Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders

Kody Kinsley has been called many things—operator, innovator, Medicaid “nerd”—but above all, he’s a fierce advocate for the health and well-being of the populations Medicaid serves. Now a senior advisor at the Milken Institute and recently North Carolina’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kinsley joins Keith Figlioli for a wide-ranging conversation about how Medicaid works, why it matters, and where innovation is reshaping i...

Dr. Ali Khan has spent his career at the intersection of medicine, public policy, and value-based care. He’s also been at the forefront of some of the country's most innovative care delivery models—from Iora Health and CareMore to Oak Street Health and now Aetna, where he serves as Chief Medical Officer of Medicare at Aetna, a CVS Health company. In this episode, Keith Figlioli sits down with Dr. Khan for a conversation about ...

The first two episodes in this Healthcare is Hard podcast series on “Opportunities in Oncology” explored the relationship between academic medical centers and community care, with guests Dr. Stephen Schleicher from Tennessee Oncology, and Dr. Harlan Levine from City of Hope. For the third and final episode in the series, Dr. Daphne Haas-Kogan joined Keith Figlioli for a conversation that dives more deeply into patient care, innovat...

Dr. Harlan Levine began his career practicing internal medicine but soon moved into business leadership roles at national healthcare organizations to help improve the dysfunction with payer-provider relationships that he experienced firsthand as a physician.

At United Health Group, Dr. Levine joined as clinical lead of the team that launched Optum, where he subsequently served as chief medical officer for more than six years. He als...

There’s been a massive gap in oncology where people who have been responsible for a dramatic increase in the standard of care have lacked a solid understanding of the business, payment and policy constructs required to deliver it. Dr. Stephen Schleicher has spent the early part of his career working to fill that gap.

Dr. Schleicher entered medical school with an interest in oncology, anchored by an appreciation for the psy...

Elements of the new Trump administration are coming into focus as announcements of key healthcare appointments and nominations provide indications for what the market can expect starting in January. To dissect the impact these changes might have, Wall Street Analyst Jeff Garro joined Keith Figlioli to wrap up a four-part series of episodes on election implications. Previous episodes featured conversations with JP Morgan’s Lisa Gill...

Healthcare was not a major focus during the 2024 election where other key issues drove most of the discussion. This left a vacuum around specific healthcare policies and what to expect from a second Trump Administration. With few details available and political capital to spend from the ‘red sweep’ this election, healthcare stakeholders are pondering how much of the incoming administration’s preference for disrupting the status quo...

With the White House and Congress up for grabs this election, anticipation in the healthcare industry is high. Shifts in healthcare policy will influence how care is paid for and delivered, which will of course influence the flow of investment dollars in both public and private markets.

During the first episode of a four-part series on election implications, beltway insider Julie Barnes laid out potential scenarios for the direction...

Julie Barnes has made a career helping health plans, tech vendors, investors and others in the healthcare space decipher health policy. She’s a former Hill staffer who earned her law degree and spent a decade in corporate law serving healthcare clients before moving to policy think tanks, business consulting, and founding Maverick Health Policy. At Maverick, she provides strategic advice on federal health policy to private companie...

OSF HealthCare stands as a model health system for those who want to do innovation right. One of the defining characteristics of the Peoria, Illinois-based system is how it aligns innovation with operations for everyone – all 24,000 employees across 159 locations, including 16 hospitals.

Becky Buchen is responsible for driving innovation at OSF HealthCare. As SVP of Innovation Operations she works to engage and educate peo...

With great power comes great responsibility and in healthcare, those words may have never held more meaning than they do with the advent of artificial intelligence. AI most certainly has the power to transform healthcare, and those in the industry working to develop and use it have an immense responsibility to shape principles that ensure these technologies help, not harm.

The Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) was created wit...

Chris Coburn has been driving health system innovation for decades. He is currently chief innovation officer at Mass General Brigham (MGB), the nation’s largest academic research enterprise with over $16 billion in annual revenue, 1.5 million patient visits and more than $2.4 billion in research expenditures. MGB also has a managed care organization, out-patient facilities and community hospitals. 7,000 of its faculty are appointed...

Optum Rx serves more than 62 million people, processes 1.6 billion prescriptions and generates more than $110 billion of revenue annually. Dr. Patrick Conway, CEO of Optum Rx, is the third and final guest in a series of Healthcare is Hard episodes exploring the transformation of the pharmacy business – following conversations with Mark Cuban and Dr. Troyen Brennan.

Dr. Conway brings an expansive view of the healthcare syst...

In the first of a series of episodes exploring opportunities for innovation in the pharmacy space, Mark Cuban offered perspective from an outsider intent on disrupting the status quo. In this, the second episode, Dr. Troyen Brennan gives an insider point-of-view from someone who has studied and worked in the space for decades.

Dr. Brennan was Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health for nearly 14 years, and before that, Chief M...

Mark Cuban built a career disrupting industries and creating new ones. Now, his sights are set on healthcare.

There’s no secret ingredient to Mark’s success. As the world sees very publicly on Shark Tank, his style is the opposite of keeping secrets. It’s based on providing respectful, but direct, honest and unvarnished opinions. He’s bringing that style to healthcare in order to inject what he says the industry is lackin...

In most industries, innovation leads to an improved product or service while ultimately helping to lower cost. Healthcare is the exception. Despite a constant pursuit of new science, technology, operational efficiencies, business models and more, healthcare expenditures in the U.S. have continued to increase for decades with little sign of bending the cost curve downward.

What causes this phenomenon in U.S. healthcare, an...

Through its work with more than 41,000 healthcare facilities and the industry’s largest database of patient feedback, Press Ganey gives organizations the data and insights they need to put the human experience at the center of healthcare.

Since it was founded nearly 40 years ago by Professors Press and Ganey at the University of Notre Dame, the company has built a reputation for being the prominent source of patient feedba...

This is the final episode in a four part series with heads of strategy at providers and payers from across the healthcare ecosystem to explore “the new normal” in a post-COVID operating environment. For this episode Keith Figlioli welcomed Sukanya Soderland, Chief Strategy Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, to explore how a regional payer is adapting. This follows previous episodes that offered a diverse perspectiv...

The previous two episodes of Healthcare is Hard explored the “new normal” from the provider perspective with heads of strategy at an innovative regional health system, OhioHealth, and one of the nation’s largest, CommonSpirit. For the third episode in this series, Keith Figlioli welcomes Humana’s Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer, Dr. Vishal Agrawal, to shift the discussion towards payers and how they’re adjusting to...