The Edge Of Healthcare 2024 Year In Review

Martin Cody: welcome to this special holiday edition of The Edge of Healthcare: Lessons from Leaders to Use Today. I am the host of this podcast, Martin Cody, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Madaket Health. And what an inaugural year it has been. Starting in early March, we sat down with leaders in the healthcare industry, and these leaders could come from just about anywhere within the healthcare. They could come from administration, they could come from technology, and be disruptors. They could be educators. They could be service folks on the front lines, clinicians, if you will. And it could also be aggregators of professional experiences, maybe they’re teaching this now on essentially how to have a flourishing career in healthcare. In this episode, I am going to humbly thank them and also share some snippets of some of the best outtakes or best soundbites, if you will, so it’s a condensed learning opportunity for you and to learn from other leaders. So, if you are either an aspiring C-suite executive, or you’re already there now, or you are a pioneering in the area of technology, and you are working for a disruptive organization in healthcare, this is your episode, because we’re going to consolidate some of the best soundbites and video bites, if you will, from the 9 of the past 20 episodes in this year on The Edge of Healthcare. Sit back and I’ll introduce some of these from all of these pictures that you’re seeing float by of the guests that we’ve had, and we’ve already got five shows slated for 2025. If you know someone that you think, boy, they’d be a good guest on this podcast because they’re smart, they’re intelligent, and they are a leader in healthcare, and they have a lot of wisdom to share, let us know. This is what we’re here for: to make certain we can level up the consciousness, and ability, and expertise of individuals in the healthcare industry because when you are succeeding, it’s a heck of a lot more fun while you’re working. Thanks so much for all your support. Sit back and take a listen to what we accomplished this year.

Martin Cody: As I’ve said, we’ve had an amazing time with 20 guests already on the podcast, and The Edge of Healthcare is just getting started. We can’t thank you enough for the opportunity to bring this wisdom to you, to help you learn, to help you level up your your own skill set and succeed in this extremely challenging industry. We’re looking forward to bringing you more exciting episodes and great content from great leaders in healthcare starting in 2025 on The Edge of Healthcare: lessons from Leaders to Use Today. Thank you so much for all your support. Have a great holiday season!

Martin Cody: Hello and welcome to this special holiday edition of The Edge of Healthcare: Lessons from Leaders to Use Today. I am the host of this podcast, Martin Cody, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Madaket Health. And what an inaugural year it has been. Starting in early March, we sat down with leaders in the healthcare industry, and these leaders could come from just about anywhere within healthcare. They could come from administration, they could come from technology, and be disruptors. They could be educators. They could be service folks on the front lines, clinicians, if you will. And it could also be aggregators of professional experiences, maybe they’re teaching this now on essentially how to have a flourishing career in healthcare. In this episode, I am going to humbly thank them and also share some snippets of some of the best outtakes or best soundbites, if you will, so it’s a condensed learning opportunity for you to learn from other leaders. So, if you are either an aspiring C-suite executive, or you’re already there now, or you are pioneering in the area of technology, and you are working for a disruptive organization in healthcare, this is your episode, because we’re going to consolidate some of the best soundbites and video bites, if you will, from the past 20 episodes in this year on The Edge of Healthcare. Sit back and I’ll introduce some of these from all of these pictures that you’re seeing float by of the guests that we’ve had, and we’ve already got five shows slated for 2025. If you know someone that you think, boy, they’d be a good guest on this podcast because they’re smart, they’re intelligent, they are a leader in healthcare, and they have a lot of wisdom to share, let us know. This is what we’re here for: to make certain we can level up the consciousness, ability, and expertise of individuals in the healthcare industry because when you are succeeding, it’s a heck of a lot more fun while you’re working. Thanks so much for all your support. Sit back and take a listen to what we accomplished this year.

Martin Cody: So, the first snippet I want to share is from Aparna Ananth who joined us from Seattle, and one of the things that we talked a little bit about was ego. And you really can’t be a leader, some would say, without a healthy dose of ego, but what great leaders do is they can check their ego at the door. As the famous instruction dictates us to do, and leverage their ego so that the team around them and the individuals they lead level up. As I said, they succeed because the leader is not looking for all the glory. And one thing that she talks about is that the driver for many people, entering healthcare is a drive to heal. They aren’t looking for the glory and the fame in healthcare. It’s a sharing community. So, take a listen to what Aparna has to say because it’s some wonderful wisdom.

Martin Cody: It’s interesting. I’ve been in healthcare a long, long time. And when you say things like leadership in healthcare, many people today would say that’s oxymoronic. There actually is a lack of leadership in healthcare, and sometimes in business, and sometimes certainly in politics. There seems to be some abrasion in those two concepts about leadership. But I want to get to kind of your upbringing and your path into healthcare.

