Podcasts about cvs aetna

Today, we're excited to get to know Dr. Ali Khan, Chief Medical Officer of Aetna Medicare, overseeing healthcare services for over 4 million members. His career spans across some of the most impactful value-based care organizations, including Oak Street Health, CareMore, and Iora Health. He is also an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and serves on the clinical faculty of the Yale School of Medicine. Additionally, Dr. Khan is a director on the American Board of Internal Medicine. Also a trusted advisor on Pear's Health Industry Council.Before Aetna, Dr. Khan played a key role in Oak Street Health's rapid expansion, scaling it from 21 to 200+ clinics, culminating in its acquisition by CVS Health. Prior to that, he was instrumental in CareMore Health's growth and innovation in care delivery for vulnerable populations.He holds an MD-MPP from Virginia Commonwealth University and Harvard Kennedy School, completed his residency at Yale, and has taught at institutions like Northwestern Kellogg and Yale School of Medicine.As a leader in value-based care, he has firsthand experience in building, scaling, and optimizing healthcare startups—making his insights invaluable for founders, investors, and industry leaders navigating the complex world of healthcare innovation.

Saving lives step by step: Puget Sound Heart and Stroke Walk, Sept. 21 and 28.Kami Sutton-Hieronymus started participating in the Heart and Stroke Walk when she was 10 years old and this will be her 26th year at the event. Kami was born a blue baby and had her first operation at 12 hours old where doctors discovered she had serious heart defects. While she started out as a volunteer for the American Heart Association, Kami now works for the organization as a Regional Grassroots Manager for its Government Relations team. American Heart Association volunteers and supporters, as well as heart disease and stroke survivors will participate. This year's Puget Sound Heart and Stroke Walk is sponsored by CVS/Aetna, Delta Dental of Washington, MultiCare Health System and Providence Health Plan.  The American Heart Association and an estimated 6,000 community members will walk at the Puget Sound Heart and Stroke Walk in Seattle and Tacoma. The walk is open to all ages with a one-mile and three-mile options.  Where and When?   Seattle – Saturday, September 21 at Seattle Center by the International Fountain. Festivities start at 7:30 a.m. and walking begins at 9:00 a.m.Tacoma – Saturday, September 28, 2024 at Cheney Stadium. Festivities begin at 8:30 a.m. and walking begins at 10:00 a.m. Register: HERE   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Saving lives step by step: Puget Sound Heart and Stroke Walk, Sept. 21 and 28. Kami Sutton-Hieronymus started participating in the Heart and Stroke Walk when she was 10 years old and this will be her 26th year at the event. Kami was born a blue baby and had her first operation at 12 hours old where doctors discovered she had serious heart defects. While she started out as a volunteer for the American Heart Association, Kami now works for the organization as a Regional Grassroots Manager for its Government Relations team. American Heart Association volunteers and supporters, as well as heart disease and stroke survivors will participate. This year's Puget Sound Heart and Stroke Walk is sponsored by CVS/Aetna, Delta Dental of Washington, MultiCare Health System and Providence Health Plan.   The American Heart Association and an estimated 6,000 community members will walk at the Puget Sound Heart and Stroke Walk in Seattle and Tacoma. The walk is open to all ages with a one-mile and three-mile options.   Where and When?    Seattle – Saturday, September 21 at Seattle Center by the International Fountain. Festivities start at 7:30 a.m. and walking begins at 9:00 a.m. Tacoma – Saturday, September 28, 2024 at Cheney Stadium. Festivities begin at 8:30 a.m. and walking begins at 10:00 a.m.  Register: HERE  

Send us a Text Message.Traditional medical systems frequently focus on treating patients only after their conditions have become severe. This approach often results in worse outcomes and higher costs for patients and providers.Can preventative care models offer a solution?Join us for this week's Health Biz Brief as David E. Williams speaks with Mohamed Diab, President of CVS Accountable Care and Senior Vice President of CVS Health, to explore how value-based accountable care systems could revolutionize patient care by emphasizing prevention and proactive risk management.

Linda Yates The Image Energizer is a highly sought international Keynote Speaker, Leadership Consultant, Executive Coach, Corporate Trainer, Author, Stylist, and Voice-Over Talent. Linda has produced over 300 educational seminars on helping individuals and businesses uncover, realize and accomplish their goals. She has motivated over 12,000 individuals representing Fortune 500 companies throughout North America including CVS/Aetna, Delta, Wells Fargo, Fannie Mae, Microsoft, Johnson Controls, and Office Depot on their internal processes and corporate initiatives. She is also an adjunct instructor at Florida Atlantic University. Her focus in working with individuals and organizations is to teach them how to become profitable in communicating their image. Author of: 6 Steps to ENERGIZE Your Personal Brand Beyond the Clothes Image & Presence Uncover the Possible 12 Steps to Success And Host of the IntHERrupt podcast which focuses on Empowering Women Leaders Linda believes that Nothing Is Impossible! Married to her best friend and mother to three amazing individuals. Linda has run in all 50 states, and grew up barrel racing! What you will learn in this episode: How your face is speaking for you, whether you want it to or not How to align your body to match what you want to communicate Why body language and facial expressions are so important over video How to demonstrate interest and participation during communications What to do to become more aware of your body language Resources: Website: https://lhyatesconsulting.com/ LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhyates/ Facebook Business: https://www.facebook.com/lindahyatesconsulting/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lhyates Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lhyatescoach/

Why is your image so important not only in your career but in life overall? Linda Yates, the Image Energizer, joins us to talk about all things image.  Linda is a dynamic speaker, author, and executive coach and is known for her positive energy and real-world strategies. She has worked with over 10,000 individuals representing Fortune 500 companies including CVS/Aetna, Delta Airlines, Wells Fargo, and Fannie Mae, just to mention a few. Her mission is to inspire, inform, and illustrate how to lead, build teams, and communicate a positive, polished, and professional image. She believes NOTHING is impossible. At 13 years old Linda knew she wanted to focus on image and asked her parents to invest $300 so that she could go to a seminar to learn about image. She knew exactly what she wanted to do. Then life, marriage, the stories we tell ourselves, and her plans changed. So, she left her dream on the table for over 30 years and entered the corporate world. Then as life does, eleven years ago, her dream came back to the forefront, and she circled back to her true passion of helping clients create an image of distinction.The image of distinction is about how you show up, behave, and communicate with yourself and others. She shares with us the importance of the embodied condition which is bringing the result of how you feel with what you wear. During our conversation we share many stories both personal for each of us but also those we have encountered. How what you wear has an impact on how you show up and why what you wear should be reflective of how you want to be perceived. Some research that was conducted with sales professionals measured their results when wearing a particular colour, they liked versus a colour they didn't, and sales went down with the colour they didn't like. Interesting how this impacts not only us but the energy we emit and the impacts on others.We also discuss what not to wear and being highly in tune with your surroundings. You need to think about what your purpose is and who you are meeting with, does it make sense what you are wearing. She shares some great examples of when she moved from the Midwest to Miami.  Linda shares that for women when you are speaking and remove your jacket, you actually lose 50% of your perceived authority.  And lastly, we speak to that internal image and the communication we share. Words matter and powerful words create an emotional response so think carefully when you choose your words. Always look to lift others including yourself.You can find Linda on LI at Linda H Yates. Looking to better understand your own leadership then visit us at www.wilempowered.com and take our free leadership quiz. #imagematters #imageofdistinction #selftalk #imageenergizer #wilempowered #wiltalk

In this episode we talk about a lot of the recent news stories in the industry. We talk about Assurance IQ closing it's doors and what that means to the industry. We also talk about Walmart shutting down their health clinics. Finally we discussed Aetna's massive drop in stock price and CVS Aetna aquiring Hella + Health.

Today, Doug Pike interviews Dr. Arthur Jeske about dental health. Pike also speaks with Sandra Leal, Vice President, Pharmacy Practice, Innovation and Advocacy of CVS Aetna about pharmacists.

Cara McNulty, CVS/Aetna's President of Behavioral Health and Mental Wellbeing joins Carol Daniel discussing the mental health wellbeing for young adults

Jennifer Truscott is Senior Vice President, Cross-Enterprise Strategic Innovation, with Aetna, whose parent company is CVS. Jennifer shares some of the ways in which CVS is centering and investing in health equity, particularly at the local level, by leveraging the strong engagement that CVS has with many underserved communities. Initiatives discussed include investments in specific “Health Zones,” and also in affordable housing. Jennifer also shares her thoughts on the importance of acting locally, and a great health equity read called Take us to a Better Place, RWJFs first book of fiction. With host Dr. Jonathan Silver, Chief Orthopedic Physician Associate, Department of Orthopedics, Kings County Hospital Center, New York, and President, Academy of Doctoral Physician Associates. Resources and initiatives mentioned in this episode: CVS Healthy 2030 Goals: https://www.cvshealth.com/social-responsibility/corporate-social-responsibility/healthy-2030-goals About CVS Health Zones: https://www.cvshealth.com/social-responsibility/health-zones   Take us to a Better Place, RWJFs first book of fiction:  https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2019/11/take-us-to-a-better-place-stories-coming-january-2020.html Excerpt: “At CVS we are concerned about the health disparities in our communities. There are disproportionate rates of illness and death and limited cultural competency among providers and resources. We see ongoing and deep-rooted discrimination and racism…it's those -isms that we just have to uncover and address. And until we have those honest conversations, we are never going to be able to solve them.”  ~ Jennifer Truscott, CVS & Aetna

Please listen as one of our Co Hosts discuss her corporate experience as African American woman in a supervisory role for CVS/Aetna. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/morethantherapy2020/message

What are the BIG questions a BIG healthcare company like CVS Health is trying to answer when it comes to virtual care and creating the healthcare business model of the future? I've got Dr. Creagh Milford, CVS Health's Head of Enterprise Virtual Health, who's purview covers both CVS Pharmacy (9,000+ stores including 1,100 Minute Clinics) and Aetna, which provides health insurance to 39 million people. Creagh's big concern right now: how to weave together existing care models with virtual so 1) the consumer has a single front door and 2) the provider workforce – which includes everyone from pharmacists to primary care docs and beyond – is coordinated and working together. As you'll hear, there's a lot of thinking about “pivot points,” or where the patient and provider meet in the virtual-and-in-person ecosystem. The goal is to make those interactions easy and seamless – for both patient and provider alike – and we get into the strategic thinking, clinical operations, and tech underpinnings that are evolving to make those transitions possible. Long-term, Creagh believes that healthcare consumers have “voted with their fingertips” and that virtual care is here to stay, but as part of a hybrid model in which questions about quality and cost are still being worked out. Will incentives ultimately realign to make virtual care more enticing across the healthcare system? What types of technology will be next to augment the hundreds of thousands of virtual visits a year coming out of Minute Clinic, or happening as part of an Aetna plan benefit? Here's how one of the biggest healthcare companies in the country is driving virtual care forward. Watch now! Jessica DaMassa, the emerging ‘It girl' of health tech interviewing, chats it up with the ‘who's who' of the health tech and healthcare innovation set on 'WTF Health - What's the Future, Health?' Catch 100's of interviews with leading health tech startups and the VC investors, health insurance companies, big pharma co's, and hospital systems helping bring their new ideas into the healthcare establishment. From AI and Big Data to digital health, virtual care, telehealth, digital therapeutics, payment model innovation, and investing, Jessica helps you spot the trends and figure out what's next.

