traditional ways. Our guest this week has an impressive academic and executive background. Dr. Harold Paz  is an executive vi...

Our guest this week - Robert Pearl, MD - has nearly 2 decades of experience leading two of the nation’s largest medical groups.   As CEO of The Permanente Medical Group and the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group of Kaiser Permanente (KP), he was responsible for the healthcare of over 5 million members.  He led numerous initiatives with exceptional performance in quality outcomes, patient safety...

Consumerism - the promotion of consumers' perspectives & interests - is one of the hottest & rapidly emerging topics in healthcare today.   Whether you’re a large healthcare delivery network,  hospital system, surgical center, or ambulatory practice - if you’re interested in patient growth and retention, or in optimizing the experience & outcomes of care - you should be very interested in improvin...

Friends & Colleagues,   After interviewing more than 50 insightful, courageous and accomplished leaders who are literally creating a new healthcare, we are going to turn the tables in this podcast episode. In this episode, I've placed myself in the hot seat, and will be interviewed about my reflections from this first year of podcasting, as well as future plans & directions for the series.   At le...

For anyone who doesn’t appreciate the critical importance of healthcare economics in the U.S., consider this: The average price for health insurance in the U.S. for a family of four is $18,500 per year. This is the equivalent of each American family purchasing a car every year.  Healthcare currently makes up nearly 20% of the U.S. GDP; and numerous studies have suggested that nearly one-third of t...

Social determinants of health (SDOH) represent the largest set of factors in determining healthcare outcomes & utilization. Despite understanding this, a fundamental problem remains: How to motivate & sustain healthful behavior, especially within communities experiencing profound social and economic obstacles such as unemployment, poverty, food insecurity, isolation, unsafe housing, etc. There is...

Despite the fact that nearly one in five hospitalized patients is discharged to a skilled nursing facility, inpatient rehabilitation service or into a home health care program - the so-called ‘post-acute’ care space remains a largely opaque and overlooked sector of healthcare for most hospital administrators and providers of care. It's also extremely confusing to patients and their families. Addin...