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About This Episode

The role of CFOs in healthcare has evolved from purely technical to one that requires empathy and active participation in decision-making processes.

In this episode, Kim Hodgkinson, a transformative healthcare seasoned CFO, explains how her passion for numbers led from nuclear physics to healthcare finance. Kim touches upon the evolving role of CFOs, emphasizing the blend of technical expertise and empathetic leadership required in today’s healthcare landscape. She explores challenges like short CFO tenures, the complexity of healthcare systems, and the integration of AI and automation. Kim also emphasizes the significance of mentorship, self-awareness, and overcoming personal adversities, underscoring their role in professional growth. Finally, she highlights innovative solutions, such as pharmacogenetics and e-registration, while also expressing her concerns about AI biases and the need for robust governance are raised, emphasizing caution amidst technological advancements.

Tune in and learn about the intricate balance between finance, technology, and human-centric care in the ever-evolving world of healthcare!

Read the transcript below and subscribe to The Edge of Healthcare on YouTube.

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, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of The Edge of Healthcare: Lessons from Leaders to Use Today. With me on this broadcast is Kim Hodgkinson. Becker’s refers to her as one of the top CFOs you should know. She has had CFO positions basically around the country with organizations PeaceHealth, HSHS, Mount Carmel Health System, numerous Ascension facilities, and now is back at home essentially in Grand Rapids. And I am thrilled to call her a friend and future golf partner, because we both have a love for chasing the dimpled rock. Kim, welcome to the broadcast.

Kim Hodgkinson: Excellent. Thanks for having me today. I’m excited to share some information and wisdom with you.

Martin Cody: I appreciate it and thanks so much for taking some time out. Kim was kind enough to reschedule when I had technical difficulties, so I think that is just one of many earmarks of a great leader that they are able to adjust on the fly, consider it compassion and kind. So I appreciate that. Thanks so much. I want to try, I mean, you’ve you hold CFO roles. Numbers to me have always been I think I’m allergic to them in some way, shape, or form. They don’t fit in my head as well as they should. I’d be curious. You’re from the Grand Rapids or Michigan area. When did you first realized that you had a proclivity and a skill set surrounding finance and numbers?

Kim Hodgkinson: So I think most of it was around numbers and thinking through complex systems, and I was just really good at it and figuring out partial differential wave equations and figuring out the theory behind interactions. And I ended up getting my undergraduate degree in physics, and then I have a master’s in nuclear physics. And then I started to work on my PhD, and I thought, you know what? I never realized what else I could do with this number experience. And so I actually ended up getting an MBA while teaching physics at Western Michigan University. And I got into healthcare by accident. I needed a job in Cadillac, Michigan, and the CFO of the hospital there said, If you can figure out physics, you can figure out healthcare finance. So my acclimation, in a sense, around numbers has really come from that ability to see complex systems and how things interact, like the whack-a-mole effect and being able to predict where the next mole is coming up and really being able to go from A to Z and figure out problems.

Martin Cody: Was there any type of parental influence on the physics side? It seems an obscure area of pursuit.

Kim Hodgkinson: So not too much influence. However, my father and my grandfather were both physicians and they both encouraged me to go to medical school. But I did not like organic chemistry. I felt, why can’t I just use the book? Memorizing it was not, it wasn’t logical to me. And so I couldn’t get past organic chemistry. And so the next logical for me was physics, because it just math and physics came so easy. And so I really, so the influence was science, but it wasn’t in the same direction.

Martin Cody: And then, oddly, I’m really fascinated by the nuclear side of things. Where did that originate?

Kim Hodgkinson: So at Western, so I got my Master’s at Western Michigan, and at that time they only had a master’s program which allowed a deep dive, which was great. And so they had a linear accelerator or it’s not a linear one, and they had an accelerator underneath the grass area outside the physics building. And so there was an accelerator. They had a relationship with the accelerator in Chicago. And the professor I hooked up with, we were talking about Hypernuclear Photoproduction, which if you need some bedtime reading, you can see my article in the Annals of Physics. It’s still out there, but bedtime reading per se. And really, it was the interaction of particles and how one thing interacts and creates something else. And so it was just fascinating to me. And it was a puzzle. And so that’s how I got into nuclear physics. So it was more about the problem-solving.

Martin Cody: And interestingly, particle physics is something that I’ve dabbled into, so I can appreciate the comparison to a puzzle and just figuring out how these things actually all fit and work together and influence each other. And you were able to extrapolate from there similar types of applications in healthcare and healthcare finance?

