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In 2000, Katie Couric underwent a live colonoscopy on national television following the death of her husband, Jay Monahan, from colorectal cancer at age 42. The broadcast demystified a procedure many Americans feared, led to an estimated 20% increase in colonoscopy screenings, and became one of the clearest examples of how public storytelling can change healthcare behavior.This episode examines how celebrities, journalists, filmmakers, and entertainers helped reshape the public conversation about cancer during a period when survivorship was becoming increasingly visible. As breakthroughs in targeted therapies, immunotherapy, and early detection allowed more people to live beyond cancer, public figures used their platforms to encourage screening, reduce stigma, and accelerate research. Their influence extended far beyond awareness campaigns, helping transform cancer from a private diagnosis into a national public health conversation.Central to this story is Laura Ziskin, the Hollywood producer behind Pretty Woman and the Spider-Man films, whose metastatic breast cancer diagnosis inspired the creation of Stand Up To Cancer. Working alongside Couric and leaders from entertainment, journalism, and biomedical research, Ziskin championed a new funding model that required multidisciplinary scientific collaboration, helping accelerate discoveries that contributed to multiple FDA-approved cancer therapies. The episode also highlights the advocacy of actor Patrick Dempsey, whose family's experience with ovarian cancer led to the creation of the Dempsey Center, expanding support for patients and caregivers beyond medical treatment.The story also asks what celebrity advocacy often leaves unsaid. Financial toxicity, caregiver burden, chronic pain, mental health, and the long-term effects of treatment rarely receive the same attention as dramatic diagnoses or breakthrough cures. As cancer survivorship continues to evolve, the greatest challenge may not be convincing people to care about cancer, but helping them understand what it truly means to live with and beyond it.RELATED LINKSStand Up To CancerKatie Couric MediaDempsey CenterAmerican Association for Cancer ResearchNational Cancer InstituteDana-Farber Cancer Institute | Adult Survivorship ProgramFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review The Cancer Mavericks: A History of Survivorship on your favorite podcast platform. For more information, visit CancerMavericks.com. Please send any questions to podcasts@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
"I'd already finished my cardiovascular unit. I'd finished my pulmonary unit. I had never heard about this in any of my classes." That was Dr. Joel Bervell's reaction to discovering that a device used every day in hospitals -- the pulse oximeter -- reads less accurately on darker skin tones. He posted a 30-second video about this consequential discrepancy that, to his utter surprise, gained over 500,000 views by the next morning. That video launched Dr. Bervell into orbit as a social media presence and created his identity as The Medical Mythbuster. In just a few years, he's built a following of two million people, earned a Peabody Award and was named to the inaugural Time 100 Creators list, all while finishing his residency. On this episode of Raise the Line, host Lindsey Smith welcomes Dr. Bervell to explore the roots of this kind of bias and the real world impact of drawing attention to it. “The most impactful biases in medicine exist because no one stops to ask who was included in the original data and who was left out,” Dr. Bervell explains. Stay tuned to also learn about: His YouTube animated series The Doctor is In which helps kids understand how their bodies work, as well as providing medical role models; How to build trust with marginalized communities; His forthcoming book, The Default Body which examines who medicine was actually designed for. Mentioned in this episode:Dr. Bervell on InstagramTikTok ChannelFacebook"The Doctor Is In" Show If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast
In 2006, a landmark report titled Closing the Gap: Research and Care Imperatives for Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer confirmed what young survivors had been saying for years. While survival rates for children and older adults had steadily improved, adolescents and young adults had experienced decades of stalled progress. They had become cancer's lost generation.This episode explores how young adult survivors transformed their shared isolation into one of the most influential grassroots movements in cancer advocacy. Diagnosed during the years typically devoted to education, careers, relationships, and starting families, patients between the ages of 15 and 39 confronted challenges that extended far beyond treatment. Fertility preservation, sexual health, employment, financial toxicity, insurance, and long-term quality of life were rarely discussed in oncology clinics, leaving many to navigate survivorship alone.The episode follows advocates including Tamika Felder, Lindsay Avner, Heidi Adams, Doug Ulman, and Dr. Archie Bleyer, whose research and