The Backstory

We've seen a shift in the COVID-19 pandemic over the past few days. As social distancing and other efforts appear to be flattening the curve, hospitals are beginning to look towards what comes next. It's no longer just about dealing with the day-to-day operations of pandemic response but also about how to stabilize the organization, bring services back on line and develop an appropriate financial...

Offer help and take good notes. That’s the abbreviated recommendation by Carol Carden for hospitals and health systems looking to take advantage of new Stark Law waivers during COVID-19. As managing principal of valuation services at PYA, Carden has been closely watching what HHS activity means for physician compensation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As healthcare providers are undergoing a range of situations right now, with some entering their COVID-19 surge or in the middle of it, and others still steadying for it, the emotional strain on caregivers on the front line is continuing to grow. And so I asked our CEO, David Jarrard, to talk about how leaders can show care for those caregivers, remain connected with them, and help alleviate some...

Language matters, and it especially matters during a crisis like COVID-19. The language healthcare organizations use needs to reflect the culture and the mission of that organization. It might be words of war, it might be something else. The key is to reflect who you have always been in the words you choose. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is part two of our conversation with Dr. David Pate, former CEO of St. Luke’s Health System and now serves on the Idaho COVID-19 task force. Here, Dr. Pate discusses the ways COVID-19 could reshape the healthcare industry and accelerate trends already underway. And, he talks about how hospitals, health systems and healthcare leaders can prepare. Most importantly, Dr. Pate sends a message to a...

Dr. David Pate retired as CEO of St. Luke’s Health System in Boise, Idaho at the end of January. A couple of weeks into retirement, he received a call from the Governor asking him to serve on the state’s COVID-19 task force. Since then, he has been focused on what’s happening with the pandemic, how to deploy resources appropriately and where things might be headed next. Here, he discusses the crit...

As COVID-19 continues to spread, a lack of resources and medical supplies contributes to the frustration that many health systems in the US are feeling right now. That, along with the intensity and strain of the work facing so many physicians, nurses and support staff, could have a significant impact on patient care. As hospitals prepare for potential capacity issues, everyone is scrambling for ex...

This is the third and final part of the conversation between our CEO David Jarrard and Emily Evans of Hedgeye Risk Management. Be sure to take a listen to parts one and two, there’s a ton of great insight there. Here, Evans and Jarrard talk about the stock market and areas of vulnerability for hospitals. In addition, Evans turns the tables and asks Jarrard a few questions about what our firm, Jarr...

This is part two of the conversation between our CEO David Jarrard and Emily Evans of Hedgeye Risk Management. If you missed part one, we'dhighly recommend going back and checking it out. Here, Evans and Jarrard talk about access to care, the political implications – including Medicare for All – public health and personal responsibility, and the opportunity for telemedicine, among other things. As...

Things are developing incredibly quickly with the novel coronavirus COVID-19 and today we recorded a conversation between our CEO David Jarrard and Emily Evans, the Managing Director for Healthcare Policy at Hedgeye Risk Management. Normally we don’t date these podcasts but because things are moving so fast, we'll let you know that this was recorded on Wednesday, March 11. It was a long conversati...

The Houston Astros made every mistake in the book. It's not great for their fans or their organization, but it does give us a new angle to talk about crisis communications. In this conversation, editorial manager David Shifrin (Colorado Rockies) is joined by associate vice president Tim Stewart (Chicago Cubs) and vice president Steve Patterson (Detroit Tigers) to talk about lessons from a very str...

Carrie Liken is the Head of Industry for Healthcare at Yext, a technology company that helps organizations manage their brands online. For healthcare providers, Yext helps create, manage and analyze information that will show up to the right patients at the right time. According to Yext, most patients search for information about a doctor or provider online, but only a few look at the provider’s w...