Kim Hodgkinson: Absolutely. I grew up on the financial planning or the strategic side of finance. And so really, if you were going to make changes in healthcare and you’re going to work around care delivery, what is more complex than taking care of people? Every person is different. Every person has needs. Every community has different needs and structures, and the diversity of our communities and people are different. So you need to understand the impacts and how doing one thing on the west side of a community might impact the east side of a community, or it might impact within the health care delivery system or the verticals that you’re working in. And so just being able to have that critical thinking lends itself not only to healthcare, but under other industries.

Martin Cody: I can certainly see it in healthcare. And you’re right, there’s probably no greater complex role than taking care of the patient because you have not only the clinical aspect of that, but also all of the administrative things behind the scenes that have to occur for that to come off seamlessly, get reimbursed, hopefully, appropriately. What, in your opinion, would be some of the misconceptions of a CFO’s role at a health system?

Kim Hodgkinson: I think one is the characterizing it as the CFO no, NO. Because the CFO is really guarding the resources of the organization, and the CFO is really giving a perspective on the availability of the resources and how those resources should contribute to the overall financial performance aligned with the mission, vision, and values of the organization. And so I think sometimes we get a bad rap of the CFO NO versus K N O W, where we actually do know about the business and we’re just another element helping the business. And so it’s just another piece of information as decisions are made, discernments are done, and it’s aligning. I think the one thing for the CFO that’s really important, whether you’re in Catholic healthcare or academic medicine, what the mission is of the organization, because sometimes you’re going to invest where there’s no return, because the mission is more important than the return. For example, mobile mission in Florida, we had mobile units and we would go down to the fern farms, which is ferns where ferns were farmed, and we would bring healthcare down to those farm workers. And that was important for those communities to keep them healthier versus having them show up in an emergency room department all the time, and it would stress out the industry, it would stress out the communities. And so it’s understanding where the return is necessary and sometimes where it’s not. But I think that CFNO is sometime a misconception on CFOs. We’re just trying to do the best thing for the resources we have.

Martin Cody: And it’s interesting too, because when you look at it in totality, I read an interesting stat in Becker’s recently that mentioned that the average tenure of a CFO in the United States in healthcare is 4.1 years. And when you look at some of the sizes of these institutions, very few hospitals or health systems move quickly. It seems that the CFO’s ability to impart change in an organization is extremely difficult, given the tenure of the role on average, and how long some of these changes require to implement, and then it’s even longer to see the results of these changes. How have you been able to combat that in your experience, or how have you experienced something similar?

Kim Hodgkinson: Absolutely. I think that average tenure, and it goes the gamut is there’s some very tenured CFOs and there’s some that come in for change, and some CFOs are brought in for change. It’s implementing moving companies from holding to operating company, bringing in a skill set. Once the foundation is laid, oftentimes it’s time for a different skill set of the CFO to come in, maybe more traditional, maybe looking at different strengths of focusing in on investments versus, let’s say, accounting. So the CFOs really can come in two ways. They can continue to hone their skills and change and pivot with the organization. Sometimes it’s just coming in and laying the foundation and moving forward, and then the role may change. The CEO may change, the role itself may change. And so I think CFOs have the opportunity, if the pace of the organization will allow them to move faster, to move fast. And with my science background, I tend to move fast. So that’s one of the things I always tell CFOs, You need to make sure the organization can absorb the pace that you want to move. And so sometimes that pace isn’t there as you mentioned, it takes a while. I think during Covid, many organizations learned how to accelerate some of their initiatives. Some of them are slowing down a little bit right now. But I think when you’re looking at tenure, there’s many reasons for different lengths of tenure, including changes in skill set, changes in scope in the role of moving forward.

Martin Cody: And then if you could compare and contrast, when you came into early in your career, the CFO roles and some of the financial responsibilities that you had at some pretty impressive and major institutions compared to what you now know today and have gleaned from others and learned from mentors, probably, I would guess, more on the soft skill side of leadership versus the hard number crunching stuff, what are some of the things you’ve learned that you didn’t know a decade or two ago when you first got started in this?

