The Modern Patient Experience

Charlotte Safran, founder of The Partnership Collective, joins the show to discuss her work helping health systems implement the patient and family-centered care model. She discusses what the model is, what it isn't, how it's really a culture change for providers, and how this model can deliver incredible patient experience results to any organization.

Liz Presson is the CEO of Pursuit, a digital consultancy based in Brooklyn, NY. On this episode she shares practical tips for how health systems can better build, design, and engage patients in the patient experience initiatives they launch. She also shares how she dealt with burnout in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Todd Guenzburger, MD, Chief Health Information Officer at Southern Illinois Healthcare, joins the show to discuss a range of digital health topics from why it's important to integrate digital health app prescriptions into the EHR, how taking care of vulnerable populations without good internet access is his mission and passion, and why improving the patient experience depends on taking care of providers too.

Sliced Health CEO Reed Liggin has a history with rural healthcare in America. He grew up in a small town in Georgia, was a hospital pharmacist, and then started two companies to provide affordable technology to under-resourced community hospitals.   He joins the show to talk about his journey, how rural patients have the same expectations and demands as other areas of the country, why speed to value and high ROI matters when adopting technology, and the difference between surviving and thriving for the 2000 or so independent community hospitals in America.   For more on Sliced Health: https://slicedhealth.com

UC Davis Health CEO David Lubarsky, MD, joins the show to discuss his efforts at one of California's largest academic medical centers to not only improve the campus buildings, but also ensure his team has the right roles for this era in time. He's brought on a Chief Wellness Officer, a Chief Diversity Equity and Inclusion Officer, a Chief Digital Health Officer, and even a James Beard-winning chef to ensure that his health system has adapted and changed with the times. 

Josh Liao, MD, has committed his career to improving health care payment and delivery. He works on this mission in several ways, including local system change, scholarship and evaluation, and policy. Health equity is a policy area he passionately advocates for. In this episode, Dr. Liao shares the baseline for what health equity is, why it matters, and how health systems and policy experts need to create new systems in order to make a more equitable care delivery system for all patients. Think of this episode as an intermediate look at health equity. Not quite a 101 course, but certainly not a 400-level one either. 

Terri Meier, director of patient revenue at University California San San Diego Health, discusses her work to transform the patient financial experience at UCSD Health, starting with creating a single billing office, brining revenue cycle back in house after years of outsourcing, and making the customer service reps the highest paying role on the revenue cycle team. 

Jonathan Bush, CEO of Zus Health, and former CEO of athenahealth needs little introduction in the world of health IT. He stops by for a wide-ranging interview about why digital health companies are the shot in the arm patients need, why he started Zus Health to speed up the entire category, what he learned in the years after he was fired at athenahealth in 2018 and starting Zus Health,  and why the existence of paper in healthcare still fills him with rage.

Kevin Holst, chief commercial officer of Groups Recover Together, joins the show to discuss the impact Covid-19 has had on the addiction recovery journey for many patients, why virtual group therapy has allowed many in recovery to stay the course, how Groups works with payers to create lasting outcomes for patients, what it takes to keep 70% of patients in recovery, and why the patients themselves are the biggest source of inspiration for the addiction recovery organization. 

Miguel McInnis, Chief Executive Officer at MetroHealth in Washington, DC, joins the show to discuss why it's scary, humbling, and ultimately beneficial to have patients as members of your board, why something as seemingly simple as fixing your automated phone system can have a big impact on the patient experience, and why the patient isn't always right but it is the job of healthcare organizations to both care for and educate them when they are wrong. 

Jeremy Behling, Chief Operating Officer at Next Level Urgent Care in greater Houston, Texas, joins the show to discuss why urgent care franchises must focus on the entire patient journey to distinguish themselves from competitors, how an operational leaders role is to remove the junk from other teams so that they can better serve patients, and what healthcare can learn from Disney and Lego about creating more wow experiences for patients.

John Shufeldt, MD, an emergency medicine physician by trade and a serial entrepreneur at heart, is an urgent care and telehealth pioneer. In 1993, he founded his first urgent care franchise and helped grow it to 60 locations. In 2010, John sold his urgent care business and started MeMD, a national virtual healthcare platform, which he just sold to Walmart Health in 2021. We discuss John's history of entrepreneurship in healthcare, why improving the patient experience depends on everyone in the industry having that mindset, and how entrepreneurship is really just the ability to recognize and solve problems at scale. 

Stephen Klasko, MD, CEO of Jefferson Health, kicks off the podcast as the first guest. We discuss his vision for Jefferson Health to deliver care anywhere, why he invested $35M into telehealth initiatives back in 2013, and how having a small incubator within Jefferson to develop new apps and solutions has made the health system more patient-friendly.