Radio Advisory

Advisory Board experts Natalie Trebes and Max Hakanson rejoin host Abby Burns for part two of our conversation digging into the trends and challenges healthcare leaders need to pay attention to in 2025. Last week, our experts covered evolving power dynamics around network design, drug cost/spend, and cyber threats. This week, the group shifts their attention to unpack what’s happening with our cor...

While the new year often feels like a time to reset and regroup, 2025 has started off in a sprint. As pressures continue to grow across all sectors of the industry, it’s no secret that leaders need to think and act differently in order to succeed in the new year. With so many swirling changes, it can be hard to sort through the most important topics, trends, and perspectives to focus on. That’s wh...

2024 was filled with upswings and downswings in the healthcare industry. Whether it was unprecedented cyberattacks, the continued rise of GLP-1 therapies, or the return of hospital volumes, healthcare leaders stayed busy. And things aren’t expected to slow down in 2025. To give you a preview of where we may be headed, this week, hosts Rachel (Rae) Woods and Abby Burns invite five Advisory Board ex...

A top podcast for healthcare leaders, with over one million downloads, Radio Advisory is your weekly download on how to untangle the industry's most pressing challenges to help leaders like you make the best business decisions for your organization. From unpacking major trends in care delivery—like site-of-care shifts and the rise of high-cost drugs—to demystifying stakeholder dynamics, to shining...

The healthcare industry talks a lot about “change management,” the idea that through careful stewardship, the process of change can be made a little bit easier. The problem is, it’s a lot easier to talk about change than it is to manage it well. This is especially difficult when it comes to digital transformation, a space that is evolving almost too fast to keep up with. So how should leaders be t...

Employers have been saying for years that they can’t absorb any more cost growth for health insurance; health plans feel like they’ve squeezed about as much juice as possible out of traditional cost mitigation levers. Both are looking for creative alternatives to curb rising health costs. Enter ICHRAs. Usually, when we talk about the health insurance landscape, we focus on Medicare, Medicaid, or e...

Last week on Radio Advisory, we broke down what healthcare leaders need to know for 2025 and beyond following the recent elections. But before we move on from 2024 completely, we have to acknowledge that there’s been a lot moving in the policy space this year, and frankly, there have probably been a few important policy areas on your radar that we haven’t discussed. That’s why this week, host Abby...

(Note: This episode was recorded on November 7, 2024) The results of the 2024 elections are in: Donald Trump will be the 47th President of the United States, and we are all but certain to have a Republican trifecta at the federal level. Admittedly, there’s a lot we don’t know about what healthcare will look like under a second Trump administration—a lot will depend on who is appointed to key leade...

Conversations around GLP-1s in today’s healthcare market are mixed. Some stakeholders are thrilled with their potential, while others are filled with questions and even anxiety about how these powerful and popular drugs will impact their business. Many in the industry have been asking for months: “What can GLP-1s do?” But maybe this is the wrong question. Leaders should be asking “What CAN’T GLP-1...

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) has a surprisingly long history in healthcare. As technology improves, RPM can expand physician capacity, better manage complex patients, and improve total cost of care. Despite RPM’s potential, leaders often struggle to root RPM in a clear business case, or they underinvest in implementation, never fully integrating RPM into existing workflows and systems. This wee...

For years, the best word to describe Medicare Advantage (MA) was “untouchable.” Hugely popular among seniors, profitable for health plans—the hybrid public-private payment model grew to the point that it now covers more seniors than traditional Medicare. But in the past few years, the tide has started to change. And if you’ve been paying attention in recent months, you’ll have seen headlines annou...

As care delivery becomes more complex and new disruptors join the scene, one thing has become clear: operational excellence is now table stakes in ensuring your organization’s financial sustainability and winning patients. In this episode, recorded live from Advisory Board’s 2024 Strategy Summit, guest host and Managing Director of Physician and Medical Group Research at Advisory Board, Sarah Roll...

