The Edge of Healthcare: Healthcare Reimagined: Policy, AI, and Entrepreneurship

Intro/Outro: 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. Thank you. And welcome back, everyone, to the Edge of Healthcare lessons from leaders to use right now. My name is Martin Cody, host of this webinar and podcast. I am thrilled to have with us today Kim Lynch, CEO and founder of Metis Healthcare. So Kim, welcome.

Kim Lynch: Thanks so much for having me, Martin. It’s a real delight.

Martin Cody: I’m looking forward to digging into Metis. But you’ve been in healthcare a long time, and I want to kind of paint a story of history, of why you got into healthcare and what was your first job in healthcare.

Kim Lynch: Sure. Gosh, it’s my first job in healthcare. I could maybe stretch that argument back to my lifeguarding career. But I can help pull it forward a bit. And I started out in politics, actually doing committee work and really enjoying getting close to community needs was really what I loved about that work. And through that process, I ended up working on both my undergraduate studies, pointing them more and more toward healthcare. I knew that that’s probably what I wanted to do. And then concentrating on getting a job in the governor’s administration, first in constituent services and then in the policy office in health policy. So, like, nailed the dream job really out of the gate. But it was through being close to the everyday people’s stories that I was seeing and hearing and learning about in both the classroom and experiencing them on the policy and policy maker side. But I’m the daughter of an anesthesiologist, so I really, I don’t know, a time in my life when I wasn’t thinking in terms of healthcare for clinicians and patients.

Martin Cody: Yeah. Your proximity to healthcare started at birth, essentially from my standpoint.

Kim Lynch: Yes.

Martin Cody: Working on the committee, that side of things for the community needs. How old were you for that?

Kim Lynch: I started out doing committee work when I was 18.

Martin Cody: In college, you had a bunch of, I guess, what poli sci focus. And you were working in that capacity, and then the job out of college was working for the governor, correct?

Kim Lynch: Yeah.

Martin Cody: Which governor or what state?

Kim Lynch: Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan.

Martin Cody: Okay.

Kim Lynch: And it was awesome. I actually had every intention of going straight from undergrad into grad school. So I was studying for that. And my now husband and I had worked on her campaign because I’d been on committee staff. I was already, you know, well in with the awesome campaign team there. And when she won, I got the offer to join the staff. And I was like, you don’t turn that down ever. So I put off grad school and it was such an incredible experience. And yeah, I loved every second of it.

Martin Cody: That does sound like a dream job, right?

Kim Lynch:  It was amazing. I mean, and it was also at the time when, like West Wing was very big. And so we had we had like West Wing watching parties. It was a very good time to feel optimistic about public service. And I love the idea. And my father, through not just his practice at medicine. He’s a specialist, he’s an anesthesiologist. I would joke with him all the time about he’s not a particularly useful doctor. If you break your leg in the woods, right? without his tools, he’s not super helpful. But that act of service and the mentality that I saw him live was totally my inspiration for going into public service. That your work should be in service of something that you find exciting but that does good for the world. So I saw that my dad did that through his practice of anesthesiology and just being a pretty cheerful human wherever he went. For me, it was finding my initial setting and my early career of where within the public service landscape was I most excited and did I felt like I could make the greatest contribution.

Martin Cody: And I’d be curious, working in a fast-paced environment like that, essentially in the governor’s team, what were some of the takeaways unrelated to the West Wing that you left that capacity with? That continued to serve you well today?

Kim Lynch: The list is endless. The first thing I will say is the mentorship of the people in that office. They could not have been more generous to the mid and late-career folks. To the folks with younger careers like that, really preceptorship was incredible. Whether it was on the most, you know, boring but quite consequential budget matters that you’d never dealt with. You know, that early in your career, all the way to understanding the ego dynamics at play as we negotiated health information exchange policy and stood up those negotiations, something that you said before we started recording, I had the Michigan healthcare marketplace described to me as a mafia when I was this bright, shiny, 20 something saying, why? Are you saying the right things, that they want to cooperate and share data? That’s how naive I was. I can’t wait for folks to hear this and laugh as this bright, shiny 20-year-old working on health information exchange. I couldn’t understand why they would say one thing and then the actions would be quite counter to that when it came to actually exchanging information. So this is a pretty high-tech act, right? Like so naive of me. It was mentors in the administration; this is like a mafia; this is a turf. And, you know, the amount of lessons that I learned in that experience, I don’t need to paint everyone with the same brush. In Michigan, there are such incredible organizations and institutions that the tectonic plates feel very firm in Michigan as well, from a system and a landscape perspective. And I see now how much that chokes off innovation. And I think that’s what those, you know, early mentors were, were signaling of. And what that was the lesson that I took from it was don’t pound sand here. This isn’t going to change. These are really well-grounded dynamics. And that if I wanted to have a real impact, it might not be there. And in that effort to spend my time.