Aparna Ananth: Ego comes into play when people are thinking about themselves. But one thing I can say about almost everybody in healthcare, I mean, it’s not something you go into because you want name, fame, glory, and money. The driver is usually a desire to serve, a desire to heal, a desire to care for. And if you can tap into that, if you can tap into that common value that pretty much everybody in healthcare shares the community, the patient, the team. Usually, egos fall apart. Even if they made their way into the door, they get set aside.

Martin Cody: One of my favorite episodes was the first episode of the podcast. We invited on Ron Urwongse, who is the proprietor and founder of Defacto Health. Not only did I like this episode for it being the first one for all of its team to listen to and learn a little bit about Defacto and from a healthcare leadership. Ron spent quite a bit of time at CAQH and has a great perspective on what the healthcare industry needs and how to deliver it. He also had some very, very witty and quick answers in our speed round of word association. This is something that we can all benefit from, is just listening to Ron talk about the interconnectivity of healthcare from a data perspective, and why it needs to be streamlined and more robust.

Martin Cody: I’m going to move on to a very fun round. And this is our word association lightning rod. So now, in the famous phrase of every doctor, this is only going to hurt for a bit. I’m just teasing. It won’t hurt at all. So I’m going to say a couple of words or a phrase, and this is speed association. So when I say the word, you tell me the first thing that pops into your mind. We’ll do a test. This is a test. Harvard.

Ron Urwongse: Zuckerberg.

Martin Cody: Okay, good. And I just did that one as a softball because I know you went to MIT, so I knew there would be something coming, which is perfect. All right, so that’s how it’s going to go. I’m going to say a word or a phrase, and you tell me the first thing that pops into your head. Ready? Prior authorization.

Ron Urwongse: Well, API, there’s a new required API for prior authorization.

Martin Cody: PBM.

Ron Urwongse: High costs.

Martin Cody: No Surprises Act.

Ron Urwongse: Fiduciary, responsible party.

Martin Cody: Interesting, all right. Now I know you’re also an avid reader. So, the final question relates to both either reading, food, or dining; completely unrelated, but if you could sit down with a person living or deceased in healthcare and have a meal with them, or a drink with them, who is that person, and what are you eating and drinking?

Ron Urwongse: So, I don’t know if you know the name Eric Bricker.

Martin Cody: This next highlight reel was unknown to me prior to the podcast interview, and if there’s an individual putting out more high-quality, voluminous amounts of content in healthcare, I don’t know who they are. Dr. Eric Bricker is the Energizer Bunny of healthcare-related content. His videos on LinkedIn are some of the most attended and watched healthcare videos, and with good reason. The man delivers value every single time. And I learned a ton just in talking to him and I am now a subscriber to his videos because they just have so much valuable content. Take a little listen to what Dr. Eric brings to the table.

Martin Cody: One of the things I love about healthcare is the many intersecting routes of not only career paths, but just the individuals that you get to meet. And as I was mentioning to you earlier, you know, I was unaware of AHealthcareZ until one of our prior guests, Ron Urwongse, who is the co-founder of Defacto Health, spent a long time at CAQH, mentioned that you were the individual, that he would like to sit down and, you know, chat, shoot the breeze with an adult beverage and kind of get inside your head. I then did a copious amount of research, have since subscribed to AHealthcareZ, and tried to watch as many videos as possible. And I will tell you, the Energizer Bunny couldn’t keep up with the amount of content that you produce.

Dr. Eric Bricker: In healthcare, then the opportunities are infinite. Okay, so if you know, you’re like some people are like, well, I’m a people person. Okay, great. Some people are like, I’m really not a people person. I’m a data person. Okay. Like you name it, you can find a spot in it. Okay, now the question becomes, whatever spot you are in, what’s the right way to approach that spot? And I will tell you my take on that and my take on that is whatever position you have, whether it’s an administration or software development or direct patient care or research. The question you should ask yourself is, is the patient being put first? What can I do to put the patient first in my software? What can I do to put the patient first in my research? What can I do to put the patient first in my revenue cycle management consulting? Because the central problem in healthcare is that the patient is not put first.

Martin Cody: If you could sit down and spend some quality time with someone inside of healthcare, living or deceased, to kind of have some meaningful one-on-one, who would that be, and what are you drinking?

Dr. Eric Bricker: Richard T. Burke, the founder of UnitedHealthcare, and coffee, as you can imagine, it’s my favorite beverage.

