The Edge of Healthcare: Disrupting the Status Quo: Bold Leadership for the Future of Healthcare

Martin Cody: Welcome to The Edge of Healthcare, where the pulse of innovation meets the heartbeat of leadership. I’m Martin Cody, your guide through riveting conversations with the trailblazers of healthcare. Tune in to gain exclusive access to strategies, experiences, and groundbreaking solutions from influential payer and health system leaders. This isn’t just a podcast, it’s your VIP ticket to the minds shaping the future of healthcare right now. Buckle up, subscribe, and get ready to ride to The Edge of Healthcare, where lessons from leaders are ready for you to use today.

Martin Cody: All right, everybody, welcome to another edition of The Edge of Healthcare: Lessons from Leaders to Use Today. My name is Martin Cody, SVP of sales and marketing for Madaket Health. And today’s guest is Ryan Bengston. And Ryan, let me know if I corrected that or mispronounced it, of Panda Health, the CEO of Panda Health, who was appointed to appointed to this position in June of this year. Ryan, welcome to the program.

Ryan Bengston: Thank you, yes. Good to be here.

Martin Cody: Appreciate it. I love having CEOs on and interviewing them because they usually have a storied career path. And I know that you’ve been at Panda for a while, but you’ve been in this role since June, and I’d be curious right off the bat, before we get deep into kind of your career path, what do you wish someone would have told you six months ago that you now know today about being CEO at Panda?

Ryan Bengston: I think the biggest thing is the increased sense of just ownership and responsibility for all the decision-making. So I’ve been a PNL leader in a lot of different organizations and have always been able to manage the resources, but more of the recognition that the buck stops with you and needing to make sure that all of those decisions are right for the longevity and ongoing intent of the business is a different level of decision making and pressure. So, hopefully, doing that well and feels good, but definitely different level that I wasn’t fully prepared for.

Martin Cody: It’s an interesting take and I can appreciate that because you mean you were CEO before, so you obviously knew the mechanics of the business and the operational aspect of it. But you’re right, there’s a little bit of a heightened sense of responsibility or urgency when you realize, I can’t take this up above, it’s me. So, it’s a great observation. Tell us a little bit about what Panda Health is.

Ryan Bengston: Yeah. So, Panda is a digital health community and market intelligence platform. So, we were founded by Health Systems to help them navigate their own digital health journeys. And it really started with a group of health systems that came together around a common issue, which was it was taking them literally 14 to 18 months from the time a problem was identified, until they were able to sift through the solutions in the market, come up with a best choice and go through the contracting process, not even implementation and integration, but just getting to the right solution. And they all realized that if they’re going to keep pace with innovation and the digital progress being made in the industry, that timeline just wasn’t going to work, and they wanted something faster. And so Panda was born out of that idea to help those health systems sift through that noise and get to the right decisions faster.

Martin Cody: I couldn’t be more eternally grateful for your existence, because I’m sure you’re much more effective than my solution, where I’ve just been yelling for 35 years. Do something. Do something. So that’s less effective. So it’s interesting that these health systems, because it’s one of the questions I was going to ask you based upon your background in consulting now with Panda, why do health systems and hospitals make decisions so painfully slow?

Ryan Bengston: Well, I think one is just the high-stakes nature of it. So, obviously, not all technology is direct clinical applications, but a lot of this is patient-facing, and you’re dealing with high stakes and, in some cases, life and death. And I think, you know, that speaks very specifically these days to some of the AI capabilities that we’re trying to roll out. And I think a lot of people see great hype and opportunity in AI, but the reality is the efficacy and validation of those solutions from a clinical standpoint is going to take some time because the because the risk is so high. So I think that’s a component. Healthcare just also always had a long-standing history of, you know, we’ve got to get all the stakeholders in the room. Everybody’s got to agree. And you need 100% yes, but only one person to say no. And then the whole thing kind of goes on freeze. And I think also the way the hospitals are organized, where in a lot of cases you may or may not have employed physicians. And so you’re trying to please a lot of different constituencies with patients with the financial side of things, with doctors that may or may not be employed. And you’re trying to keep those groups happy with your clinical staff that has only had more and more burden put on them for the last several years. So I think it’s multifactorial, and all those things just make for very careful decision-making.