Martin Cody: It’s a great answer. And it’s fascinating because I think those of us who still are naive and maybe altruistic, thinking that we can impart some change in this industry where we are pounding sand and pounding our heads against the wall, those factions are still well entrenched. And to your point, I do think it stifles innovation, and I do think it stifles disruption. It stifles advancement, it stifles I mean, healthcare is one of the only industries that I know of that still uses fax machines. And they’re single-handedly keeping the fax industry afloat. That’s a lack of leadership, a lack of innovation. Someone’s benefiting from that. It’s not all of us as consumers of health, but from there. So I appreciate that answer. And I also appreciate that candor because I think you’re right. And unfortunately, I don’t think it’s exclusive to Michigan. The challenge we all have is how do we break those walls down right from there? Where did you go?

Kim Lynch: So wow, what an excellent tee-up from the Granholm administration. I was invited to join Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and I was there for about 18 months, I will let folks read into that again. There are amazing folks at BCBSM, but it wasn’t the right fit for me. And so from there I actually went into consulting. There was a consulting firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that was a nonprofit that was transitioning from doing a lot of military health system and military-focused research into military health system and all health system research called the Altarum Institute. And I went there and absolutely loved it. It was a great time to be in health tech, and we got to build and I got to build everything from participate and build, to be clear. Everything from syndromic surveillance systems to disease registries and immunization registries. And it was really my first exposure to workflow redesign at the edge of where healthcare was. So, in that case, it was working with local public health nurses, epidemiologists, and development teams when I was the person gathering requirements across all of the various stakeholders so that local public health nurses could administer the vaccinations needed at the point of care and perform outreach to patients that were not crossing their threshold.

Kim Lynch: And it turns out that those two workflows, while very straightforward, are rather difficult to pull off. And consulting and being able to bring people together is really what I got to do there. So we also put together the high-tech act response for Michigan from that—that company. What we stood up for was the Michigan Center for Effective IT Adoption quite a mouthful, but helping doctors adopt electronic health records and take advantage of the meaningful use incentives. So that’s where my doctor father likes to introduce me as responsible for meaningful use. And I’m like, no, I assure you, was there participated in in in policy was not single-handedly responsible. But all joking aside, it was such an instructive workforce effort, technology efforts, and missed opportunity. To your point about the dynamics of the healthcare industry, it really has served to line the pockets of very small healthcare sector, and it has not delivered on the interoperable population health promises that we started out with. So I think we did a lot of good in that work, and there’s a ton of unfilled promise and potential.

Martin Cody: It’s amazing how much need there still is. And even if you go back to the syndromic surveillance and getting all of the emergency departments to be in sync, and so you can see respiratory distress triage cases on the rise and, you know, uh oh, maybe there’s an airborne something or other that we need to be aware of in this city. And some were a dirty weapon or something. The promise is still out there, but the need is probably far greater than 25 or 30 years ago when we started talking about that.

Kim Lynch: It’s so true. I mean, this is such a funny aside, but it’s one of those stories that, you know, you couldn’t make it up. When I was working on the syndromic surveillance systems, I actually went to the Taste of Chicago and got salmonella poisoning. It was their headlines. And I got to effectively trace my own. I got to trace my own case through the process. And it was such an instructive moment for me as a patient and as a builder, and to your point of all this unfulfilled potential, like holy cats, we are not even scratching the surface, right? In part because, back to the instructive times in Michigan, we’re still so busy hoarding data in so many cases that we don’t leave space for real innovation. We talk about a good game in many cases, but the time and effort tell a different story, unfortunately, too often.

