Working Healthcare

“Patient experience” is on every strategic plan, but Herold Figareau treats it like an operating system, not a slogan. In this episode of Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Herold, a former hospital concierge turned health system leader and consultant, to show how a hospitality mindset can transform care in hospitals and outpatient practices alike. They dig into hiring for attitude over experience, mentoring fro...

Alcohol use is dropping, THC products are exploding and American healthcare is not ready for what comes next. In this episode of Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh talks with her son, fermentation science student and winemaker Dalton Hirsh, about why wine has a long, metabolically familiar place in human history while today’s high potency cannabis poses new risks for brains, bodies and hospital systems. Dalton unpacks how poli...

Explore how the next generation of healthcare leaders is taking shape inside and outside the classroom. Host Meredith Hirsh and Neeraj Puro, director of health administration programs at Florida Atlantic University, dive into academic trends and shifting student expectations. They break down the gap between theory and practice, why internships and mentorships matter and how personality and problem-solving skills influence career pa...

Explore how Tara Gillespie rises from medical assistant to CEO as she leads a 17-location independent dermatology practice while staying connected to patient care. She explains how she manages acquisitions, integrates cultures across rural and metropolitan clinics, and builds scalable operations that keep her organization strong in a challenging reimbursement environment. Learn how Tara normalizes the business side of medicine to s...

Tap into Working Healthcare as Meredith Hirsh discovers how Karen Ferguson turns patient stories into policy change. After decades running a rheumatology practice and analytics teams, Karen founded Our Stories Rx to collect, structure and aim patient narratives at the right policy windows. She explains how the project gathers stories and why organized evidence, not anecdotes, changes rules on prior authorizations, nonmedical switch...

Former Congressman and OB-GYN Dr. Michael Burgess joins Working Healthcare for a candid conversation about what’s really happening behind the scenes in American healthcare and what it’ll take to fix it. From ACA subsidies and Medicare reform to PBMs, 340B programs and physician-owned hospitals, Dr. Burgess shares insider insight from both the delivery room and the House floor.

He and host Meredith Hirsh dive into how government shut...

Cut delays on Working Healthcare as host Meredith Hirsh interviews Mallika Khandelwal to expose how prior authorization, pharmacy routing and paperwork stall specialty starts and drain teams. Raised by two physicians and accepted to medical school, Mallika kept deferring before choosing the business side to make a bigger impact. She charts the path from Wall Street to clinic operations and why she founded Squad Health to help speci...

In this Working Healthcare episode, Meredith Hirsh teams up with Ginger Allen, a powerhouse leader redefining physician advocacy, healthcare leadership and medical alliances. Together they flip advocacy from afterthought to engine as Ginger declares 2026 the year clinicians stop burning out and start owning the business of medicine. Forget the 1926 “doctor’s wife” — Ginger is a career-minded builder rebooting state medical alliance...

Start fixing claim denials now on Working Healthcare as Meredith Hirsh presses Corey Feldman to show how they choke care and crush margins. After a medical billing nightmare left his family with nearly $1 million in charges, this solutions-driven entrepreneur and podcaster founded Protego Health and built AI workflows that help billing teams prevent denials and win appeals. Corey opens the payment integrity black box and pinpoints ...

Medicare Open Enrollment runs October 15 to December 7, and this episode sprints past the hype to arm you with clear, actionable guidance on Medicare Advantage. Listen to the latest Working Healthcare episode when Meredith Hirsh sits down with fierce patient advocate and practice administrator Jaime Fiore to dissect glossy extras, narrow networks and the real-world grind of prior authorization denials that can delay drugs, derail s...

Grab a coffee or tequila, whichever suits your mood and the time of day, to join Working Healthcare host Meredith Hirsh in a sit-down interview with Memorial Regional Healthcare vascular surgeon and longtime leader in organized medicine, Dr. Arthur Palamara. The episode starts where we typically finish, posing our final question: If you could create one change in our American healthcare system, what would it be? We unpack how prior...

Join Working Healthcare host Meredith Hirsh for a high-velocity conversation with Elizabeth Chabe, CEO of High Touch Group and author of The Giant’s Ladder. With venture capital cooling and NIH funding uncertain, the episode maps how life sciences and diagnostics startups prove value fast without burning cash. Elizabeth breaks down the rare disease diagnostic odyssey and argues for incentives that reward earlier, accurate detection...

Step into a candid conversation with Working Healthcare host Meredith Hirsh and Florida Atlantic University College of Medicine Professor and Chair Dr. Allison Ferris.  From swelling Match classes to record debt, this episode asks whether a bigger training pipeline means truly practice-ready physicians. Should elite undergrads chase finance while medicine loses talent, or are admissions still rewarding the right qualities to shape ...

Press play as Jon Hickman tells Working Healthcare host Meredith Hirsh how juggling school and college athletics forged his leadership style. Follow Jon's path from all-conference track and field star and college football player to a 16-year career at Walgreens, where he built a foundation in patient care and executive management. Jon’s willingness to always raise his hand for new opportunities propelled him into Big Pharma, w...

Get the inside story as Meredith Hirsh sits down one-on-one with Fran Nachlas, a surgical nurse turned Boca Raton deputy mayor and current mayoral candidate, to explore how local leadership drives community health. Drawing on nearly 30 years in operating rooms, first on the floor then in leadership, Fran brings an outcome-first approach to city problem solving. She brings relentless energy, from seven Boston Marathons and three Iro...

Join Working Healthcare’s Meredith Hirsh and Mike Chavez as they confront the drastic drop in physician-owned practices and the consolidation that drives costs higher. Meet revenue-cycle rebel Preston Alexander, founder of Forward Slash / Health and author of the “Healthcare Breakdown” newsletter, who dubs himself the “Taylor Swift of LinkedIn healthcare writing.” He argues progress comes from three bold levers: legislation; direct...

Hit play to hear how a rock-and-roll project manager became the founder trying to fix everyday healthcare chaos. Join Working Healthcare’s Meredith Hirsh as Steve Lewis recounts Bowe’s premature arrival at 34 weeks and the binder that sparked Nabu, a patient-controlled record built to unite scattered data. We dig into why 80% of information is forgotten between the exam room and the parking lot and how that fog fuels 1.5 million ER...

Tune into this episode of Working Healthcare to learn how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act could reshape rural health care as Meredith Hirsh and Mike Chavez interview policy leader Carly Salamone. With a dozen years in rural hospital care, Carly is now President of Vantage Healthcare of Ohio where is leads policy for several member hospitals. She breaks down the bill’s proposals, its impact on hospital payments and Medicaid, and what...

Hit play to hear how one nurse shattered ceilings on her way to the c-suite. In this episode of Working Healthcare, Meredith Hirsh and Mike Chavez sit down with Heather Woolf, Vice President of Operations at the Hospital for Special Surgery, for a powerful conversation on gender equity in healthcare leadership. Heather shares her bold journey from the bedside to the boardroom, revealing the systemic barriers that still hold women b...