Martin Cody: I’m telling you, Dr. Bricker is amazing. And if he is the Energizer bunny of clinical content, if you were to cross him with someone who produces as much content on the marketing and industry side, you would have John Lynn. John Lynn is just amazing from a health IT standpoint. There’s really not a conference around that is noteworthy that he and his organization are not a part of not helping promote, not helping elevate others. And it’s something to behold when someone of this stature and magnitude spends so much time trying to refine their craft, perfect their craft, and actually help others succeed in the industry and marketplace. John Lynn is what it’s all about.

John Lynn: It’s interesting that you say that because, at the end of the day, you know, I’m not a pure healthcare guy for sure. Like, you know, I mean, I live, breathe, eat, and sleep in it every day. So I am like purely devoted to it now. But that’s my passion isn’t necessarily healthcare. My passion is what you said, which is tech can improve many processes, including healthcare. And it turns out in healthcare, there’s a lot of opportunity for technology to improve what we’re doing. And to be fair, tech isn’t always the answer. You know, I’m not a purist or it’s like, well, everything needs to be technology. And no, you choose the right solution. But tech can enable a lot of solutions that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, and that’s what excites me the most.

Martin Cody: I think the implementation of it and full-scale adoption of it is still a ways off, but if you can find little pieces or challenges to slice off and use, it could have amazing success.

John Lynn: I think it’s a simple concept that I see over and over, and everyone that I talk to and everyone I meet with, and this is true on the health IT side. It’s true on the media side; it’s true on the marketing side. And it’s all about the people. It’s about the people that you interact with, the friendships you make, the connections you make. The network that you build is the key to success. It’s the key to success in your career. It’s key to happiness in your career.

Martin Cody: All right. Let’s go to Tina Joros of Veradigm. Every time I speak with Tina, I learn something, and in this episode and some of the snippets we’re going to play for you, I learned that she has a great philosophy on leadership, and it’s something that she shares with the group. And one of the key attributes of leadership, in her eyes, is that you have to be vocal as a leader and as a woman leader. She mentioned something that I thought was unique. You can do anything you want in healthcare. You just can’t do everything you want, so you have to pay attention, lean in and listen and also be very vocal. There’s a ton of other nuggets in this interview. We’ve grabbed a few of them for you, so take a listen to Tina Joros.

Martin Cody: So, as you look at leaders, what are some of the attributes that Tina admires in leadership and believes these are must haves for an effective leader?

Tina Joros: I think in this industry, you’ve got to be open to change. You’ve got to be open to at least understanding the pros and cons of trying new technology, moving into a new direction. And you’ve got to be vocal. You’ve got to advocate for what your providers, your patients, need. Same thing with the vendors; you know, you have to have that voice. So, for example, we participate in the EHRA, an association of 29 different EHRAs, to provide public comments and have dialogue about some of the rules that are coming out. I think it’s important to be good participants in this program by being vocal about the real impact of the rules coming out, what needs clarification, what’s really difficult to achieve, even on the best day, just because of the time for development or the complexity of what they’re asking? So, I think leaders have to be both great advocates for their stakeholders and also vocal. You can’t be quiet. You can’t just sit and accept what’s happening and kind of, you know, just keep up with everything. I think everybody needs to be really active in this industry in order to drive it forward in a way that’s going to make sense and be good for patients and everyone else.

Martin Cody: I do appreciate your perspective on everything that we talked about. And one of my goals is I’d like to see more women in leadership positions at very high levels, because I think the voice that they have is unique to kind of what you talked about earlier. Let’s not just all hear from the same type of voice that we’ve been hearing from for 30 or 40 years, and based upon what we’ve heard today, I would not be surprised in the near future if, in fact, CEO didn’t follow your name.

Tina Joros: I would love that. But, like a lot of women, I balance out my other obligations. And so, for right now, raising really competent, caring teenagers is a priority as well.

Martin Cody: It was also a full-time job.

Tina Joros: I’d love that opportunity someday. But again, I think what I’ve realized being a woman in business is that you can do anything you want, but you can’t do everything you want.

Martin Cody: Another one of my favorite episodes, because it was an area that I knew very little about, was with Ed DeVaney from CVS. You’ve likely heard of CVS. Ed is over and works within a division that has been receiving a considerable amount of attention the PBM area of healthcare, pharmacy benefit management, or manager. And as a result of Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus drugs, this area has gotten a lot of focus. Ed actually pulls the curtain back, if you will, and shares a ton of things as it relates to his philosophy on how to succeed. Try, try, try, and learn, and try and learn. And if you’re failing seven out of ten times, that’s a very, very rich learning environment that you can benefit from. He actually does a pretty good job of sharing some of the wisdom that has helped him get to where he is inside of a Fortune 3 company. Take a listen to Ed DeVaney from CVS.