Martin Cody: Agreed, and it seems consultancy gets a bad rap.

Kim Lynch: A lot of it earned, but yes.

Martin Cody: And I was going to ask you why you think that is, but I think you may have just answered it.

Kim Lynch: I mean, yeah, I have a strong opinion about it, and I would love other’s thoughts because I have thought about this a good bit. I think consulting is wonderful when you’re using your tool set for good. I think consulting is a real problem. When you show up and say, tell me what the answer is you want to be right? Tell me what you want the answer to be. And too often, consulting is tell me what you want the answer to be, and I will make the data tell that story, right? That is selection bias 101. And as a public health person, you don’t get to do that in my business. You don’t get to do that in my science. Right? Like you start with everyone. You don’t get to say bad data. We drop them. They don’t have the ability to pay. You drop them. It’s everyone is your starting denominator. And I loved being a consultant. Oh my gosh. It is some of my favorite work. I still talk about so many of those projects. There’s plenty of good and bad, but I think a lot of it comes down to, are you advancing? Are you using your skill set to do good within the industry, or are you perpetuating obfuscation? Are you perpetuating power dynamics? Are you perpetuating the siphoning of resources from their intended purpose, like all of that is wildly present in healthcare, and I think that’s exactly where consulting gets a bad rap because there’s a ton of money to be made in some of those, not so great tricks of the trade.

Martin Cody: And certainly, a lot of resources were squandered with very little to no results. So after the consulting gig, we can bash consultants forever, but I’ll abstain.

Kim Lynch: I love consultants, just use your powers for good.

Martin Cody: Put the patient first.

Kim Lynch: Be good because we’re all patients. That’s the thing about being consultants or any role in this healthcare system. We are all patients. We all will be patients. And that is the point of empathy that I would hope we can all access and act upon and within as we do our jobs.

Martin Cody: Agreed. And I think there needs to be more empathy exhibited and taught at the highest levels because then that could be perpetuated from the top down, which is where it should probably originate after.

Kim Lynch: Totally agree. It’s also good business. I mean, I can make the argument on hearts and minds, right? I can also make it on an economic playbook that balances the needs of your workforce, especially when that workforce, our clinicians, and staff who are caring for your patients. Yeah, there’s definitely a bridge too far. And a lot of organizations have found that bridge too far. And I think we’re in a rebalancing period. And I look forward to the organizations that are investing in their people and rebalancing that equation, being the ones who do the best in the next, you know, five, ten years in healthcare.

Martin Cody: I completely agree. I’m excited to see that chapter unfold quickly. Speaking of that type of organization, I think you left consulting and joined an organization that is largely from that ilk if you will talk to us about that.

Kim Lynch: Sure. Well, so I went from consulting with the federal government.

Martin Cody: That wasn’t the one I was talking about.

Kim Lynch: Yeah, I think you’re talking about after that. So in Michigan, my first startup was that I’m helping doctors get onto and use their first EHRs. And then I came out to DC to run the first Regional Extension Center Program nationally. That was the program in Michigan that I was running. And then I came to run that program nationally and eventually all of ONC’s portfolio. And then, from there, I left ONC to be part of the founding team at Alidade. It’s incredible to say this ten years ago now. So just ten years ago now, I have distinct memories of reviewing some agreements over the the holidays of 2014. At various times we started Alidade, and it was absolutely incredible and still a ride that it’s tough to really see the magnitude of where we were and where we are and Alidades’ role in changing the ecosystem, but it’s pretty incredible to see how, again, the tectonic plates are shifting. The ice is starting to break up, whichever metaphor you like. And I think Alidade has really been in the right place at the right time, proving such a necessary demonstration of innovation. We were just discussing there really, truly can be innovation.

Martin Cody: I want to pull on a couple of threads there if I look at your career longitudinally. So this is an amazing experience that not many people get to have in a very short period of time. So you worked for a local policy, government office, then you worked for the governor’s office, then you worked for a consultant, then you worked for the federal government, and then you go from the federal government to on the way other end of the spectrum, a startup.