advocacy fundamentally changed how medicine understands adolescent and young adult cancer. Through organizations including Planet Cancer, Fertile Hope, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and later Stupid Cancer, survivors built online communities, educational resources, conferences, and national partnerships that challenged long-standing assumptions about cancer care. Their work helped establish fertility preservation as a standard discussion before treatment, expanded research dedicated to adolescent and young adult oncology, and elevated quality of life as a critical clinical outcome alongside survival.The movement also demonstrated the power of lived experience to reshape medicine. Survivors became researchers, educators, nonprofit founders, and policy advocates, insisting that cancer care account not only for years of life saved, but for the lives patients hoped to build afterward.What began as a search for peers evolved into a national movement that permanently transformed adolescent and young adult oncology. Today, dedicated research programs, clinical fellowships, survivorship resources, and patient advocacy organizations continue to build on the foundation these young cancer mavericks created.RELATED LINKSNational Cancer Institute | Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Cancer ProgramClosing the Gap: Research and Care Imperatives for Adolescents and Young Adults with CancerAmerican Society of Clinical Oncology | Fertility Preservation GuidelinesStupid CancerLivestrong FoundationJournal of Adolescent and Young Adult OncologyFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review The Cancer Mavericks: A History of Survivorship on your favorite podcast platform. For more information, visit CancerMavericks.com. Please send any questions to podcasts@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
There's a number attached to every patient's chart that quietly shapes the resources they receive, the care they're offered, and whether their health conditions are fully seen — and most providers don't fully understand it. In this episode, Jamie sits down with Ericka Bauman, Director of Quality Assurance at Your Health, to break down the Risk Adjustment Factor — better known as the RAF score. Ericka has spent years traveling across Georgia and South Carolina, walking into provider offices, sitting with care teams, and doing the work of turning confusing data into meaningful patient outcomes. What you'll hear in this episode: What the RAF score actually is — explained the way Erica explains it to every team she visits, from providers to front desk staff Why most RAF scores are too low — and how underdocumenting a patient's conditions leaves them exposed to missed care, hospitalizations, and unmet needs The biggest misconception providers have about RAF (hint: it's not another box to check) How RAF and quality measurement are really asking the same question from two different angles — and why treating them separately is a mistake What changes for patients when care teams show up prepared, proactive, and looking at the whole person — not just the reason for today's visit The numbers will follow when you take care of the patient. This episode will show you how. www.YourHealth.Org
In 2006, the Institute of Medicine published From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition, concluding that millions of Americans were surviving cancer only to find themselves navigating a healthcare system unprepared for life after treatment. The report challenged oncology to recognize that curing cancer was not the end of care, but the beginning of survivorship.This episode explores how the growing cancer survivorship movement exposed the long-term consequences of cancer treatment that medicine had largely overlooked. As survival rates improved following the National Cancer Act of 1971, millions of survivors faced chronic fatigue, neuropathy, infertility, cognitive impairment, financial hardship, employment discrimination, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. These were not rare complications. They became defining features of survivorship for many patients.Drawing on the work of oncologist Dr. Patricia Ganz, survivor advocate Ellen Stovall, and researchers, clinicians, and survivors across the country, the episode examines how survivorship research expanded beyond recurrence and mortality to include quality of life, psychosocial care, rehabilitation, and long-term follow-up. Their efforts helped establish survivorship care plans, multidisciplinary survivorship clinics, and a broader understanding that cancer affects every aspect of a person's life long after treatment ends.The episode also confronts persistent inequities in survivorship care. Insurance coverage often ends when treatment stops, supportive services remain inconsistent, financial toxicity continues to drive medical hardship, and racial, geographic, and socioeconomic disparities still influence who receives comprehensive follow-up care. For many survivors, finishing treatment simply marks the beginning of another struggle.Modern oncology increasingly recognizes that surviving cancer is measured by more than years of life. It is also