Kim Hodgkinson: So I think there’s a few things. I think the CFOs, when I first started were more technical roles. They were looked at as, they were the bean counter, they were reporting the numbers, they were rigid, they weren’t real personable, they had teams that sort of reflected that same image. And over the years, it’s changed. They are a member of the team and they are empathetic. They have, they’re really giving back to the community. They’re not saying no, as I referred to earlier, they’re actually looking at how to answer with a yes. They’re also giving the why. And so I think you’re seeing a more empathetic, friendlier, kinder from the external. It doesn’t mean internally they weren’t that way. It was just how the role was out there. And I think they’re also part of decision-making. Before they were just a data point, and now they’re a critical element of the decision-making process because they do have the resources, the best use of the resources in mind for the organization.

Martin Cody: And I can see the evolution of that role, because in the 90s or early 2000s, you can go back to DRGs in the 80s and things of that nature to where tactically they were responsible financially for reporting the numbers, making certain that the organization remains solvent. And now I do see that evolution, where they are part of the strategic team and path forward. So they’re imparting vision and not just necessarily the analytical side of things. Where did you go to develop some of those additional skills beyond your gift for numbers?

Kim Hodgkinson: So I actually had a review early in my career that was a review that everyone in their career would want, and it was great job. We love having you on the team. You’re doing great things. I can’t imagine what we would do without you, but there was a but. And this is where the but was. There are some people who don’t like working with you because you’re aggressive; perhaps you go a little fast; you’re not clinical, so they don’t think you know what you’re talking about, which I understand. And it was a wake-up call for me to say, Okay, how do I work with this other group of individuals in healthcare who are so caring, very smart. And I actually had to learn from that point on. And it wasn’t necessarily my direct supervisor because he didn’t really know what to do either because he loved my work, but he wanted to figure out how I could integrate well and get a super soft, touchy-feely person on one end. And you get me who’s like a driver and how do you bring us to the middle? And so I actually found some mentors and sponsors in the organizations I worked with, some of which are great friends today, who I could bounce things off of. And I think the biggest thing, the starting point is having that self-awareness.

Martin Cody: So now it’s interesting because that brings up a point that seems to be a consistent theme in this podcast with regards to a, overcoming adversity, because that I’m sure during that review process was a little bit of a cold slap of water in the face, so to speak, and caught you off guard. But then you have to have the self-awareness that you just mentioned to be able to say, Okay, what can I do about this? And not go into victim mode, but pursue some solutions, pursue some guidance. And to do that, you have to go outside your comfort zone. How were you able to actually muster up the courage to go out and seek the help?

Kim Hodgkinson: I actually was a little concerned, I was a little fearful, and I felt like my fear was fumble everything and retreat, right? So fear for me was I’m fumbling everything and I just need to retreat and go into myself. I actually personally kind of did that, and I stopped taking care of myself, and I started taking care of everybody else because I wanted to be successful. And I started to, everybody else was my priority, and I actually became a true workaholic. So I gained about 100 pounds, I got sick, I had some complications, I wasn’t sleeping, and during that time I was like, why? I had a revelation when I was fortunate to be in a leadership group with a different employer about self-care, and I actually decided that instead of fumble everything and retreat and just focus and try to please everybody, I was going to face everything and rise. So talking about fear is face everything and rise. And I actually ended up about ten years ago, so this was not too long ago. I ended up losing 100 pounds, putting myself first, so I could best serve others. And actually, by doing that, I actually put myself in a better place to actually work with people, understand people, hear their stories, listen more, be curious. It took me a while, but some of it was my own because I had to take my own path and I didn’t have the people directly around me necessarily that were helpful. So I was always taking my own path, and I fumbled along the way. And I think I’ve done some great work, and I’ve met some great people along the way and had some great impacts. But I have to tell you, it wasn’t without a few war wounds.

Martin Cody: Well, it’s interesting you say that because there’s, the literature and textbooks and authors out there that talk about that journey, if you will, and that struggle. I mean, you look at Mark Devine, Navy Seal, David Goggins, Navy Seal, and the books these guys write, Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is the Way, talking about you don’t go under the obstacle or around; you have to go right through it. And you have to seek out obstacles because on the other side of your comfort zone, that’s where the growth occurs. So if you were to and now you’re a mentor yourself. So give us some two-part question. One I would love to know what you would tell your 23-year-old self today that you now know from a wisdom-imparting guidance. And then two, what are some of the things that you focus in on when you work with others to make certain that they enhance their self-awareness and can be participatory in the journey forward in a healthy perspective?