Kim Lynch: And I was also pregnant with our third child. So it was some ridiculousness from a life perspective. But yeah, it was a huge pendulum swing.

Martin Cody: Yeah, I can’t imagine a larger one from that standpoint. But I’m curious, as it relates to skill sets that were required at each stop along the way, what do you think is the consistent thread in all of the skills that you either brought to the job, learned on the job, or refined while there that continue to serve you today?

Kim Lynch: So that’s a big, big question. I have a starting point, and maybe I can give a couple of examples. My starting point would be my public health degree really helped me understand the macro dynamics of healthcare, and I would not have described it as such at the time. But experiencing healthcare myself, experiencing healthcare through individual use cases or problems, and then zooming all the way out to the macro. Start with, you know, 330 million Americans and work your way in, and the ability to toggle between the individual experience and the population level outcome, and then the individual experience and that back and forth, that toggle, I would say, is probably the skill set that I have used the most, certainly in entrepreneurship, because it’s that ability to see, you know, a single experience of care, a single payment, a single day in the life and making that better, making that demonstrably, tangibly better. As far as other skill sets go, I’ve long had a strong interest in behavior science. I’ve done a little research in that area. Just the most basic understanding of how we respond to, why we respond the way we do as humans, and how that affects our healthcare and what we do or don’t do is fascinating as a patient, and as a caregiver.

Kim Lynch: And it also helps you understand the alignment or misalignment of incentives, which is probably the skill set that is maybe the most obtuse, but is the one that I’m trying to really sharpen, I’ll say at this point in time is there are talking a talk and there’s walking a walk. The practice of aligning interests is not a one-time thing. It is something that you have to check in on and re-adjust, whether it’s a clinician and a patient and their care plan. There has to be an alignment of interests. And I would say that my discernment has certainly gotten better over my career of getting quicker to is there a real alignment of interest here and therefore my time, my effort, you know, can maybe accelerate? Or is there not really an alignment of interest here, is there. You know, talk, but not a lot of walking, in which case I could either pound sand or maybe cut bait and put my time and effort somewhere else. And I think that skill, that bonus skill of discernment, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with that cutting bait with my energy and moving on. And that’s been great. That’s been really fun, too.

Martin Cody: That’s a huge asset when you can refine the skill of cutting bait and not continuing to invest personal, emotional, and physical resources after physical resources when there’s no alignment and nothing’s going to get done. People are just merely talking the talk but not walking the walk.

Kim Lynch: Well, and plenty of times, I mean, if we take any judgment out of the situation, a lot of folks just aren’t ready, right? Like, I’ve worked in value-based care for the last ten years. It’s a huge change. There were plenty of doctors and office managers that I’ve spoken with that were not ready, but maybe they were ready a year later or after something else changed in their landscape. And I think this is where even if it’s just conceptual, even if it’s just, you know, what might the future look like? I think that it’s really healthy for us in the healthcare industry to start imagining and then to start telling the stories and hearing the stories of the folks that have made the leap and how they’ve done it. It changes. What I think, obviously, has been a really tough five years for healthcare and hopefully start. Giving us a little hope, right? In a very tangible way, for what the future could look like and how clinicians, operators, and even patients can participate in building. What does the 21st-century healthcare system actually look like? And how do I put my thumb on that scale of aligned interests and not, you know, tolerating or just moving through, right, the misaligned interests of the last century?

Martin Cody: Do you think that plays a role in your decision to join a startup and or be where you are now, being a CEO and co-founder of an organization where you can call the shots and say, I’m not dealing with that BS, let’s just focus over here?

Kim Lynch: Yeah, a lot of folks on my teams over the years will recognize this thought pattern and the very ROI-driven person’s return on investment, and that’s how my brain tends to operate. And the measure that I give for myself is where did the time go. And so I evaluate myself on a kind of the beginning of the week intention, end of the week intention. And I get really frustrated when my time is going, not where I want it to go. So if it is going to the category that I often refer to as like administrivia, sometimes there’s, you know, like the necessary, but you’re just going to have to get through it. For me, entrepreneurship has been the most right balance for me administrivia to be able to put a real impact on the board that I can be proud of.