Martin Cody: I’m curious, looking at Ed’s personal skill attributes, and you know what you fall back on the most, what would you say are your top three skills that have really allowed you to persevere in a very complex industry and rise to the level to where you currently reside?

Ed DeVaney: I highly value the consulting experience I had at Hewitt. Honestly, I think that they were, well, they went public, then they traded, they sold themselves to Aon years and years ago, but I honestly thought when I was hired by them that that was, I would have one employer, and that was it. They were, in my opinion, the absolute best of the best. So that all had to do with it doesn’t make a difference what we at Hewitt want to do. Everything has to do with what your customer wants to do. So we’ve oriented our entire field within CVS Health all around being client-centric, as we might have corporate goals A through Z, but if it’s not aligned to what the customer wants, we need to be able to throw that out and align to strategically what our customers want. So I would say that number one is, to me, it’s all about the customer and how we make sure that they are delighted.

Martin Cody: How has Ed developed a personal resiliency that others could learn from as it relates to rejection?

Ed DeVaney: Well, Martin, I’m an old baseball guy. So, in my head, if I, for every ten times I try something, three works. I view myself as a Hall of Famer.

Martin Cody: I was just going to say that is Hall of Fame material.

Ed DeVaney: And so that’s just built into who I am. And that’s not to say though, when you don’t win there, to me, there are more key learning when you lose than there are when you win. I think when you win, you need to celebrate. When you lose, you really need to go 2 or 3 layers deeper to understand what happened. Why? What part of our process that we stood up worked? What part of the individual personality worked or didn’t work? To me, it’s right or wrong, I think the focus more on the losses, to learn from them and hopefully alleviate them in the future.

Martin Cody: Do you want jaw-dropping inspiration? You need to listen to this next snippet from Ed Marx of Marx Advisors, because Ed was a guest that I was blown away with how much he’s experienced in a short time in healthcare, starting out as an Army medic. Then, he went to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins. From there, he started writing and selling and learning about code-sharing software programs in the operating room so that a surgeon could be across the country and could identify things going on in the patient, and in his particular instance, the patient happened to be his daughter. This is a very inspiring episode, and these snippets will let you know just how gratifying this career can be. Ed says yes to just about everything, and he makes himself accessible. And he is one of the individuals that we should be modeling our behavior after in healthcare. Take a listen to Ed Marx.

Martin Cody: I’m a big fan of hustle because I too was, I was the Bell Curve runner because I was on the other side of the bell curve in school. So there’s always going to be smarter people in the room than me, because I like to find those rooms because I can learn from them. But very few people are ever going to out-hustle me, and I think that will serve anybody well because you may never be the smartest person in the room, but that doesn’t mean you can’t control your effort, which is something we have at our disposal.

Ed Marx: As Zig Ziglar would say, Attitude, not aptitude, determines altitude. And so I thought about that too. It’s that hustle. It’s that attitude of hustle. Yeah, yeah, but I’m ready to move on. Yeah, I just want to throw in that little Zig Ziglar.

Martin Cody: This is a speed game. And if you ever saw the PBS program Inside the Actor’s Studio, they had a great segment at the end where he would ask the same five questions, regardless of who the talent was being interviewed. We switch it around a little bit, but the idea is to just kind of quickly like we this game we used to play as kids, the first thing that pops into your head when I say this, this word or phrase, are you ready?

Ed Marx: I’m ready.

Martin Cody: Cybersecurity.

Ed Marx: Hassle.

Martin Cody: Probably unnecessary hassle, based upon some of the things that have happened in healthcare in the last 45 days. And then, if you could leave, in addition to have a plan, an audience member who is either in healthcare today, maybe struggling to find their way, or someone considering a career in healthcare, what is one success tip or guidance principle that has served you well that you would like to impart in them?

Ed Marx: Yeah. Volunteer at a healthcare organization. So, if you’re thinking about healthcare, you’re not sure, volunteer. And if you work in healthcare, volunteer. I always volunteered every week wherever I’ve been, including my kids. It’ll change your heart. So it’s like taking a shower every day. You know, you need to take a shower every day, and if you volunteer, it’ll change your heart and your perspectives.