Martin Cody: I would agree, and I want to pull on one thread there. I’m going to go back to what how you described Panda. Would it be fair to call you a digital decision accelerator?

Ryan Bengston: Yeah, absolutely.

Martin Cody: And I think that’s great. And before I pull on the thread, I wanted to pull on; something else just popped into my into my head. Digital health might be second only to the buzzword of AI as far as prevalence and mentions in healthcare today. What does digital health mean?

Ryan Bengston: In our initial iteration, we were really focused on more of the consumer oriented technologies. So we first started around those solutions that would maybe connect to the EHR, maybe not, but that would be patient or consumer-facing. So it was digital front door, maybe wayfinding applications, AI chatbots, and patient scheduling and those types of things. It’s really expanded to virtually all health tech solutions that support the triple or quadruple aim. And so as we’ve evolved with our members, we’re doing more in, you know, back office capabilities as well. So, a lot of the AI-enabled things within revenue cycle, imaging, etc. And so I think, even to your point, that definition of digital is evolving and may vary based on the organization and individual you’re talking to.

Martin Cody: We also hear a lot about the digital front door, the double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, sextuple aim.

Ryan Bengston: How many how many aims you’ve got, yeah.

Martin Cody: Exactly. The area that I wanted to pull on that you mentioned a second ago with regards to the slowness of decision-making in the health system at the administration level, was that common philosophy or practice, where it takes 100% yeses and one no can derail the whole thing. Is that an effective management strategy?

Ryan Bengston: Well, I wouldn’t say effective. I understand the reason behind it. And because you do have so many different stakeholders and those opinions matter and, you know, different organizations do it differently, some better than others. But I do think there’s got to be a more traditional decision-making where if somebody is a dissenter, you can at least seek to understand those, get all the facts on the table, and make the best-informed decision you can and not allow that to fully stop the process. And we’ve just seen, I think, over the 30 years or so I’ve been doing this, just too many examples of where you get quite a ways down the path. And one late stakeholder comes in and says, oh no, we can’t do this. And all of that work just falls by the wayside and goes in a different direction. So, I think it’s looking for those organizations that manage that more effectively.

Martin Cody: I agree, and I’m in the camp where I think that’s a leadership issue, because I think it takes some character, some courage to just do what you just described. It’s like, hey, we’ve just invested ten months in this process and this is going to be so you need to really state your case versus just we’re not going to do it. And it’s a no, I need data behind the no type of stuff. And I don’t know if there’s enough leaders that are willing to I think stick your neck out is too strong, but you need to lean into some of these decisions and actually make a decision. And if it doesn’t work, there’s a mistake. But you’ve probably learned a valuable lesson and then iterate upon that and then keep moving. So, I appreciate your thoughts on that. And speaking of leaders, in your opinion, and now having been doing this for 30 years on the consulting side and with Panda, what makes, in your eyes, the attributes of an effective leader?

Ryan Bengston: Yeah. So for me, I think it comes down to a few things. One is really their focus on where are we trying to go as a business and not letting a lot of the bright, shiny objects or, you know, distractions that can pull you in a different way take you off of your mission. And so, you know, from a digital health perspective, we see that because there’s all manner of new solutions. And you go to any of these tech conferences, and they’ve got great booths, and they can distract you. The folks that go either on it or clinical side come back. And, oh, I just met with this great company. We need this because it’s a cool whiz-bang thing. And you’ve got those leaders that say, yep, we want to make sure we’re moving down the right path. But how does this align to where we’re trying to go as an organization? That may be that they’ve got a priority on community and value based care, or they may be wanting to be a leader in certain service lines or things of that nature. And I think the real effective leaders can kind of stay focused on the prize. And then, for me, the other one is those that really empower their team. So maybe going back a little bit to what we just said on the veto side of things, of saying, look, these are the folks I’ve put in charge of IT, or in charge of certain service lines or in charge of procurement. And trusting those individuals to do the job effectively and not feeling like you have to have 3 or 4, 12 layers of oversight and supervision to make sure that everybody is doing their jobs effectively. And again, I think a lot of that’s born out of history and challenges you’ve had in the past and adding these layers of bureaucracy on top of it. But I think the effective leaders are able to find those folks that they trust and let them run.