Martin Cody: I’m interested in the entrepreneurial angle because it’s not something that people gravitate towards. Sometimes someone had a lemonade stand at five or what have you, or doing creative things, and you can tell these individuals are like, that person’s going to start a business someday, and you see that from a distance. Where did you acquire it?

Kim Lynch: That was not me. Yeah, I definitely do not. I know those people. I’m fascinated by those folks. For me, I’ve only recently really become comfortable labeling it as a calling. I didn’t want to do this. This was not my plan. We were joking about the West Wing. I’m a guy behind the guy person. I’m the operator. I like to tee things up for doctors and for nurses to hit it out of the park. That is my happy place. I like making a machine work. This realization of what we’re working on with Metis, was a realization that came over really close to a decade of various like aha moments. And then, once the pieces had really fit together, I couldn’t put it down. I could not put my brain down from thinking about the problem.

Martin Cody: I want to talk about Metis now because it’s borrowing a term from the 90s. It’s synthesizing all of your experiences and what you just said you were observing, and now you’ve built a solution for it. So what are the problems that your entrepreneurial new stud self is solving?

Kim Lynch: Sure. So at Metis, we are helping clinicians take control of their time and their money. And when we say that, we mean helping them understand their full patient panel and their full resource and revenue portfolio so they can rationalize both and set priorities against both. So right now, if you are a solo doc to a community hospital or to a federally qualified health center, you are running probably multiple lines of business. Mhm. And if you’re not, single points of failure are another business risk we can talk about, especially in the wake of the change healthcare cyberattack and how even the surest thing sure isn’t feeling that. Sure, here in 2024.

Martin Cody: Still rippling.

Kim Lynch: It’s still rippling, indeed. And with that uncertainty, being able to understand your whole panel and all of your lines of business and where you are being paid is expected and not as expected is essential. Most clinical businesses don’t have that visibility, so we start there. We help those businesses plug holes in their current payment and give them a little breathing room so they can get strategic on their patient populations, specifically around quality measures and bonus payments, quality incentives, and all the different ways that they can start aligning their time with ways that they can run up the score for their patients and their business. At the same time, there’s that aligned incentives game. And lastly, we help them start really playing the what-if game. What if this patient population was in a value-based arrangement? What might that look like? What are the types of partners that I might be looking for in an ecosystem, maybe direct contracting to help me accelerate or advance my business? And again, this idea of a full portfolio of all different kinds of patients and all different kinds of economic models, what Metis does is gives you the ability to manage all of that in a day over day, week over week, and quarter over quarter basis.

Martin Cody: One of the things I see with physicians today is sheer exhaustion. Yeah. And I’m wondering how I mean, if a physician is listening and there will be a few listening, how do you get them over the hurdle of listen, I’ve got I walk out the door at 7 p.m. I dictate notes. I have to do this. I’ve got a family, I’m missing recitals. And it’s just one more thing that I have to do. And there’s a long list that I’m not even getting to because, yeah, regulatory-wise, they’ve been burdened there. Now, there are prior authorizations. You know, everything that is being put upon the physicians. How do you get them to understand the holistic value prop that is awaiting them through Metis and what it can mean to them?

Kim Lynch: Well, I would say that every single doctor I’ve spoken to about this has pretty quickly leaned in and said, I already understand what you’re saying, whether they are an owner operator themselves or they work for a hospital and they have heard the plight of their friends who are out practicing independently. We start with, it is really hard out there, and you are getting the raw end of this deal and we can lay it out for you. So the first thing that really clicks in for most doctors when we talk is I knew it, I knew that there was something wrong. And so there’s this validation moment of when we say, well, you know, I’m not sure what your current denial rate is usually how we open the conversation. But most independent businesses we see are ultimately paid three or 4 or 5 out of ten times. And most hospitals, if they’re in kind of the high-performing end, are ultimately paid 8 or 9 out of 10 times. We help close that gap. And that understanding of I thought that saying that I was a $20 million a year in billings, 10 million in revenue, business was just a normal way to report my business. It’s not in any other industry. And we really just start with empathy for that business owner and their admin office manager and say, look, it’s not your fault. This is like a video game set on hard mode that you’ve been playing without resources. And so really that first conversation tells us where it hurts for you. Or if you’re not even sure, let us return a quick diagnostic of here’s where we can see you’re being paid and here’s where you’re not being paid. And then let’s set priorities on where you want to change that result.