Martin Cody: One of my absolute favorite CEO interviews of this year is with James Hereford of Fairview Health Services in Minnesota. Now I forget how many hospitals Fairview has. I think it’s 8 or 9, but James is the CEO, and as they say, the buck stops there. So for all CEOs or folks that want to be CEOs, this is a fantastic episode to learn what the day-to-day operations of a CEO of a large health system like Fairview revolve around, and what you are impacted by, and what you have to do to succeed among them being available 24/7 to the community, learning how to deal with 2 or 3 regulatory agencies that are in your health system at any given time throughout the day or week, and telling you how care should be delivered. And oh, by the way, you have to take care of and respond to hundreds, if not thousands of staff. It’s an excellent episode on the humanitarian aspect of being a servant leader, which is somewhat of a buzzword that seems to have lost its luster because it was overused. Not in James’s case. This is the real deal.

Martin Cody: There seems to be a genuine lack of leadership at very high levels across the healthcare spectrum. And I see the point of care advancements we’ve made in the last 30, 40, 50 years have been unbelievable with regards to interventions, therapeutics, and stuff like that. But on the administrative side, on the reimbursement side, we don’t seem to actually be making the advancements. And I don’t understand if that’s a leadership issue, if that’s a stuck-in-the-status-quo issue, if that is just the way healthcare is, what are your thoughts on that?

James Hereford: Oh, I think it’s probably a little bit of all. I mean, there’s certainly a policy aspect to this of how we’ve kind of envisioned this entire system, right? I do think there’s a leadership issue. I’ve always described, as I was coming up, healthcare was an especially permissive environment, healthcare delivery. You don’t get enough money, put up a new tower, and get more people, right? It was a volume-based business. Now that day has come and gone, you know, and back in, even earlier in my career, it was a cost-plus business. Just add up your costs, hand them to the payer, and say, here. And the payer would just turn around and give it to the commercial, the employer. All that has changed. But I do think it’s created an environment that is fairly permissive in terms of historically not being all that challenged in terms of you’ve got to get better to survive. Well, that’s certainly changed. You have to get better. You’re not going to survive. Now there are every market is different, and every market has, you know, it’s easier in some than harder than others, right? the Twin Cities market is a very efficient market. Our reimbursements are fairly low. So we feel that the absolute necessity to be able to drive improvement, get better, probably more acutely than others. There’s also an element of, you know, I love when people talk about the hospitals are the problem because 50% of the spending is in hospitals, which is absolutely true. But you look at where the margins are. It’s not in hospitals. It’s in all the middle-tier middle players, right? It’s the distribution companies. It’s in medtech. It’s in high tech. It’s in payers that where all the money is made. And that’s the other half of healthcare spending. And we’ve chosen this in, in our particular society to say, you know, not for profit healthcare gets certain tax advantages, but in return has to act like a utility, right? Essentially, you’ve got to be there 7-by-24, got to be available on any given day. I’m going to have 2 or 3 regulatory agencies in my system telling us how care should be delivered. And you have to compete in a free market environment where you don’t have access to capital. You don’t have the same affordances and advantages that either for-profit healthcare has or all these middle-tier players have. So, at the end of the day, I’m not sure it’s a sustainable model, but it does, you know, provide impetus for us to get much, much better, which we have to do. And then it’s also consumerism. I mean, people don’t know if I deliver great technical quality. They know how we make them feel when they show up. And so you have to be, also then provide an experience that people say, yeah, these guys actually care about me, and I trust them because we’re such a trust-based business.

Martin Cody: James Hereford is the magic learning opportunity at the CEO level, I would say. His counterpart at the CFO level is Kim Hodgkinson. Kim has been CFO at some of the most impressive health systems in the United States, from Ascension to HSHS to PeaceHealth in Washington. And a CFO obviously has to execute on all the vision of the CEO and make certain that bills get paid, that the hospital and health system are financially viable. She also has to deliver, in this case with Kim, a level of compassion. It’s not all about numbers. It’s not all about making certain that the columns balance. There’s a humanitarian component as well, and Kim does this extremely well. So, if you have a penchant for numbers, and delivering great information, and not always saying no, this is a great episode for you to watch and learn from Kim Hodgkinson.

Martin Cody: 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 23-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. Ask 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 paycheck, there’s different journeys that you’ll be on.

Martin Cody: As I’ve said, we’ve had an amazing time with 20 guests already on the podcast, and The Edge of Healthcare is just getting started. We can’t thank you enough for the opportunity to bring this wisdom to you, to help you learn, to help you level up your your own skill set and succeed in this extremely challenging industry. We’re looking forward to bringing you more exciting episodes and great content from great leaders in healthcare starting in 2025 on The Edge of Healthcare: lessons from Leaders to Use Today. Thank you so much for all your support. Have a great holiday season!