measured by quality of life, dignity, access to care, and the ability to rebuild a future after treatment. That evolution remains one of the most significant legacies of the cancer survivorship movement.RELATED LINKSNational Academy of Medicine | From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in TransitionNational Cancer Institute Office of Cancer SurvivorshipAmerican Society of Clinical Oncology | Survivorship CompendiumCancerCareHopeWell Cancer SupportNational Coalition for Cancer SurvivorshipFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review The Cancer Mavericks: A History of Survivorship on your favorite podcast platform. For more information, visit CancerMavericks.com. Please send any questions to podcasts@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Despite gains in recent years, Black, Hispanic, and Asian communities are still under-represented in the U.S. nursing workforce. We're going to explore that gap and how to close it on this episode of Raise the Line from Elsevier with Dr. Ernest Grant, Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging at the Duke University School of Nursing. "You get a patient who is more compliant when they see someone who looks like them, who is from their culture and who can advocate on their behalf," he tells host Lindsey Smith. Dr. Grant bases that and other insights on a rich professional background that includes 50 years in nursing, being a leading advocate for his profession and breaking down barriers himself as a male nurse of color and the first man elected president of the American Nurses Association. In this thoughtful conversation, Dr. Grant reflects on what it took to earn credibility in leadership roles, how he's navigating the political climate on DEI initiatives, and the causes and solutions to the persistent shortage in nursing faculty, among other pressing issues. Tune in for a uniquely-informed look at what it will take to build a stronger, more representative nursing profession. Mentioned in this episode: Duke University School of Nursing American Nurses Association If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast
In 1967, breast surgeon Dr. Harold P. Freeman arrived at Harlem Hospital expecting to treat cancer. Instead, he confronted a healthcare system where poverty, racism, lack of insurance, and institutional barriers often determined who lived long enough to receive treatment. Patients frequently arrived with advanced disease, not because medicine lacked answers, but because access to care had failed them.This episode explores how cancer survivorship expanded beyond medical breakthroughs to include healthcare access, health equity, and organized advocacy. Building on the early work of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS), it examines the recognition that surviving cancer depended not only on research, but also on whether patients could navigate a fragmented healthcare system.Freeman responded by creating one of the nation's first patient navigation programs at Harlem Hospital in 1990. Community-based navigators helped patients overcome practical barriers including insurance, transportation, appointments, communication, and fear. The model dramatically improved timely diagnosis and treatment, increased breast cancer survival in Harlem, and ultimately inspired the Patient Navigator Outreach and Chronic Disease Prevention Act of 2005, establishing navigation as a cornerstone of modern oncology care.The episode also follows cancer survivor Ellen Stovall, whose leadership transformed survivorship into a national policy movement. Through the NCCS, she united advocates across cancer types, fought for insurance protections, expanded access to clinical trials, helped shape the creation of the Office of Cancer Survivorship at the National Cancer Institute, and organized the landmark 1998 National March for Cancer Survivorship in Washington, D.C. Her work reframed survivorship as a public policy issue rather than a personal experience.Together, Freeman and Stovall demonstrated that scientific progress alone could not eliminate disparities in cancer outcomes. Their work established two enduring principles that continue to shape oncology today: patients need someone to help them navigate care, and survivors must have a voice in the policies that govern it. Modern cancer survivorship depends on both.RELATED LINKSNational Coalition for Cancer SurvivorshipHarold P. Freeman Patient Navigation InstituteNational Cancer Institute Office of Cancer SurvivorshipPatient Navigator Outreach and Chronic Disease Prevention Act of 2005American Cancer SocietyTuskegee Study Timeline | Centers for Disease Control and PreventionFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review The Cancer Mavericks: A History of Survivorship on your favorite podcast platform. For more information, visit CancerMavericks.com. Please send any questions to podcasts@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Most nursing homes think they're measuring success by how many patients move through their building. What they're not measuring is how many of those same patients end up right back in the hospital — and who pays the price when they do. In this