Kim Hodgkinson: Absolutely. So I reflect a lot on what I would tell my 22-year-old self, still working in school at that point in time, but it’s really about having the energy, both personally and professionally to do your job. And there’s no dumb question … questions. I was one of those kids growing up where I would not ask questions, I would just figure it out on my own. But I learned along the way that if I had a question, somebody else had the same question. So there are no dumb questions. There are just questions you don’t ask. Right? So they said, I would just tell people, Make sure you have your personal self present so that you can take care of your work, the people around you, and you can be balanced. But again, professionally, no dumb question. And then as I work with my mentees, I actually really tell them to look deep and see what their purpose is. Because if your purpose isn’t to take care of people, if your purpose is a of paycheck, there’s different journeys that you’ll be on. And I have a young man I’m mentoring right now. He’s awesome. A little bit older in his career, but really wants to grow. And he loves technology and the aspects around healthcare. And so we’re plotting a course. I’m not telling him what to do. I’m asking him to develop a plan. And we talk about it. And then I give suggestions based on my experiences. So for example, he’s CFO, he’s in an academic medical center, happens to be a fellow in HFMA. And this gentleman just joined HFMA. And I said, You need to reach out to the CFO and talk to him about why he’s a fellow and talk to him about his journey to where he is. And I said, He’s a fellow, he’s going to talk to you. He’s going to invest in you. Don’t be afraid of the title and take the time and reach out because you’re not meeting with him to ask for a job, you’re meeting for him to enrich your journey to find out how his journey happened. So learning about others is one thing I focus in on also.

Martin Cody: And talk about kind of the gratification, it almost is paying at full circle because you relied on mentors and now you are providing wisdom. Is it extremely fulfilling? Is that what ignites you? Talk a little bit about that and why you do it.

Kim Hodgkinson: I do it because I really feel that there’s a gap, and my generation isn’t going to be around for much longer. And how do we start lifting up these individuals who really want to serve in healthcare? Healthcare is a tough field and a lot of people are exiting healthcare. So, how do we continue to ignite their passion? And it doesn’t have to be the numbers. It could be technology, as there was this gentleman that I’m working with. It could be going off into a totally. It could be becoming a nurse. I have a friend that I mentored a little bit and she has now become a nurse. She loves it. She was an accountant. Now she loves taking care of patients. So it’s, for me, it’s satisfying to see people grow, but it’s also helps me grow personally because it requires me to also reflect on where I’m giving my thoughts and sharing my thoughts, because sometimes things that have happened to me were negative. Sometimes they were positive. And so if they were negative to me, could they be positive to someone else? And so it’s actually a two-way street mentoring.

Martin Cody: I agree with you on the difficulties of healthcare. It’s such a very complex, probably overly complex system with perpetual misalignment of incentives, rewards in negative areas. And I’m curious, from a CFO perspective and a visionary leader, if you were running CMS and got to impart some changes, what would you do day one, week one running CMS to improve healthcare?

Kim Hodgkinson: So I think CMS is really the coverage mechanism, right? So I think CMS needs to make it simple. It is so driven by regulatory. They need to make it simple not only for the provider but for the patient. So for the provider, we just need to get paid. How do we get paid? How do we make it simple? How are we not getting a 16% denial rate that we have to work and then get it down to 1%? It’s a lot of administrative burden around how we get paid; all the rules and regulations. So make it simple for the provider to get paid. On the flip side is the patient. I recently went through working. My father passed away last month, and I don’t know how people do it who don’t know how Medicare works. I have a phone a friend, or phone many friends option because I work in healthcare, but I don’t know how people do it when they’re trying to navigate the system, they have a parent who’s deteriorating in health fast. They’re going from assisted living to acute to rehab to skilled care, and they’re bouncing through it at a relatively fast pace. Now, the hospice provider was great; new at flat. That was fabulous. And then, but I think CMS owes it to this population that is going through their next phase of life. They’re vulnerable, and they have children who aren’t ready to deal with Medicare. They just, they haven’t had to deal with it. And so I think the two things I would be looking at make it simple for the provider, but I’d also be looking at how do we make it simple for the patient to access and understand their benefit. So it’s not so hard, which then again is back to making it easy for the provider. So it’s all of that. Make it simple because insurance is very difficult.

Martin Cody: It’s incredibly difficult. And it’s interesting from our vantage point. I just wish CMS would enforce the laws they have on the books. You know, to make it easier for the provider getting paid, they’ve got provider data requirements within no surprises that virtually every payer is now out of compliance for, many health systems are out of compliance for. And these have been on the books for two and a half years. And yet there’s very few financial penalties. I think that would change some behavior. But you talked about underneath the umbrella of innovation in healthcare, and it’s one of the taglines in your LinkedIn profile, Excellence through Innovation. Pull on that thread a little bit. What do you mean by excellence? How are you defining that? And then what do you think of when you think of innovation?

