Working Healthcare

A woman wakes at 3 a.m., drenched in sweat and unable to sleep. Her mind feels foggy. Her patience runs thin. Her body no longer feels familiar. She asks for help and too often hears, “That is just menopause.”

In this episode of Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Maryon Stewart, a women’s health advocate and menopause expert, to challenge the silence, confusion and dismissal that surround perime...

A hospital runs on more than white coats and exam rooms. It runs on hidden workflows, clunky communication and quiet decisions that either protect patients or push them into delays and frustration. In this episode of Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Allen Cooper, founder and CEO of ReadyLit, Inc., to explore how smarter operations can heal the system behind the scenes.

Allen enters healthcare as a builder, not ...

Tom Campanella steps into Working Healthcare with a lifetime of battle-tested stories from the front lines of policy, payers and patients. He grew up in the inner city, walked into Cleveland City Council in his 20s and decided politics was not for him, yet he still craved real impact. He carried his law degree, CPA license and master’s in economics into healthcare and never looked back, trading campaign slogans for spreadshee...

We are back! During our brief July hiatus, Working Healthcare re-released four foundational episodes that reshaped how we see American healthcare. We now return with a powerful conversation about the people and forces moving care forward.

In this new episode, a little girl watches her parents practice medicine in Cuba, emigrates to Miami and grows into a fifth-generation physician who refuses to accept a health care system that trea...

When the healthcare system fails kids, classrooms quietly turn into the new emergency rooms. In this re-release of a foundational episode, of Working Healthcare, Meredith Hirsh sits down with Ali Kaufman, founder and CEO of Space of Mind, to explore how education, mental health and family systems collide and how a school can transform into a healing environment instead of another pressure cooker.

Ali shares her journey from a Brande...

Physician burnout rises, administrative burdens pile up and private equity money floods into healthcare, but most doctors still ask one urgent question: “What are my real options?” In this re-release of a foundational episode of Working Healthcare, Meredith Hirsh sits down with Justin Hand, founder and managing director of Westcove Partners, to map those options with clear, pragmatic detail and a sharp eye for legacy.

Ju...

Drug prices soar, patient bills spike and everyone blames Big Pharma, but what if the real power players sit in the shadows behind your pharmacy counter? In the re-release of this foundational episode of Working Healthcare, Meredith Hirsh invites Chuck Melendi, founder of the Disruptive Dialogue podcast and veteran Johnson & Johnson insider, to walk straight into the fire and unpack the truth behind the industry’s most po...

Pharmacy benefit managers sit between your doctor and your drug, yet almost no one understands how they really operate. In this re-release of Episode 5, Meredith Hirsh and guest Alerie Stiles strip away the jargon and expose the vivid, real-world impact of PBMs on patients, physicians and independent practices.

Alerie shares her unconventional path from cold-calling EHR demos to shadowing more than a thousand physicians, then harnes...

Most people think a doctor’s visit ends when they walk out of the exam room. It doesn’t. That visit triggers a maze of prior authorizations, coverage rules, coding decisions and payer tactics that can make or break a medical practice months or even years later.

On this episode of Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Chris Acevedo, CEO of Acevedo Consulting, who grew up watching his mom run practices and...

When Chad Perlyn was four, his parents drove through the night to say goodbye to a baby who was not expected to live. A young pediatric surgeon walked into the waiting room, laid out an impossible choice then walked back out hours later with a smile that meant one thing: the baby survived. That moment set Chad’s life in motion.

On this episode of Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Dr. Chad Perlyn, a pediatr...

At 10 years old, Loubna Noureddin runs from her home in Sierra Leone as gunfire explodes, clutching fear and leaving her teddy bear behind. In the jungle, hungry and exhausted, she follows the smell of barbecue and realizes the feast might be her. Cannibals wait. A stranger who should be the enemy steps in instead and saves her life.

That is where her story of leadership starts. Not in a boardroom. In survival.

On this episode of Wor...

What happens when an industry built on science and data refuses to act on its own evidence? Host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Holley Miller, a veteran health tech strategist whose 40-plus years navigating medical device adoption, robotic surgery and emerging technology has given her a clear-eyed view of why healthcare is structurally designed to protect the status quo even when it underperforms. Holley reframes clinical resistance...

What happens when the people treating trauma are quietly drowning in it themselves? On Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Lindse Murphy, behavioral health executive, board-certified behavior analyst and founding CEO of a statewide nonprofit advancing women in leadership, to explore what it really costs to lead in healthcare without doing what she calls the heart work. Lindse grew up navigating a childhood define...

What happens when the thing that broke you isn't the hard work but everything around it? On Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Dr. Alen Voskanian, physician, author and palliative care specialist, to explore what's really driving burnout in American medicine. Alen arrived in the U.S. at 19 as a refugee with no doctors in his family and no roadmap, just determination. He became a physician, found his calling in u...

If we are insured and spending nearly half a trillion dollars a year on prescription drugs, why are patients still standing at the pharmacy counter being told no? This episode of Working Healthcare follows that money.

Host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Tesh Khullar, founder and CEO of Prism TPO and co-founder of HouseRx who has spent his career inside drug distribution, oncology data and specialty pharmacy. He explains how PBMs, ver...

What if the real problem isn’t that women “can’t handle it,” but that the system never considered them in the first place? On this episode of Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with leadership coach and former chief people officer Sadie Wackett. She spent decades as the only woman at the table in male-dominated industries. Drawing from her experience navigating IVF, international relocation an...

What happens when two physical therapists sitting on their couch realize the entire delivery model for their profession is broken? On Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh talks with Ashok Gupta, Doctor of Physical Therapy and founder of TheraNow, about building a virtual physical therapy platform that now serves major hospital systems across the country. Ashok traces the journey from a website launch that drew zero visitors to a...

Is private equity helping physician practices survive or quietly redefining the future of independent medicine? Host Meredith Hirsh sits down in her Delray Beach podcast studio with Anna Sobkiv, Executive Director, Healthcare Services, J.P. Morgan Commercial Banking, to examine one of the biggest forces reshaping healthcare today. Anna draws on her experience advising physicians and healthcare businesses on growth, acquisition and ...

What separates an entrepreneur from a CEO, and why does that distinction matter in healthcare today? Host Meredith Hirsh talks with RCG Intel co-founder and CEO Joe Luminiello about how leadership must evolve as healthcare companies grow and scale. With more than four decades of biopharma experience, Joe explores the tension between vision and execution, the difference between authority and power, and the risks of misaligned leader...