episode of The Disrupted Podcast, Scott Middleton — Owner of Your Health and Chief Disruption Officer — pulls back the curtain on the facility partnership model Your Health is rolling out across the Southeast. It's a model that doesn't just serve patients in skilled nursing facilities; it pays those facilities for the care coordination work their staff is already doing, while creating the kind of presence that actually moves the needle on outcomes. Scott and Jamie cover the mechanics, the competitive landscape, and the cultural shift required to make it all work: Why Your Health is contracting with nursing homes to pay up to $20,000 a month for care coordination — and what that's worth annually to a facility with 200 Medicare patients The difference between "popping in" and genuine presence — and why only one of them drives real cost savings and keeps patients from bouncing back to the hospital Why physicians working in isolation are the biggest liability in a team-based care model, and how a September 1st bonus restructure is designed to change that culture How 80% of what used to require an in-person visit can now happen via telehealth — and the one thing technology will never replace: the relationship that makes a patient actually follow through Scott's 10-year urgency: why Your Health is already three steps ahead of the competition — and why that lead only matters if the model scales fast enough If you work in a nursing facility, lead a care team, run a healthcare organization, or believe the system needs a fundamentally better architecture — this is what building it actually looks like. Press play. www.YourHealth.Org
Welcome to a very, very, very special bonus episode of Out of Patients, and one unlike anything published on this feed before. For nearly 20 years, Matthew Zachary has handed these microphones to patients, caregivers, doctors, advocates, troublemakers, and people with something worth saying. This time, he handed them to his daughter. Hannah Greenzweig grew up around this show, and now she has commandeered the studio with 3 of her wonderfully creative high school friends to talk about something they built entirely themselves. There is an enormous amount of Dad Pride baked into this episode, along with the strange and wonderful realization that sometimes your kid grows up, takes your chair, takes your microphone, and produces a better show without you.Hannah Greenzweig, Michael Aidinov, Gwendolyn Baldini, and Astronomy are student artists from the Roundabout Youth Ensemble at James Madison High School in Brooklyn. Working alongside teaching artists from Roundabout Theatre Company, they spent a school year creating an original play from the ground up, writing every scene, developing every character, and producing the performance themselves.Instead of discussing a Broadway production, they dissect one they invented.Their play, Subject Matter, began with a room full of improbable ideas. Murderous bounce houses, pirate family sagas, underwater adventures, courtroom dance battles, and birthday parties at math museums all competed before the group settled on an absurd rivalry between New York's fictional History Museum and Math Museum. From there, they built a fully staged comedy about institutional competition, sabotage, oversized personalities, and the unexpected discovery that history and mathematics need each other more than either side wants to admit.The conversation pulls back the curtain on a creative process most audiences never see. The students explain how scenes evolved through constant rewrites, how characters emerged from improvisation, how costumes came together with last minute ingenuity, and how rehearsals often collapsed into uncontrollable laughter. They recount cutting favorite ideas, solving production problems with limited resources, and trusting each other enough to keep rewriting until the story worked.The episode also captures something harder to script: teenagers speaking honestly about collaboration without adults translating their experience. They celebrate classmates who stepped into unexpected roles, teachers who quietly held the production together, and the strange joy of creating something that exists only because everyone showed up.It is a conversation about theater, friendship, education, creativity, and what happens when 4 young artists get the microphones and the adults get out of the way.RELATED LINKSRoundabout Theatre CompanyRoundabout Youth EnsembleJames Madison High SchoolFEEDBACKLike this bonus episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