Martin Cody: I think it’s spectacular that you’ve been able to draw upon your rich, diverse background of experiences to then somehow find and identify an entrepreneurial cap and embrace that, because that often is not an easy path to pursue because everyone’s stories about entrepreneurialism and worried about making payroll and laying on the kitchen floor, wondering how that’s going to get done and taking on investors.

Kim Lynch: I identify with those feelings, though, rest assured.

Martin Cody: Yeah, I’m sure you do.

Kim Lynch: It’s not for the faint of heart, that’s for certain.

Martin Cody: But you also harken back again. And we heard the word empathy. And so if we can practice that a little bit more, I think good things will result from it. And you’re certainly living. You’re walking that walk and talking that talk. So I’m very appreciative of what you’re doing at Metis. So congratulations on that.

Kim Lynch: Thank you. It’s my delight to get to learn from the doctors, the nurses, and the administrators out there who are working so hard. I’m here at Northeastern University, up in Portland, Maine, near the Portland, Maine campus, and we are part of a portfolio of companies here at the Roux Institute. And it’s been incredible to see the ecosystem that they are building for folks to learn together, and how intentional even the state of Maine is being, to help folks learn together and to support entrepreneurship. I think we’re at the very beginning of making it a little easier for one another, hopefully by learning together and realizing that while there’s plenty of competition in healthcare, we need to get creative and redefine this century’s playing field. My line on it is that alignment of of incentives, and I would hope to be able to really de-risk it, quite frankly, for a lot of other clinicians and administrators to also experiment within their own businesses or to make an entrepreneurial leap, because I can think of fewer things that would have a better effect on the US healthcare system than a lot more innovation happening at the edge of care.

Martin Cody: Right. And it’s an interesting name for a podcast to the Edge of Healthcare. I like the way you move that in there.

Kim Lynch: Yeah, there you go.

Martin Cody:  If you were to give some guidance to someone who’s been in healthcare for 4 or 5 years and they could be clinical, they could be administrative, they could be at a startup, you’ve been able to recognize the capability and skill of fish or cut bait, you know, get to know fast if you will, type of thing and not squander resources. Lead with empathy. Walk the walk. Talk the talk. What other items would you tell someone? This is how you follow and identify your path.

Kim Lynch: Follow the feeling. Follow your qualitative sense of where the need is, and where your interests are. Like that alignment of like what really lights you up. Plus obviously what the world needs and look into and listen to not only those reactions in yourself, but in your community. I think we’re a little too locked in. This really is a theme that we’re talking about today we’re too locked in still in the last century’s paradigm, I think there is a lot more possibility when folks realize, you know what? Just because that’s how we’ve done it before does not mean that we have to do it this way. I’m seeing so much cool innovation, for example, in direct primary care, and watching employers have these amazing aha moments of investing in their employees really promotes healthy businesses for them, right? Healthy employees, healthy businesses. And like that’s awesome. That’s a really cool thing. That wasn’t happening ten years ago.

Martin Cody: No. And it’s interesting because when you look at it at the surface, it’s like, well, that’s not rocket science.

Kim Lynch: It’s not. But it wasn’t happening before.

Martin Cody: No. Yeah. Because everything was misaligned. And speaking of misalignment, let’s get to the segment of the podcast to where we’re going to play the word association speed round.

Kim Lynch: Oh, fun!

Martin Cody: And I’m going to say a word or phrase and you tell me the first thing that pops into your head. Ready?

Kim Lynch: Okay, sure.

Martin Cody: C.J. Cregg from the West Wing.

Kim Lynch: Oh, she’s so tall and has the best one-liners. If only I could have the C.J. Cregg one-liner machine in my brain. I would be so delighted for. Allison Janney is a national treasure. That’s what I want to say. Allison Janney is a national treasure.

Martin Cody: Awesome. And I can’t believe I remembered her last name but just came to me.

Kim Lynch: Well done. Yeah.