26.5 million Americans are insured by UnitedHealth Group, making it the largest insurance company in the U.S. with a whopping 14.4% market share and $287 billion in revenue last year - that's more than the total income of most countries in Europe! In this episode, we take on this insurance behemoth and how it has systematically rigged our economy and our government - in addition to providing Americans with overpriced, inadequate health coverage. Our guest is Wendell Potter, the former Vice President of Corporate Communications for the health insurance company Cigna. In 2008, he resigned and became one of the industry's most prominent whistleblowers, testifying against corrupt practices in HMOs before the U.S. Senate. Since then, he has become a prominent advocate for Medicare for All and universal healthcare, and authored three books - including Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans - and countless articles. Show Notes Wendell shares the story of his career path, his work for the dark side as a PR executive for the health insurance industry, and his conversion to a Medicare for All activist. Wendell ultimately left the insurance industry after a crisis of faith about his contribution to an unjust system. Wendell helps us dive into one particular evil giant of the health insurance industry: UnitedHealth. We discuss UnitedHealth's huge, rapid growth from a small player into a corporate giant (the fifth largest company in the U.S., right behind CVS/Aetna), primarily through mergers and acquisitions. They are notorius for denying claims and cutting reimbursements to providers. They have not only acquired competitors, they've gobbled up physician practices, clinics, dialysis centers and tech companies. (Incidentally, UnitedHealth also acquired the Lewin Group, a economic analysis firm that did most of the economic feasibility studies of single payer healthcare for state legislatures.) One of UnitedHealth's biggest divisions is Optum, which doesn't sell health insurance, but does include their pharmacy benefit management (PBM) business, as well as data services. This past year was the first year that Optum's contributed more to profits than the health plan business. UnitedHealth is making extraordinary profits. They could use this money to lower costs for policy holders and approve more care, but instead they reward shareholders and buy back shares of their own stock, which inflates earnings per share, benefitting shareholders and top executives. We move on to discuss the political arm of UnitedHealth and their fellow industry giants, and hear about Wendell's front row seat to the industry's efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) the insurance industry's trade association, funnelled $100 million into anti-ACA advertising, PR and lobbying campaigns. UnitedHealth is a founding member of a newer industry front group, the Partnership for America's Healthcare Future, that in the post-Bernie era has been dedicated to killing any single payer (or even public option) legislation at the federal or state level. Anything that threatens their profits, even legislation far short of single payer, is in their crosshairs, branded as "government run" healthcare. The health insurance industry's messaging playbook uses the same arguments no matter what: scare people that single payer will raise their taxes and cost thousands and thousands of health insurance industry jobs. For M4A advocates to effectively message against this, Wendell says to focus on the fact that people will pay less money and have more choice in terms of doctors and facilities. Focus on the barriers health insurance puts up between patients and care: narrow networks, prior authorization, and huge deductibles. Advocates should also villainize the insurance industry in particular, put them on the hot seat,

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series A CISO hears about your company's product from some other CISOs. Eager to find more information like a video demo they could watch on their own, they visit your site. They can't find anything except a prominently placed "Request a Demo" button. Fearing the marketing and salespeople who will hound them if they fill out the information, they just bail. This week's episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and Andy Ellis (@csoandy), operating partner, YL Ventures. Our guest is Jim Routh (@jmrouth1), former CISO for MassMutual and CVS/Aetna. Thanks to our podcast sponsor, Buchanan Technologies Short staffed and overworked IT groups can be overwhelmed by the massive scope of a comprehensive cybersecurity program. Buchanan Technologies makes the complex simple with our twenty-four by seven, customized, vetted strategies that identify risks, detect threats, implement security controls, and protect the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of your data. Discover more. In this episode: Why do vendors put the product demo videos behind gated walls? Tips for improving cybersecurity awareness within a large organization. The annoying pains of the vendor ecosystem. What are some really bad cybersecurity practices that need to be corrected right away?

Finding the Fit | Kevin Browett, CEO of the Michigan Institute for Neurological Disorders, joins host Gregg Garrett to discuss his career journey from being a pharmacist, to controlling over an $18 billion business at the largest retailer in the world, to a multi-time entrepreneur and scale-up leader, to CEO. Of course, Kevin speaks about his top three from the former CEO of CVS who helped him focus on the future, to the owner of the largest Dale Carnegie franchise who taught him to be brave, to a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur who taught him to take the leap on new opportunities, to his grandfather who taught him the value of listening. And you have to hear what he has to say about the role of failure and what that means in driving to the next level. Show Highlights During this episode: Transferring skills in the connecting world [1:20] Welcoming, Kevin Browett [5:14] The “Top Three” Larry Merlo, who helped him stay focused on the future [11:52] Systemic problem solving [17:05] Kevin's Grandfather Joseph, who showcased how to listen to be a great leader [21:23] Ralph Nichols, who taught him how to be brave [27:50] Being mindful as a mentor [33:12] Zaydoon Jawadi, who taught him to take risks on good people [38:26] Michigan Institute of Neurological Disorders (MIND) [43:23] Having a growth mindset for MIND [48:09] You have to hear this… The metaverse and impact of technology [52:45] Join the MIND team! [55:45] Failure drives big learnings [57:33] Stay in touch with Kevin! [58:45] Additional Information Contact Kevin Browett: Kevin's LinkedIn Contact MIND: MIND LinkedIn MIND Website Contact Gregg Garrett: Gregg's LinkedIn Gregg's Twitter Gregg's Bio Contact CGS Advisors: Website LinkedIn Twitter About Kevin Browett Kevin Browett is the Chief Executive Officer of The Michigan Institute for Neurological Disorders. Browett has extensive operations and business development experience with a wide range of industry knowledge. He has led startups, Fortune 500s, and has been a change agent when it comes to the healthcare model. In his role as CEO, Browett is responsible for multiple locations, 25+ providers, MIND's extensive neurology-based service lines including MRI, Infusion, Pain Management, Diagnostic testing, as well as numerous specialty centers dedicated to specific conditions like Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology Disorders, Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders, Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders, and Migraine and Facial Pain conditions to name a few. MIND is a leading neurology practice dedicated to providing the most comprehensive diagnostic, therapeutic, and supportive services to adult patients and their families affected with neurological conditions. In an effort to improve outcomes and quality of life, MIND is one of the few comprehensive private neurological facilities in the country focused on the betterment of our patients through the use of onsite, cutting-edge neuro-diagnostic technology, neuro-imaging, infusion services and medical education and research. Browett sits on the Cranbrook Board of Trustees and serves as a board member for Duquesne University Business School and Oakland University. Sample Career Achievements: Strategic Vision: Evolved 77-year-old newspaper company into media group, restructuring product mix and transforming direction and profitability. Won Newspaper of Year award in 4 of 5 years. Pioneering Startup: Founded successful pharmaceutical distribution company, pioneering enterprise-wide process automation, merchandise mix, staffing, and store layout later adopted by CVS/Aetna. Business Development: Grew pharmacy startup from nothing to 17 stores, 300 staff, and $30M in sales within 24 months. Built entire Peoples Drugs pharmacy operation, setting foundation for acquisition by CVS. Successful Turnarounds: Turned struggling Peoples home health care division into top ROI producer. Transformed Kmart pharmacy operations, growing sales from $700M to $1.6B in 18 months. Innovative Product Development: Developed key strategic sourcing partnerships for Nutra Novus to create innovative, new products, driving sales from $17M to $32M. M&A - Divestitures: Handled multiple mergers for CVS Pharmacy and Peoples Drugs, including acquisitions or divestitures of Rite Aid, and IMASCO.

Let's just start here: As a general construct, insurance carriers have every incentive for health insurance premiums to go up every year. If you're an employer, that is a material fact. Is it counterintuitive? Maybe. Except if you're an employer and your premiums are going up year after year, it begs the question why, every single year, the already-extravagant amount you pay continues to go up way more than the inflation rate. You'd think that if your broker and your plan administrator were so great at their fiduciary responsibility over your self-insured plan that this wouldn't be happening. Oh right, whosever PPO network you're using, they don't have any fiduciary responsibility over your self-insured plan. You do, all you CFOs and CEOs and benefit professionals out there. Wait, I misspoke. Plan administrators do have fiduciary responsibility—to their shareholders. The CEO of CVS/Aetna made $36 million in 2019. He's clearly very good at that job. The rest of them are, too. I'm not singling anyone out here. And also, this podcast is not investment advice. In short, as previously stated, most major insurance carriers and the brokers they pay commissions to have every incentive for your premiums to go up every single year. That's where we're at, folks. It's an open secret, yet so many are just getting so wildly taken advantage of by carriers and brokers whom they have really put their trust in. If you work for a self-insured employer, tell your CFO/CEO to listen to this show. Or if you are a CEO/CFO or a benefits professional in charge of healthcare benefits, welcome. I hope this information is helpful. My guest in this healthcare podcast, David Contorno, has been in the benefits industry longer than he hasn't been in the benefits industry. I think he started working in a benefits brokerage when he was 17 or something. Currently, he's the founder of E Powered Benefits. In this episode, we talk about the keys for self-insured employers that lead to better health for their employees at something like 20% or more lower costs. Here's some of the imperatives for employers that David digs into in this episode: Advanced primary care—really valuing primary care providers who do not work for hospital systems and, therefore, are not subjected to the ball and chain of perverse incentives that David talks about at some length. Getting cost and quality data so you can make prospective choices and not get hit in the back of the head with an after-the-fact “gotcha” in the form of an overpriced bill that you are now obligated to pay. Let me bring up all the articles lately in the New York Times and elsewhere … people paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for something that should cost a fraction of that. Most of them have “good” insurance (keep that in mind) from their employer. Also keep in mind that most of these stories that hit the news are the ones where some poor employee got stuck with a bill—not the metric ton of other examples where the self-insured employer was on the hook. If you're an employer, you can get ahead of these “gotcha” moments. It's textbook risk mitigation if nothing else. Create benefit designs to help employees find and incent them to use the highest-quality providers charging a fair price. Listen to EP334 with Sunita Desai for more on the topic of incenting consumerism. Know how your broker gets paid. If someone is paying your broker a commission and it isn't you, then your broker makes more money when your premiums and rates go up. They are a sales rep getting paid to make someone else money off of you. Get a handle on your pharmacy spend. David gets into some nuances here which are super interesting. You can learn more at epoweredbenefits.com. You can also connect with David on LinkedIn.   David Contorno is founder of E Powered Benefits. As a native of New York, David began his career in the insurance industry at the age of 14 and has since become a leading expert in the realm of employee benefits over the last 22 years. David was Benefits Selling magazine's 2015 Broker of the Year, and in March 2016, Forbes deemed him “one of America's most innovative benefits leaders.” More recently, he received the 2017 Leadership Award at ASCEND, the annual conference of The Association for Insurance Leadership, which recognizes those whose leadership in support of improving the value and performance of employee benefits has significantly advanced the industry. David is a member of the board of directors for both the Charlotte Association of Health Underwriters and HealthReach Community Clinic. He served on the NC Insurance Commissioners Life and Health Agent Advisory Committee, as well as participated in the Technical Advisory Group that helped with the market reforms required under the Affordable Care Act in North Carolina. He is a longtime member of the Lake Norman and South Iredell Chambers of Commerce as well as the National, North Carolina, New York, and Long Island Associations of Health Underwriters. David contributes to numerous publications, including Forbes, Benefits Selling magazine, Business Leader magazine, and Insurance Thought Leadership. David is committed to giving back to his community and actively participates in the membership drive for the United Way, assisting the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, and supporting The Dove House Child Advocacy Center. When he is not working, he enjoys boating and traveling. 04:20 How do you ensure better care for patients? 05:10 “What's required to correct those things is not really a massive degree of intellect or even innovation.” 05:38 What's the road map for self-insured employers who want to take control of their healthcare costs? 10:06 “Higher costs equal more profit and more revenue.” 14:03 “The problem with devalued primary care is … that most people pass over the primary care provider and go right to the specialist.” 19:41 “Every employer should have every broker sign a compensation disclosure form.” 20:06 “If you think there's perverse incentives on the medical side … it gets even worse on the pharmacy side.” 21:01 What changes do employers find when they follow the road map to taking control of their healthcare costs? 21:44 “It's not uncommon for us to reduce total healthcare spend for an employer by between 20% and 40% at the end of the first year.” 22:09 “I can't change [the] outcome without changing the path you walked to get there.” 22:41 “Going self-funded is where the journey starts, not where it ends.” 24:47 “If most employers truly understood how badly these carriers and health systems are taking advantage of them … [it's almost like] Stockholm syndrome.” 27:09 “The only legitimate fear that employers should have is, How do they message these changes … to the employees?” 29:21 “This has to happen, and if it doesn't happen, the system's going to break and … be picked up by entities that are, I think, only going to make the situation worse.” You can learn more at epoweredbenefits.com. You can also connect with David on LinkedIn.   @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits How do you ensure better care for patients? @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “What's required to correct those things is not really a massive degree of intellect or even innovation.” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits What's the road map for self-insured employers who want to take control of their healthcare costs? @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “Higher costs equal more profit and more revenue.” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “The problem with devalued primary care is … that most people pass over the primary care provider and go right to the specialist.” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “Every employer should have every broker sign a compensation disclosure form.” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “If you think there's perverse incentives on the medical side … it gets even worse on the pharmacy side.” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits What changes do employers find when they follow the road map to taking control of their healthcare costs? @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “It's not uncommon for us to reduce total healthcare spend for an employer by between 20% and 40% at the end of the first year.” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “I can't change [the] outcome without changing the path you walked to get there.” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “Going self-funded is where the journey starts, not where it ends.” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “If most employers truly understood how badly these carriers and health systems are taking advantage of them … [it's almost like] Stockholm syndrome.” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “The only legitimate fear that employers should have is, How do they message these changes … to the employees?” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits “This has to happen, and if it doesn't happen, the system's going to break and … be picked up by entities that are, I think, only going to make the situation worse.” @dcontorno discusses #employers and the #medicalindustrialcomplex on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #healthbenefits Recent past interviews: Click a guest's name for their latest RHV episode! Nikki King, Olivia Webb, Brandon Weber, Stacey Richter (INBW30), Brian Klepper (AEE16), Brian Klepper (EP335), Sunita Desai, Care Plans vs Real World (EP333), Dr Tony DiGioia, Al Lewis, John Marchica, Joe Connolly, Marshall Allen, Andrew Eye, Naomi Fried, Dr Rishi Wadhera, Dr Mai Pham, Nicole Bradberry and Kelly Conroy, Lee Lewis, Dr Arshad Rahim, Dr Monica Lypson, Dr Rich Klasco, Dr David Carmouche (AEE15), Christian Milaster, Dr Grace Terrell, Troy Larsgard, Josh LaRosa, Dr David Carmouche (EP316)