Martin Cody: I completely agree, and it’s funny, I’ve interviewed Ed DeVaney from CBS on the program, and he talked about, if his team isn’t making mistakes, they aren’t pushing hard enough because that’s how they learn. That’s how they accelerate. That’s how they move. And I think there’s an element there that is missing that a lot of the highest levels of health systems or hospitals, it’s changing. I think it is changing because I think it’s evolve-or-die type of scenario. But, you know, with 40% or more of hospitals operating with a negative operating margin, which I’m not too far removed from college to know that’s not scalable. You would think that some of this decision-making or the boards would be looking at saying, hey, we need to do things differently versus M&A and those sorts of things. And I’m just curious, and maybe frustrated as well, at the lack of adoption of some of the great leadership principles that you just talked about to propel organizations forward. So how do we make that change at scale, so to speak, versus ones and twos?

Ryan Bengston: Yeah, that’s a great question. There’s a lot of good organizations out there that are bringing leaders along. I think, you know, there’s several health systems that have good leadership development programs, and there’s third party organizations that are seeking to do that. I think you’ve also seen a proliferation of clinical leaders, doctors in particular, being promoted into leadership roles, a lot of hospitals, because they’ve got that clinical background understanding. And in many cases, that’s great. In others, they may not have as much of the leadership history or different style based on their education training. And don’t get me wrong, I am not at all anti-physician leadership by any means. I think there’s plenty of examples of them doing a great job. I just think there needs to be a recognition, you know, the same way you would promote a finance leader or an IT leader. That expertise in that area doesn’t necessarily translate to broad-based leadership. And so making sure that wherever those resources are coming from, they’re getting that right, guidance and education into that role.

Martin Cody: Great point. And I agree with you. And it’s kind of like when you elevate the successful football player into the coaching role, and it just doesn’t go well just because they’ve got that talent and skill set as a player doesn’t mean they’re going to be a great leader, mentor or coach and stuff like that. So. Well said. I love what Panda’s doing and how you’ve articulated it. And I’m curious: you’ve got six months under your belt as we head into the new year. What are you most excited about for the organization?

Ryan Bengston: In the spirit of full transparency, we’ve been doing this for a few years. We got started in 2020, got off to a bang because we had the pandemic that was propelling the necessity of deploying a lot of these technologies. So, you know, back then the telemedicine, the RPM, and a lot of that. And then as that started to stabilize, then immediately on the heels of that was a lot of workforce related things because you had so much burnout and challenges on the workforce and employment side. Then, as the money dried up a little bit from the government and reimbursement levels got back to where they were, there’s been this pullback. And so we’ve had to make a little bit of a pivot in our business. And you know one of the things you just mentioned earlier was this just do something. Just move forward. Keep making good decisions. And part of the challenge that we realized because, you know, our business was predicated on these businesses, these organizations from the health system side purchasing new technology to fix problems. And the reality is, there’s probably 85 to 90% of the time that these resources that are evaluating solutions and looking at technology are doing it to just keep up with the pace of market change and stay aware. Or, more often than not, they’re looking to rationalize down contracts and deal with renewals that are coming up and say, do I really want to renew this? Or is there something else better? And so we recognize from our membership that while we all look at the transaction and who’s implementing what, most of the duck paddling his feet below the water is really related to stuff they’ve already got and how can they renew or adjust those as best as possible. And so we’ve made a conscious pivot to make sure that we’re helping them not just buy new products, but really look at what’s coming up for renewals. How do you get ahead of those and take care of those challenges? The other piece is the community aspect. So, at the outset, I mentioned that Panda is a digital health intelligence platform and community. So there’s a significant part of what we do that is related to connecting peers within different organizations to share their knowledge and learning. So as we now have hit 50 member health systems and growing, we’ve got a platform that you can kind of think of it like Reddit, where our members can come up there and say, hey, I’ve got a question about this. We’re leaning into patient self-scheduling. Who are you guys working with? How well does that integrate? What are the pitfalls we should look out for? There’s a mobile version of this as well. So we’ve got instances where folks are standing at one of these flashy IT conferences at a booth saying, hey, I’m talking to this guy. And it’s the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen. Has anybody actually ever heard of this or worked with these guys, or is this just smoke and mirrors? You can kind of get that real time feedback. So, as everybody knows, the health systems are always looking for good, unbiased information. And we try to be that trusted third party, but they’re going to trust their peers and other health systems way more than, you know, other folks in industry. And so we wanted to create that platform. And so we just launched that a few months ago, and very excited to see how that’s starting to take off as we move into the year ahead.