A man is struck by a car on the streets of Los Angeles. In the emergency department, a CT scan ordered to look for traumatic injuries reveals something nobody expected: a mass in his colon. Days later, sitting across from Dr. Belinda Waltman, he calls the accident “a blessing in disguise.” Then he changes the subject. He is less worried about cancer than about whether he can afford to miss another day of work. In this season finale of Standard Deviation, host Dr. Oliver Bogler explores what happens when biomedical science collides with the realities of the healthcare safety net. Dr. Waltman, a primary care physician in Los Angeles County, specializes in expedited cancer workups for uninsured and underinsured patients. Every diagnosis arrives carrying another set of questions about housing, transportation, food insecurity, wages, and survival that rarely appear in medical records or scientific literature. For years, Waltman carried those stories without knowing how to bring them into the academic record. As a full-time clinician without a research lab, grant funding, or publication pipeline, she faced barriers familiar to many working scientists and physicians whose most important observations happen outside traditional research settings. With support from the Life Science Editors Foundation's JEDI program, those experiences became The Margins Matter, a narrative medicine essay published in JAMA that argues the social realities surrounding cancer care are not background details. They are part of the disease itself. Bogler traces how editorial mentorship transformed lived clinical experience into published scholarship while asking a larger question about who gets to shape the scientific record. The conversation examines cancer care, Medicaid, health-related social needs, medical publishing, and the structural incentives that determine which stories become evidence and which disappear from view.The result is a conversation about documentation, visibility, and why the margins of medicine often determine who survives long enough to benefit from its advances.RELATED LINKSDr. Belinda WaltmanThe Margins Matter | JAMAThe Margins Matter | PubMedLife Science Editors FoundationFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What does it take to compete on the world's biggest stage and then pivot to one of the most demanding training paths in professional life? Today's guest, Samantha "Sammy" Kolowrat, has done both, and she has some fascinating insights into the commonalities of those two worlds on this episode of Raise the Line. “Something that really drew me to medicine is the team atmosphere that's there as you work towards a common goal, and there's this level of intensity that's very reminiscent of the experiences I had as a professional athlete.” Originally from Prague, Kolowrat represented Czechia at six IIHF Women's World Championships and the 2022 Beijing Olympics, and also captained the Division I women's hockey team at the University of Vermont while earning degrees in biology and pharmacology. As she starts an anesthesiology residency at Vanderbilt University, she credits her athletic career with shaping how she handles pressure, feedback, and teamwork in medicine. "The more I improve, the more knowledge I acquire, the more skills I hone, the better care my patients get," she tells host Lindsey Smith, describing what drew her to a field that rewards the same relentless fine-tuning as elite sports. This engaging conversation also explores: How crippling performance anxiety as a Division I athlete ended up preparing Kolowrat for the operating room; Why she was drawn to anesthesiology's "well-oiled machine" atmosphere; The mentorship gap she's working to close for the next generation of athlete-physicians. Mentioned in this episode: Vanderbilt University Anesthesiology Residency Program If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast
What would it take for Texas to become the national leader in health, wellness, and regenerative medicine? On this episode of Texas Talks, host Brad Swail sits down with Jack Collier, co-founder and CEO of Optimized Health and Performance, a nationwide telehealth clinic based in the Austin area. Collier explains how his own experience with hormone testing led him into the health and wellness industry and why he believes patients need more information and control over their healthcare decisions. The conversation covers: Preventive health, hormone optimization, and regenerative medicine Healthcare costs and the role of insurance Peptides and the growing online gray market How Texas could encourage research while protecting consumers The Make Texas Healthy Again movement and health education Why Austin has become a hub for health and wellness innovation Collier argues that Texas has an opportunity to become a national center for emerging healthcare research and innovation while improving health education and giving patients greater choice in how they manage their health. 00:00 — Introduction & Jack Collier 02:09 — Hormone Optimization & Jack's Health Journey 05:09 — The Future of Health & Regenerative Medicine in Texas 09:17 — Prevention, Nutrition & the Current Healthcare Model 16:03 — Healthcare Costs, Insurance & Patient Choice 20:17 — The Long-Term Value of Preventive Health 23:27 — What Texas Can Do Through Public Policy 24:53 — Peptides, Safety & the Online Gray Market 28:53 — Peptide Therapies & Medical Innovation 31:04 — Regulation, Research & the Future of Healthcare 32:40 — Make Texas Healthy Again & Health Education 36:17 — Austin's Health & Wellness Boom Watch Full-Length Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@TexasTalks Follow us on social mediaX: @Texas_DispatchInstagram: thetexasdispatchLinkedIn: The Texas DispatchTikTok: texas_talks_podcast Find more at The Texas DispatchYour source for state news, policy, and investigative journalism.https://thetexasdispatch.com