In this episode, Chris talks to Tony Clark, Executive Vice President of Supplemental Insurance products for Aetna. They will cover the CVS-Aetna merger, 2022 product offerings, new enrollment technology with auto-underwriting, and upcoming member discounts and resources like the ability to pay your premiums at CVS. For more information about the speaker or topics discussed in this podcast, visit: https://www.carothersinsurance.com/coffeewithchris --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/coffeewithchris/message

CVS Aetna just announced virtual primary care. Could this be an indication that the future of healthcare is virtual? John and David don't seem to agree…with each other.Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/e-eKYLl3B8kVisit us at www.caretalkpodcast.comSubscribe to CareTalk on your favorite podcast service:Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2GTYhbN......Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast......Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0...... #virtualreality #healthcareindustry #healthcarepolicy #health #caretalk

Joining today's episode is R.J. Briscione, Senior Director of Social Determinants of Health Strategy & Execution at CVS | Aetna. In this 30 minute episode, R.J. digs into all of the silver linings he's seen over the last year, including the focus of today's show, Feeding South Florida. R.J. answers questions like: How did Feeding South Florida turn into a double silver lining as a result of the pandemic? What eye-opening moments impacted the future direction of the program? How did member stories impact the next phase of Feeding South Florida initiatives? To connect with R.J.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjbriscione/ To learn more about Feeding South Florida: https://feedingsouthflorida.org/

There's been a dramatic uptick in violent incidents on flights, with airlines reporting 3,000 cases of disruptive passengers since Jan. 1. Reporter John Pletz joins host Amy Guth to discuss how carriers are responding. Plus: Kellogg CEO's Chicago address shows a company's “headquarters" doesn't mean what it used to; CVS/Aetna combo targets Illinois in a new threat to Walgreens and Blue Cross; historic sites group breaks ranks with state officials over Thompson Center; and a Lake Shore Drive name change has been approved by City Council.

 Youtube version https://youtu.be/iCRu-spbzv0 https://www.vaccineparadox.com/​ Kian Xie is passionate about bringing positive, radical changes to healthcare and business, and helping people feel confident and empowered in their personal decisions. Here's how I've done that: Working on the CVS/Aetna merger in 2018, I used data analytics to help a national network of 1100 retail clinics expand their patient care services. I've supported a leading scientific manufacturer in selling products to pharmaceutical companies that help them ensure the safety and quality of drugs and vaccines. I'm a holistic health coach and herbalist, advocating for patients to feel safe and supported in whatever type of healthcare they choose for themselves.

We're kicking off Season 2 of the Leading Analytics Podcast with Bob Darin who holds both an chief analytics officer role and chief data officer role at CVS Health, which recently merged with the insurance giant Aetna. The combination of these two giant companies holds great promise in healthcare to bring together retail and pharmacy operations with health insurance services to produce a powerful end-to-end solution for patients and consumers. Bob shares a few selected approaches to how the data and analytics teams are organized, and specifically the expectations the organization has for the data and analytics capabilities.  The bar is high for advanced technologies like AI at CVS/Aetna, and this episode walks you through the vision and tactics being employed step-by-step.