Kim Hodgkinson: Absolutely. So I always look at how do you do things differently, whether it’s using the same tools you have but in a different manner, or do you bring in something new? So, for example, when we were dabbling in population health at one of the health systems I worked at, we were trying to help the providers understand what population health was. So we brought in and did a pilot with pharmacogenetics. We brought in a company, we used the employee health plan. We picked a certain population of the employee health plan that worked, or the employees that worked for us who are on four or more meds, and we had them do the genetic testing to look at how a certain drug would metabolize for them and if they had interactions. And we use the pharmacogenetics. Sorry, I’m stumbling on it. And I worked with a physician on this partner, by the way. So we use the pharmacogenetics study to really inform and help the physicians understand how population health works and how individual it could be. So I would use that as one of the examples of how you bring innovation into the clinical space. Now, if we want to talk about, on the CFO side, the revenue cycle, in the last few roles that I’ve had, we actually put in E-registration into our lower volume emergency rooms. And so on the weekends or after hours, we would train the tech in the emergency room or the RN, depending on how busy they were, to do quick registrations, and then a registration person from another busier ER would finish the registration. So we wouldn’t have to have people on site. So it was just using the technology we have, but changing the process and the workflow in order to be more efficient and use the resources better. And so really looking at how we can streamline our opportunities. But with AI coming in and automation being prevalent, it gives us this whole playing field now of where we can look and start piloting. Now, with caution, I will say in the end, there’s going to be a person that has to sign off on any AI or automation; there’s going to still have to be a person that signs off. So we need to understand what we’re getting ourselves into. But I think we have this big playing field open to us to look at. Where can we actually solve some of our problems?

Martin Cody: And you mentioned two things there, AI, and I’ll come back to AI because I don’t know if anybody knows, but it seems to be in healthcare in a big way. But you talked about the Pop health study with the providers and working with providers in the capacity that I do, I empathize with them, because certainly what you talked about earlier is like, the providers just want to get paid and they want to get paid efficiently, what they’re supposed to get paid, etc.. And you now have payers instituting algorithms to talk about, you mentioned denials, to just deny things because they know they won’t get worked. So there’s a moral obligation that seems to be suffering. But I have this hesitancy to want to put any another task or one more thing for the providers to do because they’re exhausted. And I’m curious, in that Pop health study, how approachable were they or how enthusiastic were they to participate in that? And then what was the outcome?

Kim Hodgkinson: Right. So we actually asked for volunteers so that we got the physicians who are truly interested in the study. And then we actually went to two who were not interested. So we had a total of ten physicians that we were working with on this study. And so we had a couple naysayers, which is always good for the study. And then the rest were champions. The outcome of the study was that we actually moved a lot of these patients onto different medications because they weren’t metabolizing all their medications, so they weren’t giving them the benefit from the combination of drugs that they were taking. And so out of that, we did move a considerable amount. I don’t remember the exact percentage, but it was quite a few different changes in medications. The barrier that did end up having is at the time, the studies were very costly. And so how do you then, with population health, justify that change, that cost for the studies? There were 6 or $700 of study. We didn’t have the patient pay for the study, of course, but how do you incorporate that since insurance isn’t paying for it? It’s going to keep the ER visits down because they’re not having the lack of results from their medications. It’s going to keep their office visits down. And it probably in some cases would keep admissions from happening.

Martin Cody: And were the providers, did they have an eye-opening experience where they thought, Wow, I did not expect that outcome?

Kim Hodgkinson: Yes, they did. They didn’t realize. I think they know, physicians know that drugs interact. It’s sometimes not knowing that two specific drugs in combination when you’re on four-plus medications actually have a null effect.

Martin Cody: And then the AI aspect has so much promise in numerous areas inside medicine and healthcare as a whole. What should we be aware of and looking out for in terms of it maybe having a nefarious impact?