Send us Fan MailA cancer diagnosis used to be enough to qualify as medically frail and exempt from Medicaid work requirements. A new federal rule says it no longer is, and nobody has defined what will be enough instead.In this clip from our episode “The Hidden Cost of Medicaid Work Requirements”, hosts David E. Williams and John Driscoll break down the last-minute rule change narrowing the definition of medical frailty and why 25 states say the federal government has gone beyond what Congress ever authorized.Listen to the full episode here
In 1986, 23 survivors, physicians, nurses, attorneys, and community organizers gathered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a weekend that would permanently change the language and politics of cancer. Working late into the night, they debated not only strategy, but identity, ultimately declaring that from the moment of diagnosis, every person with cancer is a survivor.This episode traces the social and political forces that gave birth to the modern cancer survivorship movement. As advances in early detection and treatment allowed more people to live beyond cancer, survivors discovered that finishing treatment did not mean returning to normal life. Many faced employment discrimination, loss of insurance, social stigma, infertility, chronic health complications, and a healthcare system that viewed survival as the end of care rather than the beginning of a new chapter.Against the backdrop of the civil rights, disability rights, and community health movements of the 1960s and 1970s, physicians, activists, and survivors challenged medicine's paternalistic culture and demanded a greater voice in decisions affecting their lives. Central to this story are physician and survivor Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan, whose landmark 1985 essay, Seasons of Survival, redefined survivorship as a lifelong continuum, and community organizer Katherine Logan, whose determination united dozens of grassroots organizations into what became the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship.The coalition's founding established principles that continue to shape oncology today. Survivors were no longer defined solely by disease or treatment outcomes. Their experiences became evidence. Their voices became essential to clinical research, healthcare policy, and patient advocacy. By redefining survivorship as an ongoing experience rather than a destination, the movement challenged medicine to recognize the lasting physical, emotional, financial, and social consequences of cancer.The ideas forged during that weekend in Albuquerque became the foundation of modern cancer survivorship. Nearly 40 years later, the coalition's defining principle, that survivorship begins at diagnosis, continues to influence cancer care, research, policy, and the way millions of people understand life after cancer.RELATED LINKSNational Coalition for Cancer SurvivorshipNational Cancer Institute Office of Cancer SurvivorshipThe New England Journal of MedicineAmericans with Disabilities Act (ADA.gov)Library of Congress | Civil Rights History ProjectWhite Coat, Clenched Fist by Fitzhugh MullanFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review The Cancer Mavericks: A History of Survivorship on your favorite podcast platform. For more information, visit CancerMavericks.com. Please send any questions to podcasts@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What if the biggest threat to your healthcare organization isn't competition or reimbursement rates — it's the moment one of your team members decided that the policy was more important than the person in front of them? In this episode, Jamie sits down with Matt Staub, CEO of Your Health, to explore the timeless "Give 'Em the Pickle" philosophy — born in a burger joint, but almost perfectly designed for healthcare. Matt and Jamie unpack the four pillars of the pickle framework — service, attitude, consistency, and teamwork — and trace each one directly into the reality of patient care, care team dynamics, and organizational culture. Video LinkGive Em The Pickle Youtube Video What you'll hear in this episode: Why charging a loyal customer 75 cents for extra pickles is the same mistake healthcare makes every day — and how the Ritz Carlton's $2,500 employee empowerment policy points to a better way How attitude isn't just a soft skill — it's the infrastructure of every patient interaction, including the ones where you're already having a bad day Why mistakes in healthcare aren't failures — they're invitations, and the patients who complained and felt heard often become your fiercest advocates What real consistency looks like in care delivery: not doing the same thing robotically, but doing ordinary things extraordinarily well, every single time How teamwork in healthcare means every person in the organization — from the CEO to the community health worker — has a role in whether the patient feels seen and served This episode will challenge you to look at service not as a department or a satisfaction score, but as the very soul of what your organization stands for. Give 'em the pickle.