What if there were a single company that could connect hospital electronic health record systems to a massive genomic testing and analytics platform? It would be a little like Amazon Web Services (AWS) for healthcare—an enabling platform for anyone who wants to deploy precision medicine at scale. That's exactly what Joel Dudley says he's now helping to build at Tempus.When Harry last spoke with Dudley in January 2019, he was a tenured professor of genetics and genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center and director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare. But later that same year, Dudley was lured away to Tempus, founded in 2015 by Eric Lefkofsky, the billionaire co-founder of Groupon. Tempus is building an advanced genomic testing platform to document the specific gene variants present in patients with cancer (and soon other diseases) in order to match them up with the right drugs or clinical trials and help physicians make faster, better treatment decisions. In this week's show, Harry gets Dudley to say more about Tempus's business—and explain why it was an opportunity he couldn’t turn down.You can find more details about this episode, as well as the entire run of MoneyBall Medicine's 50+ episodes, at https://glorikian.com/moneyball-medicine-podcast/Please rate and review MoneyBall Medicine on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:• Launch the “Podcasts” app on your device. If you can’t find this app, swipe all the way to the left on your home screen until you’re on the Search page. Tap the search field at the top and type in “Podcasts.” Apple’s Podcasts app should show up in the search results.• Tap the Podcasts app icon, and after it opens, tap the Search field at the top, or the little magnifying glass icon in the lower right corner.• Type MoneyBall Medicine into the search field and press the Search button.• In the search results, click on the MoneyBall Medicine logo.• On the next page, scroll down until you see the Ratings & Reviews section. Below that, you’ll see five purple stars.• Tap the stars to rate the show.• Scroll down a little farther. You’ll see a purple link saying “Write a Review.”• On the next screen, you’ll see the stars again. You can tap them to leave a rating if you haven’t already.• In the Title field, type a summary for your review.• In the Review field, type your review.• When you’re finished, click Send.• That’s it, you’re done. Thanks!TRANSCRIPTHarry Glorikian: The last time I had Joel Dudley on the show in January 2019, he didn’t sound like a guy who was looking for a new job. At the time, he was a professor of genetics and genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare. He was publishing breakthrough papers on the use of advanced statistics to find unexpected biomarkers for diseases like Alzheimer’s.  And he had a long to-do list of ways he wanted to push his fellow physicians to become more data-driven.But lo and behold, later in 2019 Dudley was lured away from Mount Sinai by Eric Lefkofsky, the billionaire co-founder of Groupon. Lefkosky had started a new company called Tempus, with the goal of creating an advanced genomic testing platform to help oncologists and other physicians make faster, better treatment decisions for their patients. Lefkofsky showed Dudley what the company was doing to document the specific gene variants present in each cancer patient, in order to match them up with the right drugs or clinical trials. And it didn’t take him long to talk Dudley into joining as chief scientific officer.  In our interview, I got Joel to say more about why joining Tempus was an opportunity he couldn’t resist.One cool piece of news that came out right after we talked is that Tempus isn’t just a provider of testing and genomic analysis—it’s now a hardware company too. This year the company plans to release a portable, voice-driven gadget called Tempus One that will allow doctors to interact with Tempus’s genomic reports through natural language inquiries. It’s like Siri or Alexa, but specialized for oncology. I’ll have to get Joel to come back to tell us more about that. But for now, here’s our conversation from early January.Harry Glorikian: Joel, welcome back to the show.Joel Dudley: Thanks for having me back.Harry Glorikian: So, you know, as we were just talking before I hit the record button. It feels like when we last did this, it was almost a lifetime ago. Especially the last few years, it  feels like, every day feels like a month, almost, trying to keep track of everything. But, you know, you were doing something very different the last time we talked to you. You were at Mount Sinai and and now you're, you know, at Tempus. And so let's start there. Like, why the switch and. What are you doing?Joel Dudley: Yeah, I think, like many people, I didn't expect to be at Tempus. I've been here about a little over a year and a half now at Tempus, and I was approached by Eric Lefkofsky, the founder of Tempus, when I was at Mount Sinai. And things were going great at Mount Sinai. I was fully tenured. I had tons of grant funding, cool projects, even startups spinning out of the lab. So I definitely wasn't looking for a job at all. And and I hadn't really heard of Tempus at the time. And I just knew they were kind of out there. And I somewhat heard of him and he approached me about a job. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not looking, you know, and I know Guardent. I know people at all the sort of big precision, Freenome, and precision medicine companies. I mean, I thought, well, if I was going to go, why would go to Tempus. You know, and like, I just, I know everybody else in these other companies. So he's like, just come to Chicago, you know, talk to me and see what's going on.Joel Dudley: And then I looked at the website and I'm like, how the heck is this company worth three billion dollars, you know. $8 billion valuation now. And I'm like, I was being, to be honest, a bit arrogant because I'm thinking I know everybody in this field and I don't know what these guys are doing. Which is a little arrogant, to say that. But it's like sort of like, how could a precision medicine company get to $3 billion without me knowing about it. So at that point, it was almost curiosity at that point that brought me into their headquarters, obviously back when we could fly and travel. And I went I went in there. I'm like, well, I've got some collaborators at Northwestern anyway I've got to meet with. And yeah, I'll just go I'll go see what this tech dude wants. And I was even telling my wife before I left, I'm like, all these tech guys, they, always have the worst health care ideas, like, they have the worst health care ideas. Joel Dudley: So so I'm like I'm like, you know, but that being said, I went and visited Eric at headquarters, Tempus headquarters. I was completely blown away, completely blown away. It was a company like nothing I had ever seen before. And I can get into some specifics on why Tempus was different. But at a high level, it was really the first time. So my background, I'm very much a systems guy. Right. I like to understand everything from multiple systems perspective. Right. And in the molecular world, that means I'm a systems biology guy. I want proteomics. I want genomics. I want the whole thing. So when I look at other companies that were doing targeted DNA panels, I'm like, well, what fun is that? You know? And I know there's a good reason why people do that because of reimbursement and and all that kind of stuff. But it's like, what am I going to learn from DNA? You know, nothing. So that was my bias. And Tempus was the first precision medicine company operating at scale I saw that was totally committed to a multi-scale multimodal data philosophy, which I had never seen before, and was totally committed to this concept that I think you and I get excited about, which is a diagnostics company that was first and foremost a data company, first and foremost. Now, there's a lot of diagnostic companies that paid lip service to being data companies. But when it came down to it, there were all about volumes and margins of their tests. Right. Tempus was the first one that was authentically and seriously and in a big way committed to being a data company first.Joel Dudley: So I was totally blown away and and at first, you know, said there's no way I'm leaving my great job here in Mount Sinai. And I kept thinking about it and I kept thinking about it and I thought, holy cow, these guys are successful. This is going to be massive. I mean, this is going to be bigger than anything I could do at any single academic institution. This is going to be world changing. So anyway, that was a lengthy explanation of why I joined Tempus. It just wouldn't get out of my brain.Harry Glorikian: Well, it's interesting because I remember when you told me, I was like, what? Huh? Like, I was adding up what you were adding up, like all the different things you're doing. And I'm like, he went there? I'm like, I almost was thinking, can I buy stock? If he's going there, I should buy stock. So you know, Eric, before he did, you know, Tempus, obviously, did Groupon and, you know, he's financially successful, I could probably say. But what was his motivation?Joel Dudley: Yeah, he the origin story of Tempus is that Eric's wife had gotten breast cancer and someone of great means, of course, was able to get, have her seen by all the best, literally all the top the top 10 cancer, breast cancer doctors in the country. And what he noticed, being, if you get to know him, he's a very rational, logical guy know, very data driven guy. He noticed very quickly that, you know, first of all, none of the doctors agreed. That data wasn't informing her care, you know, and got a real personal look at sort of the dysfunction, I guess, or let's say missed opportunities to use data in health care that we see we, you and I see. And he decided to do something about it. There's a lot of really admirable things about his personal involvement in Tempus that drew me there. One is he's all in. I mean, he's all in, all in. A thousand percent of his attention is focused on the company. He's got a venture capital firm. He's got Groupon still is in existence and is in, and he is in in a huge way. He's you know, I think every time I've been to that office, I think he's the first one there in the morning. You know, it's just like, in some ways he's sort of like the general that rides the first horse in the battle on this thing. And not only did he not only was in a big way financially, he put a huge amount of his own money into into the endeavor, but his personal investment is, he's fanatical about Tempus.Harry Glorikian: Well, I'm convinced that when you want to change the world, if you're not fanatical, then it's not going to happen. You have to believe it more than anybody else believes it to make it come true.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. One of my favorite stories. I'll just share a quick note and I'll switch was I remember one time we were having a discussion. I can't remember what it was about. A flow cell, after I joined. A flow cell failing or something like that on the sequencer, and Eric I think had asked for which flow cells failed and I had walked by his office attempts and the bitmap images of the flow cells were up on his computer and he was staring at them intently. I have no idea if he even knew what he was looking at. I mean, he does now for sure. But the point was, the point was it was just shocking to me because I'm like, here's the CEO, billionaire CEO of this company, and he's looking at the pixel by pixel at these flow cell images, trying to figure out why they failed. And I thought that was unbelievable. You know, no, no detail is too small.Harry Glorikian: No, you know, I think, you know, you have to be passionate, get involved and want them, you know, I mean, at some point you're at scale and you have to sort of start trusting the people around you. But in the beginning, you know, I think you have to fully be committed. And everybody has to be going with you. Yeah. So and I totally agree on the whole data driven part. I mean, I have given so many talks, especially with a good friend of mine, Jennifer Carter, who was the former CEO of N of 1, where, you know, there's a bunch of doctors where the genomic data is saying one thing and they decide to do another, which boggles my mind why you would do that, because most of the time it doesn't work. But so you guys are at the forefront of genomic data. And I'm sort of imparting words of saying, you're trying to get faster, real time patient care decisions and help physicians make better decisions. Is that, am I summarizing the business?Joel Dudley: Yeah, yeah, that's it. In at a high level, it's obviously to deploy precision medicine at scale. So one of the things we say we're doing a Tempus is building all the boring, boring plumbing that nobody wants to build to actually deliver precision medicine at scale, which includes....So we ingest clinical records for the patients, because we contextualize the reports of the clinical data that we get from the individual patient. So but we work with everything from community, rural community hospitals to sophisticated academic medical centers. So we have this, part of our machine is, we have this interface that can take everything from a direct pull from a Cerner cloud instance all the way to literally people shipping paper to Tempus. But but, you know, basically we've built we built that data abstraction API, if you will, that can take eithr paper or cloud. And it was expensive. It required a lot of people and it cleans up the data. But somebody had to do that, like someone had to build that, the boring plumbing to do that. And and we did it.Harry Glorikian: Well, Flatiron I think, you know, what I've heard is Flatiron has a bunch of people in the back end, like putting things in context right, yesterday versus tomorrow versus, you know, trying to get context, which NLP not very good at. And I got to imagine that Foundation might be doing some of the same sort of stuff. No, not as much?Joel Dudley: Not as much on the clinical data. They're very much focused on the molecular data. The difference, though, between Flatiron and Tempus, though, is that Flatiron bought the EHR which the data was being collected. And so they own that. We take everything, like I said from manila folders to Cerner, to Epic to... Like that was the challenge, that's what makes TEmpus totally different in that we didn't own that that EHR. So it was a bigger challenge. But we also have humans that check all the data because as you mentioned, NLP is imperfect. But the real business, though, if I could make a point, though, is is developing smart diagnostics. Because, the principle being, you know, we all want to bring AI, let's say, to health care. One way to do that is to bring AI into the EHR, which doesn't seem like it's going to happen anytime soon. Like we have a hard time. You know, we barely can get logistic regression to run inside Epic. I don't know. I don't think we're going to, I shouldn't pick on Epic alone. But, you know, it doesn't seem like very sophisticated AI is coming to the EHR anytime soon. Plus, there's sort of a small number of players you have to deal with, you know, to have control over that environment. So that's challenging. You could try to bring the doctors to AI, which doesn't work very well. A lot of companies have failed because they say, oh, we have this beautiful AI machine, this beautiful interface that the doctors would just leave their, you know, standard workflows and just come over to our obviously better system. That feels like 99 percent of the time, right, because doctors don't want to change, physicians don't want to change their workflows. So the idea behind Tempus was more, physicians interact with lab tests all day long. So one step at bringing AI or a Trojan Horse, if you will, is to make the lab test themselves smarter. So a real simple example is, our cancer testing is, e because we pull the clinical data on that patient and the sequencing data, here's a real simple example of something that Tempus can do with a smart test that other people can't, which is if they have a DNA mutation that suggests the patient should go on a certain drug, but we know from their actual clinical records that they tried that drug and failed it, we will dynamically change the report to not put them, not suggest that drug or gray it out or whatever, depending on the version of the report. That's like a brain dead simple example, but most companies can't do that because they're not able to rapidly pull in and structure the patient's clinical data and contextualize the molecular data or the test result with that specific patient's information. So that's the Tempus approach there.Harry Glorikian: Well, not not to not to digress, but I've always said in my talks, I believe that if anything breaks or will break health care, it's the EMR systems being completely, you know, I mean, they're just they're just not where they need to be considering how fast where we want to go to the next level of health care. Right. If we were a tech company, it would have been rewritten, you know, 15 times by now to get us to where we need to go.Joel Dudley: Totally, totally.Harry Glorikian: But you're looking at DNA, you're looking at RNA, you're looking and you're looking at a whole host of 'omics to help drive a positive outcome. I mean, are there concrete examples that you might give in how this is being used and why, you know, why Tempus is compared to everybody else where it is, I would say?Joel Dudley: Yeah, absolutely. So you know what? One of the things that we think about when we get a sample in the door is how much sort of multi-scale data can we generate on the sample without going completely, without being totally insane. Right. So it's like I mean I mean, still being sustainable, let's say. So I'll give you. So what happens today when let's say, by the way, we're expanding outside of cancer, but focusing on cancer for the meantime, when a tumor section comes in to our current lab. So not only do we get sort of the the deep targeted DNA sequencing, we also get normal blood as part of that so we can do tumor normal. A lot of companies don't even do tumor normal. But then, and this is one of the things that really caught my attention, was, we generate full transcriptome on every patient that comes in the door. I mean, that's nuts. I mean, that was nuts that they just decided to as a default on every patient. That's like that's like $800 in extra cost that's not going to be reimbursed. And and even clinicians can barely wrap their heads around RNA today. I mean, it's a super hard time with RNA. I mean, do they like DNA because like the variant's there, or it's not, and the drug gets prescribed or not. But RNA is this analog probabilistic sort of dynamic measure. It gives you all kinds of different types of interpretation that's difficult. But the fact that they committed to that from day one was nuts.Joel Dudley: So then we also have our own pathology lab. So we actually digitize the section and stain and digitize all the tumor sections. We have high quality imaging. And then we pull in the structured clinical data, of course. And then we have an organoid lab actually inside Tempus. So we try to build a patient specific organoid from every every patient we can and bank that for future screen. So we have a huge number of organoids where we have not only the organoid stored and the ability to really expand that but then the patient's actual, you know, in vivo clinical data, molecular data. And you could start to do things like, hey, where you know, if we if we see this pathway in the organoid, it means we're going to see this pathway in the real patient and all that kind of stuff.Joel Dudley: So another interesting thing about Tempus is, we have this new business unit called Algos. And this is something that sounds really obvious when you pointed out and you wonder why nobody else did it. But we go to market with the broadest possible assay. So in a traditional, like, biomarker discovery, you would say, I want to try to find a biomarker of people who respond well to radiotherapy or something like that, prostate radiotherapy or something like that. So I'm going to start with the, people would start with their full transcriptome and then maybe, let's say you find a 10 gene signature that predicts who's going to respond well to radiation therapy. Then the the typical diagnostic company would say, OK, now let's shrink, let's take this 10 signature, let's implement it at Nanostring or PCR or some kind of care platform and and then go to market with that. And Tempus says, well, screw it. Let's go to market with the full transcriptome as our default assay, because then that allows us to digitally layer signatures on top of it. And by default, everybody. So we measure transcriptome now. And maybe five years from now, we find a new signature for drug response. We don't have to remeasure everybody. We just run it digitally, you know, on top of the signature.Harry Glorikian: You know, that was one of the I remember when we were talking about this years ago, I was like, that's what you would want to do. That's why you'd want the data. Right. So you want all of this data so that as time goes on, you don't have to go back and get it again. You've got it. And you just look at it. It's almost like I think about it like topology. I mean, at some point you take the first scan and you start layering things on top to get a better idea of what what is there over time, because, hell, the technology, you know, your insight becomes better over time. Some new piece of information comes in, and you go, oh, let me go back and look at this again. So you guys do that. And then the recommendation is a targeted therapy. I mean, I haven't seen any of the reports, so I'm sort of guessing along here.Joel Dudley: Yeah, we've got we've got a great report that summarizes the patient's clinical history and all the stuff you sort of expect. And then it offers various recommendations also about, of course, clinical trials. So the other thing we have is a huge clinical trial network, which I haven't mentioned yet. A national clinical trial network where we can spin up trials and match patients to trials. That's owned and operated by Tempus. But we can, so it takes the DNA information and RNA information and synthesizes recommendations. And it's going to be up to the doctor. Of course, you know, some doctors like to look at the DNA. Some people like to see where does the DNA and the RNA corroborate each other? You know, is there a PI3 kinase mutation plus activation or deactivations of a PI3 kinase pathway or something like that, and so we present all that information and a pretty, pretty digestible way.Harry Glorikian: So, two questions. A, does the patient ever get something to look at? And B, have you done any stats on success, right, of recommendations and so forth?Joel Dudley: Yeah, we've publishd some papers. We had a paper in Nature Biotech and a couple of, a couple of others that sort of show the value of this additional information and continue to publish, you know, papers. But we've been primarily on the cancer side, primarily physician facing. And, you know, physicians can, of course, give their reports to the patient's physician facing in other disease areas like neuropsych, which we've gotten into. We do have a patient facing digital app that is being tested right now to go more directly to patients, but not yet, and COVID as well. We have a patient facing up. So but that actually will be a bigger part of all the disease areas.Harry Glorikian: You have agreements with tons of institutions coming in. I mean, you and I were at one point sort of throwing this idea of having enough data where you're at that escape velocity of, it sort of stops making sense to go someplace else because the Encyclopedia Britannica is in one place. So where are you guys on that journey?Joel Dudley: Yeah, I think we're, you know, it depends. You could argue it, but I think we're basically approaching escape velocity at this point, where if you look at the trajectory of our data and I don't have the exact numbers handy, but it's a, it's a steep it's a steep line in terms of the number of samples we sequence. I think it's close to 200,000 samples last year or something like that. But but but our RNA, for example, our RNA database alone, I mean, the Cancer Genome Atlas looks like a little baby toy dataset compared to the Tempus's internal dataset. And that's, of course, a massive, I don't know if it's a multibillion dollar, but it's a massive Internet effort among academics. It's a great effort by the way, I'm not knocking the Cancer Genome Atlas, but but by comparison Tempus is able to eclipse that, you know, like you wouldn't believe. And then also have very much richer clinical data associated with those samples and have continuous updates of that data where something like the Cancer Genome Atlas is like this frozen thing that gets updated by an academic consortia every year. So even when we look at the cancer Genome Atlas, which again, I think was a worthwhile investment, and remains a worthwhile investment. But if you just compare those, the growth trajectories and the density and quality of that data side by side, Tempus is just a rocket ship compared to that data sets like that, which used to be like, you know, even Big Pharma would rely on the Cancer Genome Atlas is their sort of discovery data set. But now you'd be kind of insane not to use Tempus, it's just so much bigger.Harry Glorikian: So so that brings me to that next question. Right. So we've got we've got these patient samples. We've got clinical data. You make a recommendation, you can actually recommend a clinical trial. But now the next step comes to me and says, well, but if I have all all those pieces of information, shouldn't I be also looking at drug discovery?Joel Dudley: Yeah. So quick on the trial site. It's worth it. I'd like to point out 'cause we're really proud of this. So we have this thing called the Time Trial Network. It's a national network of I think it's 2,000 oncologists around the country on a common rate sheet, a common IRB. And the whole idea was when we match a patient, instead of a drug company going to, say, an AMC like Dana Farber or something, which, of course is a great institution, and saying, hey, we want to run our X, Y, Z drug trial with you, and all the patients will have to either fly here or drive here every couple of months, if you don't have all the patients here locally, we created this national network. And the idea was rapid site activation of trials. So if a pharma is looking for a certain type of pancreatic cancer patient subset and we match that patient in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or nearby or something like