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...

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....

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...

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. Str...

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 & Comp...

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 i...

In the United States, 85% of the population resides within 10 miles of a CVS Pharmacy. Through continued growth and expansion since its founding as a health and beauty products retailer in the early 1960s, CVS Health has now become America’s largest health services company. That expansion accelerated over the last two decades through acquisitions of companies like MinuteClinic, Caremark and Aetna...

Since its first store opened in 1901, Walgreens has been embracing innovation in the retail pharmacy space, fueling its expansion to become a neighborhood health destination with more than 9,000 locations. As the healthcare industry navigates major structural changes – and a global pandemic – Walgreens is staying true to its roots of innovation and guiding what the future of healthcare looks like...

Investments in digital health hit an all-time high in 2020, only to surpass the new record within the first six month of 2021. Needless to say, there’s never been more attention placed on digital health innovation. But it makes for a crowded market, putting providers and health system CIOs in a challenging position where it’s impossible to vet the wave of new technologies and determine what will r...

The accelerated pace of innovation in digital health, record-breaking investments in the sector and even some of the technology developed to navigate the pandemic wouldn’t have been possible without groundwork laid by The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). And there’s probably no one who understands ONC’s past, present and future role better than Steve Posn...

In the United States, more than 90% of the landmass is rural. And in rural communities from coast to coast, the challenges in delivering healthcare can be very different than the urban and suburban centers that get most of the attention. There’s untapped opportunity in reimagining healthcare business models and the technology that will enable them in rural areas, according to Ballad Health CEO, Al...

Dr. Farzad Mostashari’s extensive resume doesn’t fully convey the true value he brings to reimagining healthcare. He’s the former National Coordinator for Health IT at the Department of Health and Human Services, served as assistant commissioner at the New York City Department of Health, was an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer at the CDC, a fellow at The Brookings Institution and a resident a...

Dr. Sachin Jain says he got a silent education about healthcare and medicine around the dinner table from his father, an anesthesiologist and pioneer in pain management. But he still wasn’t sold on a career in healthcare until the end of his junior year at Harvard when he took a course on the quality of healthcare in the U.S. taught by Dr. Howard Hiatt and ( one of this podcast’s first guest ) Dr....

Improving patient experience has been a driving focus for Winjie Miao during her twenty year career at Texas Health Resources, where she’s now senior executive vice president and chief experience officer. Texas Health cares for more patients in North Texas than any other provider through 350 access points including 27 hospital locations and a network of outpatient facilities, Neighborhood Care &am...

Last year tested nearly every aspect of the healthcare system, making the 2021 J.P. Morgan Health Care Conference like none other in its 39-year history. But there’s at least one constant from the past few years – the insight Dan Michelson, CEO at Strata Decision Technology, offers in the recap he writes for Becker’s Hospital Review . With a customer base that includes 2,000+ hospitals and 400+ he...

Before the term Value Based Care existed, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) unveiled one of the nation’s first risk-based payment models – its Alternative Quality Contract (AQC). Patrick Gilligan joined BCBSMA in 2007 to oversee the AQC’s rollout after spending nearly 14 years negotiating contracts on the provider side at Partners Healthcare (now Mass General Brigham). He left BCBSM...

As someone who has been in the middle of healthcare policy and reform in the U.S. for decades, John McDonough has a unique perspective on how the rapidly changing political climate in Washington will impact the healthcare industry. John’s dedication to public health began in 1985 after he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives where he co-chaired the Joint Committee on Health Ca...

Robert Musslewhite has viewed healthcare innovation and the lifecycle of a healthcare services company from nearly every angle over the past two decades. He joined The Advisory Board Company because it was a small but fast-growing organization where he felt he could make an impact, and where he ultimately became chairman and CEO. Under his leadership, the company quadrupled in size to serve nearly...

CommonSpirit Health created one of the largest health systems in the nation by merging Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives in early 2019. It now operates 137 hospitals and more than 1,000 care sites across 21 states, with revenues of nearly $29 billion. Extending its reach into more communities across the country has enabled CommonSpirit to leverage scale as a means to advance its core...

Tal Heppenstall has a dual role at UPMC. He’s been treasurer of the $21 billion dollar health care provider and insurer since 2003, where he’s responsible for the day-to-day cash needs of an organization that integrates 90,000 employees, 40 hospitals, 700 doctors’ offices and outpatient sites, and a 3.9 million-member Insurance Services Division. In addition, Tal is president of UPMC Enterprises,...

Michael Allen has unique expertise in healthcare finance. He’s been chief financial officer at four different health systems and is national chairman of the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) where he regularly interacts and shares knowledge with peers in the 56,000-member organization. Michael calls HFMA his side hustle and is going on his second year of a one-year term since the...

Cedars-Sinai is a nonprofit academic healthcare organization that serves the diverse Los Angeles community through more than 40 locations, 4,500 physicians and nurses, and 1,500 research projects in motion. Darren Dworkin has been Chief Information Officer at Cedars-Sinai since 2006, where he also founded the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator and serves as managing partner of Cedars-Sinai Health Ventures....

Over the course of nearly 20 years as Chief Research Officer at The Advisory Board Company, Chas Roades became a trusted advisor for CEOs, leadership teams and boards of directors at health systems across the country. When The Advisory Board was acquired by Optum in 2017, Chas left the company with Chief Medical Officer, Lisa Bielamowicz. Together they founded Gist Healthcare, where they play a si...

As the healthcare industry’s largest group purchasing organization (GPO), Vizient manages more than $100 billion in spend for more than half of the nation’s acute care providers. Its members include a diverse group of large community health systems, safety net institutions, children’s hospitals, independent community hospitals and 95% of the country’s academic medical centers. This provides Vizien...

This special episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders puts listeners “in the room” for LRVHealth’s annual planning meeting where the firm and its partners from across the health system determine strategic directives for the upcoming year. But this year was much different than the past. Months of extensive planning for what is typically a two-day event in Boston was thrown completely o...