Martin Cody: There is no shortage of shiny objects at these trade shows.

Ryan Bengston: So no, not at all. And again, that’s a big part of what we need to do is go out there and, you know, we’ve got 6500 vendors that we monitor and vet and validate within our platform. And the purpose of that is to understand who actually is scaling up, who’s got good customers, who’s got good financial backing and is going to be here for a while, versus the hundreds of solutions that look good. But as soon as you kind of look under the hood, there’s not a lot there. And it’s that noise that is causing so much of this delay and distraction for these health systems, and we really want to help them cut through that.

Martin Cody: I also love the validation aspect of, okay, we bought this technology three years ago. Is it producing the ROI that we were told or that we modeled out? Why or why not, type of stuff. And leveraging the existing tech investments that they’ve had versus just continually piling on new tech investments. So I think that’s very intuitive intelligence because chances are, and I’ve seen it, you know, a hundred times where it’s not producing the results that were advertised, so to speak. So how do we make certain is that on us, the health system, is it on the tech? Is it on the deployment? Where is that? Because if it was the best thing since sliced bread, then let’s make certain we can leverage that, right? So I think that’s super interesting, and I love the community aspect as well. So congratulations on that.

Ryan Bengston: Thank you. And I like to sorry one last point as it relates to those existing solutions. Part of the challenge, too, is that those Venn diagrams of what those solutions are doing and what other solutions are doing are constantly changing. So we bought a technology to address problem A, we’ve got other technologies that have now merged or been acquired. And now there’s a platform that addresses A, B, and C instead of just renewing. Where do we have other technology that has now expanded or can address? And so we’ve seen dozens of examples when renewals are coming up where they recognize like, hey, we now have three platforms that could do this. Why are we using this one? How do we rationalize this down? And so that’s the pace of change in the market that we just have to keep tabs on, too, is those Venn diagrams are constantly moving.

Martin Cody: And, plus, it’s nice because you’re agnostic. You’re neutral, right? So a CFO, or a COO or, you know, director of surgery who lobbied and campaigned hard for this technology, it’s human nature. They’re going to want to shine a light on that positively that we’re getting the ROI that we say, but you can come in as Switzerland to say, ah, it’s probably not producing the results that we had hoped. And like you said, everything’s changing. There’s three other platforms that do the seven things that we need to be done. So, let’s revisit this. It’s super intelligent idea. All right. Speaking of pivot, I’m going to pivot to the word association aspect of the program. Okay, so now this is where I will say a word or a sentence, and you tell me the first thing that pops into your head. No filtering.

Ryan Bengston: All right, I’ll do my best.

Martin Cody: All right. We’ll start with one that seems to be getting more and more popular. And it’s the word ghost networks.

Ryan Bengston: Okay. I have no perspective or opinion on ghost networks.

Martin Cody: All right. You’re 60 customers. I’m sure do, because recently, there’s a lot of lawsuits that are getting filed for these provider networks that are less than 50% accurate, and it’s impeding access to care and those sorts of things. And there’s no one that’s immune from it. So it’s going to be interesting to see how this evolves because the lawsuits are already getting well publicized.

Ryan Bengston: Yeah, it has not been one that’s kind of hit the top of our customer’s priority list as of yet, at least that we’ve heard about. So it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out over the next year.