that, just picking a random city, that instead of that person driving into the AMC, an academic medical center that has the trial, or CRO, we spent a trial as close as possible to where that patient lives at one of our partners, whether it's a community hospital or something like that. At the end of the year, don't quote me on this, I think we had, we went from like a patient match to first dose in patient and something like less than 10 days or something like that, because we rapidly activate a single patient trial site.Harry Glorikian: Wow, that's cool.Joel Dudley: It's pretty cool. So it's sort of like a whole ecosystem. Right. So it's not only are we sequencing the patient and finding who are eligible, we can we also have the trial site integrated into our platform.Harry Glorikian: So it it's interesting, you always wonder, like how much how aware our patients that some of these things are. Out there when they need it, right, as opposed to the way that you and I both know the way the system runs, which is, oh, come here so that we can make the dollars as opposed to what what's really going to be the best for the patient?Joel Dudley: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you had asked me a second question that I totally forgot now because I distracted.Harry Glorikian: The drug discovery side of it, making that connection at some point of...Joel Dudley: Yes, it's super valuable data for drug discovery. And that is part of the value proposition of Tempus, of course, to our pharma partners who want to develop therapeutics. So part of Tempus's business is to partner with pharmaceutical companies and assist them in their discovery or biomarker efforts through Tempus's data and platforms. And we have some backend platform technologies for investment targeting our data. We have a platform called Lens for interrogating our data that is produced. Pretty interesting. And then, you know, we have a business called Alpha, which is about spinning out joint ventures around therapeutic discovery from from Tempus's data.Harry Glorikian: Ok, so that's how you if you identify something, you're willing to sort of spin it out at that point and see it come to life.Joel Dudley: Yeah. Yeah. So it's partnering with pharma or partnering with, you know, a joint venture that we're involved in around the data, but per se we don't do the drug discovery internally on the data.Harry Glorikian: You and I love the data and love the AI and machine learning. What gets you super excited? Where do you see the biggest applications of the A.I. and machine learning? Where do you see the biggest opportunities?Joel Dudley: And in no particular order, so a lot of interesting things can be done with machine learning when you have not necessarily orthogonal but multiskale data on the same samples. Right. So I'll give you a concrete example is, we have we have a large histo genomics, we call it program that our AI data science team is working on, where, of course, if we have rich RNA sequencing and rich DNA sequencing plus digital pathology on slides and samples, we can start doing things like calling PDL1 status directly from an H&E stain via deep learning instead of actually sequencing a patient. Because sequencing is great. But but imagine if you could call it the critical markers for a trial via an H&D stain and deep learning, you know, in rural Louisiana, or something like that, where people don't want to pay for sequencing or you just want to be much more capital efficient. So once we once we start collecting all these different dimensions of data, we can start predicting, you know, across all these different dimensions. Right. So what in the rich sequencing data can we predict from images, for example, which is really interesting, because then that cost, you know, nothing practically. But the key up front, you have to collect those those cohesive, coherent data sets of multiple dimensions to train. Once you've trained, it's super valuable.Harry Glorikian: It's interesting because I was having a conversation earlier today about spatial resolution of single cell, but but actually looking at the genomics inside the cell, the expression patterns and looking at that based on geography, let's call it that, for so everybody understands it, but very cool how you could see individual cells lighting up versus, you know, the other cells around them, which would give you an indication of what's being activated, how it's influencing the cells around it, et cetera.Joel Dudley: Yeah, absolutely. And that's an area we're exploring within Tempus, of course, is related to the histo-genomics I mentioned is if we start with a single cell and spatial transcriptomics on tumor cells plus rich imaging, at some point we're going to build up a data set that will give us deep molecular insights from the images alone, once we've built up the single cell and spatial transcriptomics that accompany those those images. So that's one, it's a really useful practical application of AI. Another one that's interesting for us is just getting additional insights out of existing data, which is something I've always enjoyed. But a concrete examples is, we have a big partnership with Geisinger where we've developed a deep learning model that runs on ECG traces. ECG traces are collected for elective surgeries, for physicals. And we're not the only ones necessarily exploring this, but a lot of people are using deep learning models to see if the, because an ECG trace, you could consider an image, basically. Right. And so people are using it episodically to see, like, is there something, that subtle pattern that's not being detected in the episode of care, but we're actually trying to predict things that will happen in the future. And we published some papers on this. But so we're taking a single ECG trace and we're saying, are there hidden signals basically in this ECG trace that will predict if someone is going to get future a-fib, future stroke future, you know, coronary syndrome? And we have a very large data set with Geisinger that we've done in partnership. And we've it's just amazing, like the one year, three year future events you can predict from a single snapshot of an ECG. There you go. Myocardia.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, I like I have my little monitor here, and I, I, I tend to do it every day just just to get some longitudinal data.Joel Dudley: Yeah. Yeah. Alivecor is a great is a great device. Yeah. So a couple of really interesting applications of that. One is, you know, from a population health standpoint, just going through all of the ECGs that have been collected and you can triage people into high risk low risk groups and manage them. But it's also interesting for clinical trials, because if you can predict things in the future from an ECG trace, say, for, like an anticoagulation trial, you can enrich that trial population for events and things like that from a fairly cheap standard device. So I'm interested in, you know, the ability of ML and AI to get additional, squeeze, additional information and utility out of these sort of everyday things that are measured routinely.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, and I think that, I mean, you know, whenever I've seen it, we've always gone from a complicated measurement to figuring out easier modalities to sort of identify that information from. We just didn't have the, maybe the power per se to get it in the first place. So, okay, you guys are in oncology now, you're moving out to cardiology and I think infectious disease and do I dare say neurology, depression and things like that. So why? Like, why wouldn't you just go deep and, you know, crush the space in that one area? Why?Joel Dudley: Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like we are doing fairly well in oncology. But this goes back to why I joined Tempus, which is, I always joke that this is like four different companies. And, you know, it's like it's like Flatiron plus Foundation plus, you know, we don't like to compare ourselves these companies, but like this is early on when I was, because we're actually not like those companies, which I'll explain in a second, but I was like, on the outside, it sounds sort of crazy to say, well, we're like six companies in one. But the difference was, it was built that way from the ground up in an integrated platform, a vertically integrated platform. And that's what makes it powerful. It requires a lot of capital to do that up front. But the vision was pretty interesting. So they built this sort of vertically integrated, very powerful machine to tackle cancer in this like multi-modal, comprehensive way. But they were smart in that they built it in a fairly abstract way so that it could be repurposed for for other diseases. And from day one, that was always the intention. And to me, that was amazing because I'm thinking, well, geez, a company that just tackles cancer alone with this approach is a massive company, you know,, putting on my venture adviser hat. You know, it's like, well, jeez, this is huge because this is like this company plus that company, plus that company all wrapped into one nice, seamless package. That's huge. And then I thought, well, if they replicate this success they're having clearly going to have in cancer in just one other major disease area that is an unprecedented precision medicine company in history. You know, no company would have done what Tempus has done in cancer and a whole other disease area in terms of ushering in this like very large scale multimodal approach, with clinical tests in the market and things like that. So I was like this, I got to join this. This is nuts.Harry Glorikian: Well, it's interesting that you say that, right? I keep trying to explain to people and I guess one of the examples that I've been using lately is something like Ant Financial, right. Where how they started in one area and were able to broaden, based on some very simple capabilities. And now it's 10,000 people managing 1.2 Billion customers. Yeah, you don't do that because of a personal touch. You have to have automation to tackle that. And and I know that you guys have like your robotic systems for sequencing. And I have to believe that that thing doesn't, I always tell people it doesn't care what it ingests. Right. Analytics on the back end may need to be adjusted accordingly. But, you know, that's the power of this data approach as opposed to the way we've done it historically.Joel Dudley: Absolutely. And the way I would describe it, I'm not sure everybody loves this analogy, but I think it's a very accurate analogy, which is, what I saw, and we're doing this, so we built this very sophisticated, vertically integrated infrastructure that connects sequencers to clinical and back, plus data abstraction and clinical data structuring. And so we built that machine and sort of dogfooded it ourselves on cancer and and other things that we continue to sort of dogfood it and use it our use ourselves. But eventually the goal of Tempus is to open this platform up to other people, so the way I what I saw early on was that while Tempus has the chance to become the AWS of precision medicine, basically. We're building all this boring plumbing or connecting hospitals. We're building this, like I mentioned, this API of data abstraction that can connect everything from cloud based EHRs to paper, you know, and everything in between. So at some point we want to open, and we are actually beginning some partnerships where we're opening up Tempus's platform, because if we've invested a billion dollars in that plumbing, then the beauty is, you know, you should is a startup. You don't have to do that now, just like AWS. You know, it's like now three guys in a in a garage to get out their credit card and start Stripe or Shopify or whatever the next big company is. And that was always been the aspiration of Tempus, not only to build this for ourselves, but to build it as an enabling platform for other people who would want to deploy precision medicine at scale, which is, we're actually executing on that vision in a serious way. It was more of an aspiration, I think, when I joined. But now we're full on executing.Harry Glorikian: It's interesting. I mean, I remember you saying that to me, I want to say, last JPMorgan, when we were actually able to travel and sit down with each other. I mean, I talk to other people and I mention Tempus and some people go, who? And other people are who are very knowledgeable are like, well, I don't see what the big deal is. And so it almost seems like. Do you think people know what's there that they can take advantage of?Joel Dudley: I don't think people fully appreciate it. And of course, there's a bunch of things I can't even talk about that are even more exciting that are being cooked up. But you'll be hearing about them soon. I think we'll make a few JP Morgan announcements, but it's sort of the M.O. Actually, one of the things that attracted me to Tempus was our CEO is very much a show don't tell kind of guy, to the point where even some people get frustrated because.. Nobody gets frustrated. But it's like, hey, we're doing all these amazing things and nobody knows about them yet. But but he's 100 percent right in that people will know when we're actually doing, once we're doing the stuff, right. You know, and and that was impressive to me because we're obviously in an area that's overhyped, you know, precision medicine, AI in medicine. And there's a gazillion companies out there doing proof by press release, you know, on all their vaporware. And Tempus is doing real, real stuff that's saving patients lives. And, you know, and they're being very disciplined about it and not overhyping it and just putting in the work. And then in the long run, people will know. I think it's going to be all one of those things, like who's Temples? To, like, Oh, my God, I had no idea, where did this come from.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, and I think your biggest challenge is going to be the last mile, right? I mean, it's like Internet connectivity, right? Well, it's on the street, but how do you get it into the house? And the biggest complaint I always hear from everybody is getting this implemented at an institution is not trivial.Harry Glorikian: I would argue that's what Tempus is mainly solving is that last mile problem. In fact, you know, I don't know how many institutions are connected inti Tempus, but it's well over 100 for sure. And that's a KPI that we're tracking. How much how many institutions we have last mile connectivity into. And that's been just growing up. That was a huge KPI for us the last last year. And it continues to be. But I would argue that's the problem solving, is that last mile, because we are in clinic, in EHRs, have bidirectional data feeds and decision support and a large number of institutions, it's just people don't realize it.Harry Glorikian: Let me ask you to I don't even know if you're still doing this. You were part of the Institute for Next Generation Health Care. I don't know if you're still.Joel Dudley: No, no, no. Not anymore. Harry Glorikian: OK, well, so I'm trying to get you to put your next generation hat on here for a second. And if you're looking at everything that's going on and where this is going, like where do you see the next big leaps coming? Where do you see the next changes coming in how we're going to make a difference for patients and hopefully bring down cost? And how is the technology that you guys are working on where you see it going sort of driving that next level of outcome for patients?Joel Dudley: What I always like we always like to say at Tempus is we don't know, because it's actually it's a very Tempus-y thing, to be humble that way, because we don't know. Like. Well, we all we know is that, you know, we have to build this data set and we need to build these pipes and we need to, like because that will enable whatever the thing is that hits is the next big thing, I mean, clearly, like in cancer and other areas, we've got some clear value propositions and starting in cardio and neuropsych. But I'm convinced if Eric was on this podcast, the first thing he would say is, I don't know. We don't know. We do know that it's going to require huge amounts of data and we're going to, so we're going to collect that data and then hope we figure it out or someone we work with figures out what the next big thing is. But if I put on my my personal hat, I guess I've always been interested in prevention. It's not an area we work in at Tempus a lot, we work with a lot of late stage disease, obviously when you start in cancer, you're starting in some pretty heavy disease area, right. And life and death. But we are getting into cardiology and we're looking at endocrinology, diabetes. We have a big diabetes effort that will be announced soon. And so I think when the stuff we're doing in cancer or when the approaches we're building at Tempus can start to be applied to prevention, I think will be really interesting in terms of moving the needle. And then, you know, in post COVID, we'll see what happens with telemedicine. But right now, we primarily interface with the, and again, I'm speaking personally. I'm not divulging any any strategic roadmap or anything here. But I would imagine at some point if telemedicine continues to go the way it's going, there's no reason a purely virtual telemedicine company could plug into temper's in the same way an academic medical center does. Right. So which I think would would be enabling.Harry Glorikian: Well, I would I would hope that that would be, I mean, if you think about the CVS-Aetna deal, I know that CVS, last year, you guys announced a deal with CVS, if I remember correctly.Joel Dudley: Correct.Joel Dudley: And so I think now that telemedicine has become much more. You know the way to do things, wy would you want somebody going to the ivory tower when you could plug them in through the system and interact with them there? And I mean, there's a huge cost savings. And and from a I mean, time standpoint, it's just more efficient.Joel Dudley: Yeah, yeah, and we spoke with a institution which I don't think I can name at this point, but they had mentioned that during covid they had even spun up a tele-oncology practice, which was surprising to me because oncology is just one of the things where you think what's so complicated, you know, you can't spin up a tele-oncology service. But in fact, they had and and they did extremely well over COVD. And then when you start to think about oncology, well, it's like, OK, I mean, you've got to see your doctor. But then they're saying, well, go get your labs at Quest. Go get your infusion at the infusion clinic, you know. You know, it's not it's not like you have to stay in the doctor's office. And I started thinking about it. I'm like, OK, tele-oncology can work. So, you know, whether we'll see broad, you know, expansion of tele-oncology probably after people see the profits AMC made, or AMC but another health system. But so so yeah. So it could be even in oncology, we see totally virtual services, you know, plugging into something like Tempus.Harry Glorikian: That would be interesting. I always think, like, I'm getting older. So the faster that we move into this new world, the happier that will be. I'll have a better experience, right?Joel Dudley: Absolutely.Harry Glorikian: So knowing the two of us, we could probably talk about this for hours. Right? Especially on the data side. You know, I think I think you're right. There's an under appreciation for where, once you have the data, what the different things you can do with it over time. It's more looked at from the science as opposed to the data side of things.Joel Dudley: Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of people who practice data science and machine learning know this, that it's just, huge amounts of data of high quality data just trump any, you know, sophisticated machine learning methods. What I mean is like choosing between like the latest greatest deep learning or whatever method, versus just having a simpler method with huge amounts of high quality, the high quality part being important, data -- I would take huge amounts of high quality data any day because that's way more enabling than whatever sexy machine learning method is. And it's usually the case that once you have vast amounts of high quality dfairly straightforward statistical modeling methods will yield just amazing insights that come as a virtue of the scale and the quality of that data. And I think that's the lesson I learned at Tempus is that data just trumps all from that perspective. Then I think it's important to point out, because there's a lot of tool-only companies in the field like, "oh, I got, trust me, this deep learning methd is better than that deep learning method. Or It's got this little extra thing. Or this topological method is better than deep learning." I's like, who cares when once you have the volume of data that we have?Harry Glorikian: Yeah. The only place where I would not differ, but say, I think when you've got multiple high quality data sets, then you need a little bit of help making sense of it all, because the human brain was not designed to look at multiple pieces of data coming together and see patterns that it might not normally be able to sort of visualize.Joel Dudley: No, that's absolutely true. And that's the and probably being oversimplifying that, because that's my career, has been multi scale data. It's like machine learning and stuff like that. So I feel like I should, yeah, that's a good point. But huge amounts of high quality data and this multimodal, you know, we always say multimodal, the multimodal aspect is really important because we want different high dimensional measures on the same sample or same individual, if you will. And obviously, longitudinal as a dimension is a very powerful dimension as well.Harry Glorikian: Yep. Yep. No, well, this is something like, you know, I, I talk to people about and Joel, not to sort of build you up, but I mean, there's not many people that have the biological and the data background in one. We haven't I don't I don't believe we've graduated enough of them yet. We're moving in that direction, but not not enough of them yet. So it was great to have you on the show. I'm hoping that we'll actually get together sooner physically rather than later. But I have a feeling we're in this for another four or five more months. Before this thing starts dying down.Joel Dudley: Yeah, probably, when we'll travel back, but it's wild. I was thinking, like I said, I maybe mentioned this last time. I've been at Tempus only like a year and a half and we've added five dollars billion of valuation in that time. But what's really cool about that is not that we're worth $8 billion in valuation because valuations are, you know, whatever, but is that there's a sense within Tempus that we are still a small, scrappy startup just getting started. So like that that's my favorite part about that number, is not that, because I think a lot of companies, if they had an $8 billion valuation they'd be like, "We made we made it. This is great." But Tempus is like, "just completely ignore that. We are just getting started." It doesn't matter to anything we do day to day.Harry Glorikian: Well, I remember when when I was at Applied Biosystems, you know, the valuation was going off the chart because we were doing the genome. Couldn't install machines fast enough. And I remember talking to some of the senior people and saying, okay, well, what are we going to do next? And I remember the gentleman who was taller, way taller than me looking down at me and said, have you seen our stock price like we are? We're killing it. We're performing admirably. And I remember going home and telling my wife, like, I think it's time to sell some stock. Because that is not the right mindset for success.Joel Dudley: Not the right mindset, no. Yeah, it's it's it's very refreshing, you know, that it's that attitude is just, you know, across the board at Tempus, everybody is like, we're just getting started. We're just getting started, heads down, keep cranking. And we really, you know, obviously comes from leadership, but we really block out any distraction that would come from from that type of valuation or whatever, you know. So it's really fantastic leadership on the part of Tempus.Harry Glorikian: Well, one of these days, I hope to to meet Eric, he sounds like an interesting character. But you know, stay stay safe, stay healthy, and, you know, obviously, you and I will constantly continue the conversation in the background, but is great to have you back on the show. And you know what, honestly, huge change from Mount Sinai, I never thought you would leave that place, considering.Joel Dudley: I never thought either. But I enjoy it. It's been, like I said, as I've been recruiting people, I said, you've got to, like I don't care how good your job is now. You've got to get out now. There's like there's this wave where, everybody's going to be riding in the next decade, when I talk to someone like me. You're so well positioned to do it. And you're going to, if you don't get out and just try, you're going to kick yourself in five to 10 years and say, I saw this coming. I saw this big thing coming and I didn't get out.Harry Glorikian: Well, I've been saying, you know, since we since we were doing the genome. I remember telling all my friends, I'm like, "Biology, man biology and where the data is going is where it's going to be." And people were like, "Well, tell me specifically where to put my money." I'm like, look, I'm not, I can't tell you right now specifically. I'm just telling you that that whole area is going to explode. And I think it's just going to, I mean, now we're at a point where it's, the curve is ridiculous. Gene editing stocks. What's happening in the space. I mean. COVID has pulled stuff forward in a way that I could never have imagined.Joel Dudley: Yeah, me either. Yeah. Yeah, it's a huge catalyst. I agree, though. It's amazing. Good good time to to be in the field for sure.Harry Glorikian: Oh, best job in the world. I always tell people.Joel Dudley: Yeah, yeah. Science fiction is a cool business.Harry Glorikian: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to have a little bit of both. Otherwise it gets boring.Joel Dudley: Yeah, exactly. Awesome man.Harry Glorikian: All right. Good to talk and we'll stay in touch.Joel Dudley: All right. Sounds good. Take care man. Good to see you.Harry Glorikian: All right.Harry Glorikian: That’s it for this week’s show.  We’ve made more than 50 episodes of MoneyBall Medicine, and you can find all of them at glorikian dot com forward-slash podcast. You can follow me on Twitter at hglorikian. If you like the show, please do us a favor and leave a rating and review at Apple Podcasts.  Thanks, and we’ll be back soon with our next interview.