Pete Lawson has more than 35 years of experience in both healthcare operations and mergers & acquisitions. He's spent time with both investor owned and not-for-profit health system, and has served as a hospital CEO and multi-facility corporate leader. Now, as a consultant and strategist, he brings his background on both the buy side and sell side to guide client hospitals through the transaction p...

The severity of the coronavirus outbreak continues to grow globally. And with it, the buzz and media attention and fear. At the same time, it’s not yet a big issue here in the US. Hospitals here generally aren’t on the front lines of combatting the outbreak. In this conversation, our CEO David Jarrard speaks to senior managing advisor Aileen Bennett about the situation and that gap between the att...

The business relationship between physicians and hospitals is shifting. It's thanks to new compensations models and new models for patient care, largely (but not exclusively) driven by the move towards value-based care. James Cervantes, associate vice president in the National Practice here at Jarrard Inc., brings a wealth of experience working on leadership structure, professional development and...

On this J|Insights our CEO, David Jarrard, talks about a really interesting article titled Beyond burnout: Docks Decry ‘Moral Injury’ from Financial Pressures of Healthcare. It's by Melissa Bailey over at Kaiser Health News and was published on February 4. The idea of moral injury actually started in military and combat situations. It's this idea that it's not just stress and it's not just frustra...

Some hospitals look like disaster zones during this year’s historically serious flu season. And now the US is bracing for the potential threat of coronavirus, generating significant fear (and, it seems, somewhat masking the news about the flu). Behind the scenes and away from the media buzz, many providers are taking drastic measures to handle increased patient loads and prevent the flu virus from...

The general outlook for healthcare remains positive…despite the election. That was the core message presented from the stage at the 2020 Council Panel: Wall Street’s View on Prospects for the Health Care Industry, put on by the Nashville Health Care Council. Sitting on that stage were three healthcare finance wonks, plus a popular leader in the healthcare industry who took on the role of emcee. Mi...

Healthcare marketers have the tools they need. We’re neck deep in tools. 2020 is not the year of more tools. Instead, it’s the year of finally using tools the right way and connecting them to the bigger goal – not just taking them out for a spin and running test campaigns divorced from what our organizations are trying to accomplish. We see five areas where digital healthcare marketing needs to lo...

Founding partner and chief development officer Anne Hancock Toomey spent most of last week in San Francisco at the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. And, like most of the 50,000 healthcare executives in town, she never set foot in the Westin for the actual conference. Instead, she spent 16-hour days traversing the hills of San Francisco to meet with those who are otherwise busy delivering su...

Our CEO, David Jarrard, reviews the first season of Art of Change and explains what he's learned from our conversations with healthcare leaders over the past year. We created the Art of Change because we felt the phrase itself captured the heart of our firm. Change done well is an art. And we began a voyage through stories and videos and illustrations to capture that art, asking, “What does it loo...

In the previous conversation with our CEO David Jarrard, we talked about what's going on with the increasing scrutiny being placed on hospitals and health systems by the media, the public and politicians. We also talked about what healthcare leaders can do to prepare their organizations. Here, Jarrard discusses what those same leaders can do personally to prepare and perhaps even change the way th...

It's become apparent over the past few months that the perception of hospitals and healthcare providers as a whole has changed. Even in the last couple of weeks, numerous stories have appeared in the media placing healthcare providers under new levels of scrutiny - and appropriately so. On top of that, it's a presidential election year, adding an additional layer of pressure. Our CEO, David Jarrar...

January 1 rolled around and election season kicked off. Ok, it was already well under way. But with the new year things are ratcheting up and the first primaries are just a couple of months away. With the increased scrutiny being placed on hospitals in general, and the many different political approaches to healthcare among the candidates in this cycle, how should healthcare leaders prepare and re...

Last week, the New England Journal of Medicine published a paper showing that hospital mergers don't do much to change several key metrics in quality and experience. And in the one place where the numbers do change - patient experience - they're worse. Under normal circumstances a paper showing little to no change in the key outcomes studied wouldn't get much attention. The problem here is that ho...