For years, health systems have been holding their breath to see if patient volumes would finally return to pre-pandemic levels. Because—per conventional wisdom--if volumes return, then so will operating margins. Right? Not so fast. In this episode, host Abby Burns invites Advisory Board experts Sebastian Beckmann and Elizabeth Orr to explore why with the positive volume forecast we see in our proj...

Two weeks ago on Radio Advisory, we told our listeners that the number one area of focus for health system growth is operational excellence, and a major part of that is capturing all of the revenue on the table from your medical group. Healthcare organizations have spent the last decade buying up medical groups and physicians, in part because of the “promise” of downstream referrals. It is a long-...

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services released the Acute Hospital Care at Home payment waiver. The action was expected to usher in a new era of home-based care. But while it’s certainly grown in recent years, frankly, that massive shift hasn’t happened. The question is, why? This week, host Abby Burns invites Dr. Matthew Richards, Senior Medical Di...

(This episode originally aired on September 26, 2023.) Value-based care has been dominating industry conversations in recent years. Here on Radio Advisory, we talk a lot about best practices, how to make the right investments, and how to best prepare leaders for the future of value-based care. But given all this momentum, we want to spend time asking the question: what are the misconceptions or mi...

In the last few years, all eyes have turned to GLP-1s as an industry-altering answer to obesity treatment and weight management. But the fact is, these drugs can’t – and shouldn’t – work in a vacuum. There is a fear that attention on GLP-1s may even blind leaders to the other services that go into providing effective obesity care. So, what should leaders be thinking about when designing and and de...

When we talk about “health systems,” it can sound like we’re talking about a monolith. But in reality, the $1.4 trillion dollar health system sector is made up of a diverse range of players. Academics and safety nets; urban and rural systems; 1,000-bed systems and 25-bed critical access hospitals. The question is, especially as systems emerge from the financial hardships of the past few years, how...

We’ve talked a lot about AI on Radio Advisory, with a particular emphasis on generative models and their capabilities. But are there other models of AI that are flying under the radar? Today’s episode focuses on computer vision and its potential to shift how we think about the use of technology in healthcare. For the second episode in our series leading up to Advisory Board’s upcoming Strategy Sum...

It's no secret that climate change has had a massive effect on population health, but it’s also impacting healthcare business. Did you know that energy costs have gone up by 28% in the past five years? Health systems in particular can shave percentage points off their annual costs by reducing their energy consumption—but there is both a knowledge gap and an action gap keeping leaders from taking a...

This week, host Abby Burns invites Advisory Board expert Sebastian Beckmann back to Radio Advisory to provide an update—as promised—on what his team has uncovered about site-of-care shifts in the six months since he first brought this research to the pod. Hint: there’s about $50B at play. This episode is a modified encore of Episode 195: Site-of-care shifts: It’s time to go on offense.” In that ep...

(This episode originally aired on September 12, 2023.) With rising costs and tightening margins, the industry is continually looking for ways to "bend the cost curve" while maintaining, or even increasing, quality and performance. One stakeholder in particular, employers, are feeling significant pressures from inflation, hospital consolidation, the rise of high-cost drugs, and more. While many leg...

(This episode originally aired on March 12, 2024.) The relationship between health plans and providers has always included an element of friction, but lately, it seems like the temperature is rising. And you've probably noticed – public contracting disputes increased by 69% between 2022 and 2023. That's why, in this episode, host Abby Burns invites Advisory Board experts Max Hakanson and Eileen Fe...

Healthcare leaders have dozens of priorities on their plates, and achieving innovation is not as simple as just buying a new technology or implementing a new care model. Frankly, it can be overwhelming not just to see innovations through, but even to get started. So, what does it really take to innovate? And how do you align your organization’s challenges with the solutions or innovations that are...

It seems like a no-brainer for healthcare organizations to allocate time and attention to a health condition that is guaranteed to affect 50% of adults during their midlife years—but that hasn’t been the case. We’re seeing momentum around making menopause mainstream—from the White House directing research funding, to Hollywood stars talking openly about menopause, to the rise of femtech companies...