In this week’s episode, John talks about the latest bombshell lawsuit filed by 44 states accusing Teva and other generic drugmakers of price fixing. Other briefs include: A house bill introduced to address surprise medical billing. CMS’ guidance designed to eliminate spread pricing. Advent International to acquire AccentCare. Civica Rx announces first two drugs in production. A hearing is set to review CVS-Aetna merger. About Darwin Research Group Darwin Research Group Inc. provides advanced market intelligence and in-depth customer insights to health care executives, with a strategic focus on health care delivery systems and the global shift toward value-based care. Darwin’s client list includes forward-thinking biopharmaceutical and medical device companies, as well as health care providers, private equity, and venture capital firms. The company was founded in 2010 as Darwin Advisory Partners, LLC and is headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz. with a satellite office in Princeton, N.J.

Jennifer Rie, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Analyst for Anti-trust Litigation discusses the latest anti-trust news including Spotify's request for the European Union to investigate Apple for abuse of a dominant position and the Department of Justice's approval of the CVS-Aetna deal. She speaks to Bloomberg's June Grasso.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Jennifer Rie, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Analyst for Anti-trust Litigation discusses the latest anti-trust news including Spotify's request for the European Union to investigate Apple for abuse of a dominant position and the Department of Justice's approval of the CVS-Aetna deal. She speaks to Bloomberg's June Grasso. 