Martin Cody: Thank you. Medicare Advantage.

Kim Lynch: I think relationship status like it’s complicated. I have seen an N of two of really excellent, really well aligned Medicare Advantage plans. That ain’t a great batting average. That’s what I would say. And so do I think that it is completely hopeless. No. But do I think it’s really hard right now to be one of those great, outstanding MA plans, and separate yourself from the cacophony of folks that are not doing the right thing with the resources and are really taking advantage of imperfect design. And I understand it right. Just because it’s legal, though, doesn’t make it right.

Martin Cody: Correct. We see a lot of that.

Kim Lynch: We sure do. We sure do.

Martin Cody: All right. This one seems to be everywhere. Artificial intelligence.

Kim Lynch: Oh, AI think that AI is just the next thing that we’re going to figure out how to use responsibly, and I understand the fear and concern around it. But I’ve also met doctors, and there’s no patient that I know of in the country that isn’t going to prefer a computer over a doctor. And I have seen clinicians using AI and experimenting with AI in really responsible ways that absolutely give them tremendous leverage. So I think where we are really headed with AI is once the panic subsides a bit, we’re going to see clinicians and care delivery that is augmented by AI becoming the next standard of care, but always through the clinician, always through the appropriate use of the tool, just like every other previous new tool that has entered the practice of medicine. Yes, exactly.

Martin Cody: All right. Last question. Anyone in healthcare related, living or deceased, who would Kim want to sit down with and pick their brain for a considerable length of time? Who is it? Who is it? This isn’t like a quick interview. This isn’t like speed dating. You’re going to sit down, you’re going to have some quality time with them. Who is it and what are you drinking?

Kim Lynch: Well, we certainly have to meter the alcohol, but the first thing that comes to mind that I really would love to hear the long-range view is Ted Kennedy and the various negotiations and near-misses of his career in healthcare. And what are we drinking again? We’re going to have to meter it, I think, for me and Ted, but certainly a good scotch. I’m a big fan of Laphroaig or something very smoky in that vein. So I think that would probably go over well. But again, I’m a wandering and out kind of gal thinking that, Ted, I’d have to pace him a little bit to really get through the whole conversation.

Martin Cody: I think you might be correct. Kim, I am thrilled to have this time together. I really appreciate the insight and especially the consistency unplanned of some of the messaging that you have. You know, stay true to your word, be empathetic, walk the walk, talk the talk. Those sorts of things get everything aligned. I mean, those are very powerful things from a wisdom standpoint that a younger generation can say, okay, if I’m going to follow my heart, where am I going to follow my heart and listen to the cues? And it could be anywhere in healthcare because there’s just so much opportunity. So congratulations on everything you’re doing at Metis. How does someone get a hold of you if a doctor is listening or a health system is listening go? We need to help our providers and we need to get more aligned.

Kim Lynch: Oh, that’s incredibly kind. First, I would say I love to listen to the people closest to the work. So I would love to hear your story and am certainly happy to share more about what we’re working on with Metis. But that is really incredibly kind of you to say, and that listening to the people closest to the work for me, whether it has been something absolutely brand new to me in my career or something that I’ve done hundreds of times, that is the advice that I give myself. It is the advice that I give my teams, and it’s the advice I’ve been trying to practice really through 20 years in my career. So it’s pretty simple. And you’re right, it does lead you to all sorts of really good places. So yes, if you’d like to get in touch with us, we are MetisHealthtechnologies.com or get MetisHealth.com and we would love to chat with clinical business owners of any size employers, really anyone who is trying to align interests in the healthcare ecosystem. We want to help you tell that story quantitatively, qualitatively, clinically, and financially, so we can really tell that story of who’s producing better outcomes at predictable costs and really run up the score for everyone.

Martin Cody: I like it, and I think you’re driving to immense value by trying to find and create more time for the provider and certainly more revenue. So those are two very important things to quality of life. Thank you for sharing what you shared. I look forward to the podcast being released soon and seeing what the feedback is. make certain you call or get in touch with Kim at Metis, and she can help your organization as well. Stay tuned for more episodes coming from the Edge of Healthcare. Take care, everyone!

Intro/Outro: 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.