Kim Hodgkinson: That is the biggest concern I think we’re all talking about right now is physician, the AMA is talking about augmented intelligence, which is a great way to phrase it for physicians, because physicians need to be the one taking care of the patients with the augmentation, right? Not taking a complex patient and subjecting them to an algorithm that perhaps is bias. And I think the bias in data even as easy as ChatGPT the other day, I asked it a couple of questions and it came up with a totally wrong answer. I was like, This is a totally wrong answer, and its response was, I don’t have the data to actually create another answer. And I’m like, Okay, that was fun. And more proving that ChatGPT is created by humans. And so it’s not perfect and it does have biases. And I think the other thing is making sure the governance is there in the health systems and anywhere, because as I mentioned earlier, somebody’s going to have to sign off on the use of the AI for the organization, and that governance is so important. AI automation is everywhere. There’s shiny objects bouncing all over the place right now. People think it’s a great thing. I think we’re coming to that cusp where people are maybe settling down a little bit from the frenzy and understanding that what problem are we trying to solve before we go chasing the AI or the automation? And there’s a lot of benefits to it, particularly in the revenue cycle, if we can implement some of those definitely benefits.

Martin Cody: Agreed. I think there’s a great place for it, and it’s going to come down to the stewardship and leadership of the individuals at the organizations who are utilizing it and the problems they’re trying to solve, and then also the ethics and morals of solving that problem. If you’re looking to drive profit, if you’re looking to cut costs, if you’re looking to not all necessarily bad things in and of themselves, because we should always be looking at ways to reduce operational expense and those sorts of things, but not at the expense of patient care, not at the expense of member experience. And that balance is going to require really critical leadership at a phase right now in healthcare, where we’re just at the beginning of AI.

Kim Hodgkinson: Absolutely, I equate it to we’re not quite ready for AI. It’s like the Blu-ray players that came out and we weren’t ready for Blu-ray. Right? And we finally got maybe ready for Blu-ray, but they never really took off. I mean, we have them at my home, but they just never really took off in a way they perhaps should have. I think AI is, it’s been around for a long time. It just hasn’t been as exposed as the tools that we now have today. And there’s a ton of tools. And I think that’s where we have to focus on is what are the right tools and how do we audit those tools, and how do we make sure it doesn’t create bias in the care we’re providing?

Martin Cody: Perfectly stated. Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. I want to bring it back full circle to when I started with the introduction about a future golf partner in you, because we both have a passion for golf. So I’m going to ask the question which is produced some great answers, but I’m going to put it in the context which you and I think can both relate to. So you’re at the 19th hole and you can sit down with anybody for an adult beverage or a libation or an iced tea inside of healthcare that you’ve been longing to talk to, and they could be living or deceased. Who is that person? What are you drinking and what are you talking about?

Kim Hodgkinson: Sure. There’s so many great people that would be, it’d would be a pleasure to have a drink with. I think I’m going to go with my grandfather and I’m going to tell you why. My grandfather, Paul Hodgkinson, was the head of OB-GYN at Henry Ford in Detroit. And he had a patient in 1960 who had breast cancer. And she had a full mastectomy. And he recommended radiation therapy because they had thought she’s only going to live a couple more years. And he recommended radiation. And she lived until 2019. She put an endowment in his name when I was about, I don’t know, late 20s at Henry Ford. And then she left a legacy gift when she passed away. And so he is, has a great chair in his name at Henry Ford. He’s done great things in women’s health. And the reason I would like to sit down with him is primarily because I did talk to him a lot as a teen, as a 20-something, but I never really got to talk to him when I was more mature in my journey in healthcare, and I’d really like to understand what motivated him to care so much about women’s health. He did some pioneering work in women’s health and really understand from a physician’s perspective, someone who is super passionate. And what we’d be drinking, it would be a morning, well, morning brunch. He is a Bloody Mary guy. And so we would be drinking Bloody Mary’s fully decked out with the snack bar on top. So I would really love to spend more time with him as I’ve matured and really understand more about what he experienced and why he cared so much.

Martin Cody: Wow, that would have been a special conversation and I would love to have been a fly on the wall for that one, including the Bloody Mary with the full lunch decked out on top, because those are always a pleasant surprise. Kim, thank you so much for participating and sharing a little bit of your history, especially intriguing and rewarding and gratifying for us is knowing how you’re paying it full circle and helping others find their journey and passion and their self-awareness to overcome obstacles. It’s a difficult industry, but together we can certainly improve it. And so I love what you’re doing. You’re walking the walk and talking the talk and really making a positive influence. Thank you so much and I hope our paths soon cross.

Kim Hodgkinson: All right. Thanks. It was great to spend time with you.

Martin Cody: All right. Take care.

Kim Hodgkinson: Take care.

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.

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