The Wall Street Journal portrays it as causing panic in the streets. I'm taking about the pending acquisition of Aetna by CVS Healthcare. It's stoking fear of the combination of a ubiquitous retail delivery platform, CVS, with the health insurance, managed care, and huge patient database of Aetna.

Mark Keroack, MD, MPH, has been in and around the healthcare industry for most of his life – long before he became President and CEO of Baystate Health, a not-for-profit, integrated healthcare system that serves over 800,000 people in western New England.Most people don’t know that medicine has always been a family business for Dr. Keroack – his mother was a nurse, his father was an “old-fashioned” doctor with an office right in their home, all five Keroack brothers ended up becoming doctors, and he even met his wife in medical school.With this lifelong immersion in healthcare as a foundation, Dr. Keroack has been on the front lines of innovation and digital transformation in the industry. One example is TechSpring, The Baystate Health Technology Innovation Center, which launched under his leadership at BayState in 2014 to bridge the gap between technology innovators and healthcare professionals. As Dr. Keroack describes it, TechSpring lets entrepreneurs get behind the firewall to work with real clinical and claims data, and gives them an opportunity to work collaboratively with physicians to identify and target specific problem areas. Baystate Health is already using a number of innovations that hatched through TechSpring and a few have also gone commercial.In this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders, Keith Figlioli talks to Dr. Keroack about the major shifts occurring in healthcare and how health systems can and are using innovation to adapt. Dr. Keroack offers his insider perspective on a wide range of topics, including:The Importance of “Disciplined Innovation” – there are a lot of ideas being explored to improve healthcare, but where most systems fall down, according to Dr. Keroack, is in their failure to focus and capitalize on the ones that are proven to work. To him, disciplined innovation means going “all in” on the proven ideas and scaling them quickly. Focusing intently on the ideas that work can also help ensure a balanced approach to managing the dichotomy between people in a healthcare organization struggling with change and those who want to adopt new processes and technology as fast as they can. One example Dr. Keroack cites is BayState’s partnership with DispatchHealth, a startup that provides an on-demand, mobile emergency room. DispatchHealth has already made 700 visits around Springfield, Massachusetts and 80 percent of them helped divert patients from making ER visits. With a net promoter score of 95 – a higher NPS than even Apple, Dr. Keroack points out – BayState is working to scale its use of DispatchHealth quickly.The Double-Edged Sword of Integrated Delivery – Private practices are becoming more and more rare, and other than boutique primary care practices in wealthy areas or more niche specialties such as ophthalmology or urology that have a better chance of surviving on their own, that trend will continue according to Dr. Keroack. Some things can get lost in this new reality, such as the entrepreneurial spirit and the intimate, personal touch you get from a small office. But there are also many positive gains. Obsessing about how to design systems of care across specialties and across regions often yields better outcomes, or at least less variable outcomes. To Dr. Keroack, this is one of the great motivations of building an integrated delivery network. Narrowing the Gap to Consumer-Friendly, Tech-Enabled Healthcare. Productive paranoia is a good thing, and amidst new market entrants like Optum, CVS/Aetna, Walmart, Humana and others, Dr. Keroack says he wouldn’t be doing his job without it. These companies have tremendous resources and sophisticated consumer instincts and technology that they’re using to target – and become the front door to healthcare for – a narrow niche of the continuum that traditional systems manage. If they’re successful, it could leave tr

Mergers and acquisitions activity in healthcare ranked third behind energy and media entertainment in terms of total deal volume in the first half of 2018. And from what we can tell, things didn't slow down after that. Of course, you have the big deals like CVS-Aetna, Cigna-Express Scripts, and Amazon-Berkshire Hathaway-JP Morgan. And the much-hyped entrance from tech giants like Apple. But we're also seeing a ton of consolidation in specialty practices, software companies and more. The rise of value-based payment is certainly a factor, but the market is complicated and there are many, less obvious factors at play. On this episode, Amanda Hansen, Vice-President of Strategy and Business Development for AdvancedMD breaks down the M&A activity and industry trends to help us understand what's happening, and why. For more information about this episode, and full show notes, visit: https://thehcbiz.com/ep87-healthcare-consolidation-amanda-hansen   ...   This episode is sponsored by VBP Forward: VBP Forward will host its inaugural conference February 20-21, 2019 in Buffalo, NY. The conference will bring together over 200 professionals who serve Medicaid and Medicare special needs or complex populations or have an interest in that value chain.

Host Dr. Bob Kaiser converses with guest Dr. Rita Numerof, founder and CEO of St. Louis-based Numerof and Associates, about the transition from fee-for-service to market-based models in healthcare. They also discuss healthcare disruptors such as the partnerships between Amazon- JPMorgan Chase-Berkshire Hathaway, CVS-Aetna and Walgreens Humana.

Your disruptive innovation Sherpas are back to discuss how the theory may be playing out in healthcare.  Will Behrmann, Jay Gerhart and Ann Somers Hogg cover a lot of ground on the complex and ever-changing healthcare landscape.  Is disruption truly occurring?  Why does it matter? Do we really want it to occur?  What will it look like?  Weighty questions indeed.  CVS/Aetna, primary care disruptors, health care system talent joining large tech companies, personalized care moving into the home…and Ben performs some Shakespeare.@SherpaPod @WillBehrmann @JayGerhart @annsomerswh @TheBenReport #InnovationEngineHealthcare Innovation: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. By Kenneth Kaufman and Eugene Woods - A Sherpa's Guide to Innovation is a proud member of the Health Podcast Network @HealthPodNet - Support the show (https://healthpodcastnetwork.com/)

Daniel Barchi - Chief Information Officer for New York-Presbyterian joins us to discuss Artificial Intelligence ethics. We also take a look at final preparation for CVS/Aetna and Daniel lays out operationalizing tele-health.

Every week, The American Journal of Managed Care® recaps the top managed care news of the week, and you can now listen to it on our podcast, Managed Care Cast. This week, the top managed care news included the Department of Justice giving the green light for the CVS–Aetna merger; premiums for employer insurance plans are on the rise; and the new North American trade deal includes protections for drug makers that will hurt biosimilars. Read more about the stories in this podcast: Justice Department Clears $68 Billion CVS–Aetna Merger: https://www.ajmc.com/newsroom/justice-department-clears-68-billion-cvsndashaetna-merger Premiums for Employer-Sponsored Family Insurance Increased 5% in 2018: https://www.ajmc.com/focus-of-the-week/premiums-for-employersponsored-family-insurance-increased-5-in-2018 What We're Reading: HealthCare.gov Maintenance; USMCA Drug Exclusivity; Medicare Telemedicine Proposal: https://www.ajmc.com/newsroom/what-were-reading-healthcaregov-maintenance-usmca-drug-exclusivity-medicare-telemedicine-proposal Food Insecurity, Unaffordable Care Linked With Widening Disparities in Cancer Deaths: https://www.ajmc.com/focus-of-the-week/food-insecurity-unaffordable-care-linked-with-widening-disparities-in-cancer-deaths National Association of ACOs Fall 2018: https://www.ajmc.com/conferences/naacos-fall2018

Dow dropped more than 800 pts- CVS/Aetna Merger approved- Haiti Minimum Wage debate.

-DOJ approves CVS-Aetna merger, conditions deal on Medicare prescription drug divestment -FBI Director Christopher Wray: Kavanaugh probe was limited -US foreign arms sales up 33 percent to $55 billion; Obama still holds the all-time record because of 2012 fighter jet sales to Saudi Arabia -RBG puts a stop to Wilbur Ross deposition, in lawsuit over Commerce Secretary’s lies about a Census citizenship question To listen to the full District Sentinel Radio episode, airing Monday - Thursday, subscribe at Patreon.com/DistrictSentinel.