Martin Cody: From an integration perspective, FHIR API’s.

Ryan Bengston: Very favorable on that. I think that that is a significant opportunity on a go-forward basis to really improve the state of integration and data transfer. So very supportive on that front.

Martin Cody: I like that answer. And then, when you hear a health system say, this is the way we’ve always done it.

Ryan Bengston: Immediate opportunity.

Martin Cody: All right. Good. Agreed. And then, when you hear the phrase the Ohio State.

Ryan Bengston: Well, as a Michigan grad, it grates on me every time. But I think that’s part of the purpose, right?

Martin Cody: I’m not even a Michigan grad, and it grates on me. So you’re in good company. All right. The last question is an audience favorite. If you could sit down with someone living or deceased in the healthcare industry and pick their brain, who are you sitting with and what are you drinking?

Ryan Bengston: That’s a tough one. I, deceased, I would probably go with Dr. Michael DeBakey. So, a pioneer in cardiovascular medicine and open heart surgery. I was originally drawn into healthcare because I was actually born with a congenital heart defect. Had to have open heart surgery when I was two years old. And the And the technology. I won’t say exactly how long ago that was, but a long time ago. Obviously, it was not what it is today, but whatever there was at the time that helped me out was in large part because of the work that Dr. DeBakey and his partner Denton Cooley had done. And so I think just I’m really drawn to people that take big swings and solve big problems, and so would love to just kind of get inside his mind. And then, if I can have a 1A, I guess, in the current world, going back to solving big problems, I don’t think we’ve seen a bigger health problem in our lifetimes than COVID. And so I think Dr. Fauci, Andy Slavitt, Dr. Murthy, some of those folks that really were at the forefront of addressing this from a public health standpoint would love to. Now, you know, now that we’re on the heels of it, kind of step back and just think about how did you even approach it at the time. How did you work through it? What do you wish you knew now that you or then that you know now? I like the big problem piece of it. As far as what I’m drinking, I know you’re a big wine guy, and I do not have that pedigree, but I would say my wife and I a few years ago had an opportunity to go do a wine tour around Tuscany, and we found this nice little winery called Cava …, and they’ve got a Brunello di Montalcino that we really liked. I’m not a connoisseur enough to know if that’s even a good one, but we enjoyed it and shipped a case back. And today, when we’re looking to celebrate something, we usually pull out one of those bottles. So, if I did have the opportunity to talk with any one of those folks I just mentioned, I would definitely go that route.

Martin Cody: It’s an awesome route. And the beautiful thing about wine is if you like it and you enjoy it, then it’s a good bottle. It doesn’t have to have points associated with it, especially when you can relate it to an experience like being at the winery itself in Tuscany. Pretty magical. And as far as Dr. DeBakey is concerned, it’s ironic because I used to sell cardiothoracic surgical instrumentation, and, you know, you’ve arrived when your name is on an instrument, so, yeah.

Ryan Bengston: His name is on a lot of things related to cardiovascular, both devices, buildings, you name it, but fascinating guy.

Martin Cody: Fascinating. And I love those selections. Ryan, thank you so much. That has been a wonderful insight on a bunch of things with regards to decision-making. I’m looking forward to seeing the growth of Panda in the coming years, because I think you are on to something with helping these health systems not only accelerate the digital decisions, but also adopt what they have and make it more meaningful. So congratulations on that. And I think they’re in good hands with you at the helm.

Ryan Bengston: Thank you. Appreciate that very much. And we’re looking forward to continuing to help those health systems do just that, so we appreciate it.

Martin Cody: Awesome. And thank you, audience members, for tuning in to another episode of The Edge of Healthcare. Take care everyone.

Martin Cody: Thanks for diving into The Edge of Healthcare with us today. I hope these insights will fuel your journey in healthcare leadership. For more details, show notes, and ways to stay plugged into the conversation, head over to MadaketHealth.com. Until next time, stay ahead of the curve with The Edge of Healthcare, where lessons from leaders are always within reach. Take care of yourselves and keep pushing the boundaries of healthcare innovation.