Motion: Retail Alliances – Not Washington – Will Save the U.S. Health Care System Last year, Intelligence Squared U.S. and the Mayo Clinic brought to the stage a bold inquiry about whether health care in the United States is terminally broken. And this year, we’re picking up where that discussion left off, against the backdrop of corporate behemoths announcing mergers that, they say, are sure to shake up health care – from the Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase venture, to the CVS-Aetna deal, to the Humana-Walgreens partnership, and more. But while these superpower alliances are making a splash in the headlines, will they actually be able to disrupt, and save, U.S. health care? Proponents argue that the bargaining power and data competencies of these retailers will squeeze middlemen out of an inefficient supply chain and bring more transparency to health care pricing. But others argue that the promise of these novel efforts is overstated or misguided, particularly because U.S. health care is so complex and deeply rooted. Will consumer-focused models and employer-led initiatives lead to better and less expensive outcomes? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Trump administration is sending mixed signals to health insurers, pushing controversial changes to the ACA markets while giving big pay bumps in Medicare Advantage. Meanwhile, companies like UnitedHealth, Walmart and even Amazon are circling deals that could shake up the industry. To make sense of this moment, this week’s PULSE CHECK features John Gorman, the head of the Gorman Health Group — one of Washington’s most thoughtful experts on the health care industry and government health programs. John sits down with POLITICO’s Dan Diamond to discuss why he left government to open his own consulting firm (starts at the 1:25 mark), the growth of Medicare Advantage (5:30), the state of private insurers and the rise of UnitedHealth (8:30), the CVS-Aetna deal (15:45), Walmart-Humana’s possible deal and Amazon’s looming presence (20:00), the Trump administration’s impact on insurers (22:20), and a quiet change to Medicare Advantage that could let health plans tackle social determinants of health (28:15). We'd appreciate your help: Please share PULSE CHECK and rate us on your favorite podcast app! Have questions, suggestions or feedback? Email ddiamond@politico.com. Referenced on the podcast: Zach Tracer’s Bloomberg story on UnitedHealth’s physician acquisitions: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-09/30-000-strong-and-counting-unitedhealth-gathers-a-doctor-army POLITICO’s Darius Tahir and Paul Demko reported on the CVS-Aetna deal: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/04/aetna-cvs-merger-drugs-205514 Dan’s look at Walmart’s potential purchase of Humana: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-pulse/2018/03/30/walmart-might-buy-humana-what-it-means-154555 Incoming AHIP leader Matt Eyles’s PULSE CHECK interview on the insurance industry and the Trump administration: https://simplecast.com/s/4e376b02

Will Amazon–Berkshire Hathaway–JP Morgan and CVS-Aetna change the health care game? To one health care employer purchaser, these announcements feel a lot like Groundhog Day.

Aaron and Brian have many, many, many thoughts on the tech that shaped 2017, and make some predictions about 2018 and beyond. Show Links: Previous Year Predictions: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 15 Trends Shaping Tech in 2018 [PODCAST] @PodCTL - Containers | Kubernetes - RSS Feed, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn and all your favorite podcast players [A CLOUD GURU] Get The Cloudcast Alexa Skill [A CLOUD GURU] DISCOUNT: Serverless for Beginners (only $15 instead of $29) [A CLOUD GURU] FREE: Alexa Development for Absolute Beginners Show Notes Mergers and Acquisitions Biggest Tech M&A of 2017 and VC Funding is down
 Big Mergers: Amazon+Whole Foods; CVS+Aetna; Intel+Mobileye; AT&T+Time Warner; Disney+21st Century Fox
 2017 Trends Storage companies are becoming HCI companies (thoughts on owning a server supply chain vs. software defined vs. commodity hardware)
 Containers are becoming more mainstream - but so many misleading “surveys”
 Nobody has a clear advantage in “hybrid cloud” architectures
 Public cloud is a portfolio game and data acquisition game, not a cost reduction game
 Building new applications is still a small % of corporate applications
 There’s such a big gap between cloud releases and non-cloud releases (timeframes, updates, informing the market, etc.)
 2018 Cloudcast Areas of Interest What happened to DevOps? Is it now in Phase 2 as “SRE”, or is it unobtainable?
 What’s happening in China? How will it impact the rest of the Global markets? Will AI & ML become tangible to non-Data Scientists? What’s the Fantasy Football of AI & ML, for business?
 Where and how will voice technologies (Alexa, Google Home, etc.) fit in long term?
 How will we track the Public Cloud tipping point?
 What is Serverless most disruptive to, or is it additive to app-dev market size?
 Should we track “Serverless” by the ServerlessConf or AWS events?
 Should we be following “edge computing”? What are the core focus areas?
 2018 Predictions Continued decline of the middleman in all industries
 Awareness of Cloud Computing “costs” becomes more mainstream
 Does Security even matter anymore? What bigger events can happen?
 Feedback? Email: show at thecloudcast dot net Twitter: @thecloudcastnet

As 2017 draws to a close, the recent CVS Health-Aetna merger continues to dominate the healthcare conversation. David Buchanan, president, Buchanan Strategies, weighed in on the non-traditional partnership during Trends Shaping the Healthcare Industry in 2018: A Strategic Planning Session, a December 2017 webinar now available for replay. In this HealthSounds episode, Buchanan predicts the future of mega mergers in healthcare, the impact of the CVS-Aetna alliance on brand awareness, and the real ‘bonanza’ of the $69 billion partnership beyond bringing healthcare closer to home for many consumers.

Is Amazon coming for your dental supply business? Could it work? Teresa and Kevin talk about the surprising Amazon booth at Greater New York; the stock news that shook up dental stocks; and what it means for workflow in your office. The CVS/Aetna merger will affect Americans but does it hit dental at all? Maybe.  Mentioned Resources: Jim Cramer talking about Amazon Patterson/Schein threatened? More about Danaher Seeking Alpha's summary of the CVS/Aetna deal Link for strategy session with Teresa

A merger between CVS and Aetna would create a one-stop model for coordinated care – but would consumers really benefit? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I do go on a bit about two mergers CVS and Aetna and an insurance company buying a medical practice. I do believe this will have an impact on consumers because healthcare choices will be affected. In the second part of the show it is all about anger and anger management resources.   Resources Mentioned:  Health News from NPR has more on the CVS/Aetna merger, looking at what consumers stand to lose or gain. CNBC interview with the honchos from CVS and Aetna on the proposed merger. University of Florida Health Podcast with transcript on how doodling can help you feel better. Reader's Digest has a detailed but consumer friendly version of the study. Google has an app called Auto Draw; you can draw lines and play with the AI or you can make full blown images that you can download. You can access the app from your phone, tablet or computer. Brain Pickings and Ursula K. Le Guin on Anger Helpguide.org on anger and anger management. You might also want to check out the Emotional Intelligence Tool Kit Dr. Stan Hyman on Anger Management Techniques: 31 Tips to Tackle Your Temper Tara Brach has a 55-minute class on the mindfulness of anger. Five Reasons You Get Angry by Robert Tabbli, LCSW maybe one of these folks bears a passing resemblance to someone you know. Gary from Pathway to Happiness has a different approach. In Understanding Anger: Why Anger Isn't Irrational.   Disclaimer:  Links to other sites are provided for information purposes only and do not constitute endorsements.  Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with questions you may have regarding a medical or mental health disorder. This blog and podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this program is intended to be a substitute for professional psychological, psychiatric or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

This week on Young Bucks we are discussing the surging price of Bitcoin, the new tax plan, and the CVS-Aetna deal.Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TuskMediaLLCPlease see disclosures.

This week on Young Bucks we are discussing the surging price of Bitcoin, the new tax plan, and the CVS-Aetna deal.Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TuskMediaLLCPlease see disclosures.

Amazon might start selling prescription drugs online — and it's causing a "mass freak-out" among the healthcare industry. One result: drugstore chain CVS brough Aetna, a health insurance company. We analyze the trends behind the deal and ask: Are they going to be good for patients? Thank you to our sponsor, Providence St. Joseph Health’s Digital and Innovation Group. Follow them at twitter.com/provinnovation

What happens when healthcare becomes a transaction? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/judibonilla/support

We analyze the CVS Aetna Merger and what it means for our healthcare future.  $69 billion is a massive acquisition and could signal what lay ahead both in the short term and long term. Will CVS look to make real landscape changes or will they squeeze more profit out of the current structure? --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Jim Lowell, Chief Investment Officer at Adviser Investments, has Monday's Market Analysis.

Matt, Ezra, and Sarah talk through the argument around net neutrality, the possible CVS-Aetna merger, and a white paper about who becomes an inventor in America. Ben Thompson's defense of Ajit Pai Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Stock Talk with Rob Black" - Radio Show December 4 - KDOW 1220 AM (6a-9a) On Stock Talk, Rob Black talks about Facebook's attempt to attracting kids, tax reform, the CVS Aetna merger, McDonald's, Bitcoin, and Imagine Dragons.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"Stock Talk with Rob Black" - Radio Show December 4 - KDOW 1220 AM (6a-9a) On Stock Talk, Rob Black talks about Facebook's attempt to attracting kids, tax reform, the CVS Aetna merger, McDonald's, Bitcoin, and Imagine Dragons.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Host Jonathan Ferro spoke with Marcus Ashworth, Bloomberg Gadfly Columnist, and Michael Hewson, Chief Market Analyst for CMC Markets in London, about Brexit, Toys R Us shutting 26 U.K. stores, and Bitcoin.u0010Jonathan also spoke with Cameron Crise, Macro Strategist for Bloomberg, and Michael McKee, international economics and policy correspondent for Bloomberg, about tax-overhaul legislation, the CVS-Aetna deal, and the week ahead.

"Stock Talk with Rob Black" - Radio Show December 4 - KDOW 1220 AM (6a-9a) On Stock Talk, Rob Black talks about Facebook's attempt to attracting kids, tax reform, the CVS Aetna merger, McDonald's, Bitcoin, and Imagine Dragons.

CVS finally makes an official $69 billion bid for Aetna.  Industry Focus host Kristine Harjes shares why this massive healthcare deal might not clear regulatory hurdles. Plus, we discuss Blue Apron’s upgrade, the importance of customer acquisition costs, and National Cookie Day.  MarketFoolery’s holiday music festival continues with some help from Carly Rae Jepsen. Thanks to Casper for supporting The Motley Fool. Save $50 on a mattress at http://www.casper.com/fool (promo code “Fool”)

Disruption will come from below (i.e. start-ups) that come to market with new business models (peer-to-peer for example). Startups that embrace technology and creativity. Change ultimately will be driven by consumers. Consumers will be empowered as personal health data becomes readily available through new technologies such as the Apple Watch and various health data apps. Local care centers like MedExpress (now Optum) and online marketplaces owned and operated by Amazon, Walmart and the like are the future. These marketplace changes combined with de-regulation/ forced competition (wishful thinking?) will eliminate the bloat and the "wag the dog" administrative state forced upon us by the political class. Only through deregulation will the insurance companies be forced to compete for our business. Only then will premiums come down as insurance oligopolies are replaced with a competitive market place across state lines and nationally. Competition will force drug prices down as well. We will only maximize the potential offered by tools such as the Apple Watch and enjoy the benefits of providers with new business models if we eliminate regulations put in place by politicians whom have been bought off by lobbyists employed by healthcare insurers and large pharmaceutical companies. If we don’t change the status quo – as citizens our tax bill will only grow as we continue to subsidize a system that benefits insurance carriers and pharmaceutical companies at our expense.

Kathleen Gaffney, co-director of diversified fixed income at Eaton Vance, talks about bond markets, investment strategy and high-yield. Shira Ovide, a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist covering technology, and David Garrity, CEO of GVA Research, discuss the domination of Amazon. Jim Harrison, CEO of Party City, talks about new channels of revenue growth and his company's vertical business model. Finally, Max Nisen, a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist covering health care, talks about vertical consolidation deals popping up in health care, like CVS-Aetna, and Amazon entering into the prescription drug segment.