Most nursing home administrators don't realize they're sitting on one of the most underutilized revenue streams in all of Medicare — and until someone shows up and tells them what it's worth, they never will. In this episode, Scott Middleton — founder and Chief Disruption Officer of Your Health — calls in from the road as he travels across rural Georgia on a multi-day facility tour, fresh off completing a major merger with TCPA. What follows is an unfiltered, on-the-ground breakdown of two transformational opportunities Scott is actively building: chronic care management (CCM) reimbursement and ACO cost savings — and the very specific reasons most of the industry is getting both wrong. In this episode, you'll hear: Why Medicare already pays $65/hour for care management performed by nurses, community health workers, and social workers — and how Your Health is now contracting with nursing home facilities to perform it, paying them up to $100 per patient per month The "Fuse" platform — a communication and documentation tool that routes care management notes directly into billing-ready buckets, syncing with point-of-care software so the minutes get captured and billed automatically How ACO risk scores work, why Your Health's scores have grown 30% under their current plan, and what failing to see hospice patients could cost the organization — up to $22 million in a single year The $4,800 per patient per year problem: how one physician in their network was quietly rated one of the worst under the ACO model simply because his patients were going home without any follow-up Scott's announcement that SSAs and TCPs are being restructured to report directly to peer group administrators — and why the confusion about their roles has cost the company If you lead a nursing home, an assisted living facility, a physician group, or any organization inside the long-term care ecosystem, this episode will change how you look at what you're already doing — and what you're leaving behind. www.YourHealth.Org
Send us Fan MailMedicaid work requirements take effect in every expansion state by January 1, 2027. But half the states just sued to stop the rules that govern them. They're challenging a new federal rule that narrows who counts as “medically frail” and adds paperwork for people trying to prove they're exempt. We'll discuss what the fight means for coverage, providers, and for the states preparing to implement.In our latest episode, David E. Williams (President, Health Business Group) and John Driscoll (Chairman, UConn Health) dig into what these cuts will really cost. They break down the CBO's projections for coverage and dollars over the next decade, and why a last-minute federal rule narrowing the definition of "medical frailty" may be the most consequential, and least understood, piece of the whole debate.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, transforming cancer research with an unprecedented federal investment and launching what became known as the War on Cancer. The legislation did not emerge from scientific discovery alone. It was the culmination of decades of relentless advocacy by researchers, philanthropists, journalists, and patients who believed cancer demanded the same national commitment that had put astronauts on the Moon.This episode traces the origins of the cancer survivorship movement by returning to a time when cancer was rarely discussed in public, many physicians withheld diagnoses from their patients, and surgery offered few lasting cures. It follows the pioneering work of pathologist Dr. Sidney Farber, whose early chemotherapy research challenged conventional thinking, and Mary Lasker, whose political strategy, fundraising, and public campaigns helped transform cancer from a private tragedy into a national public health priority. Together, they built the coalition that reshaped federal support for oncology research and forever changed the relationship between science, government, and the American public.The story then turns to journalist and breast cancer survivor Rose Kushner, whose refusal to accept the standard one-step radical mastectomy challenged nearly a century of surgical dogma. Working alongside surgeon Dr. Bernard Fisher, Kushner helped bring evidence-based medicine to breast cancer treatment through randomized clinical trials that demonstrated less invasive surgery could achieve equivalent outcomes. Their efforts changed clinical practice, strengthened informed consent, and helped establish the principle that patients should participate in decisions about their own care.The breakthroughs explored in this episode extended far beyond new treatments. They redefined the role of patients in medicine, accelerated clinical research, and laid the foundation for modern cancer survivorship. The movement that followed would not simply help more people live longer. It would change what surviving cancer meant.RELATED LINKSNational Cancer InstituteNational Cancer Act of 1971American Cancer SocietyDana-Farber Cancer InstituteNational Library of MedicineThe New England Journal of MedicineFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review The Cancer Mavericks: A History of Survivorship on your favorite podcast platform. For more information, visit CancerMavericks.com. Please send any questions to podcasts@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
An 11-year-old boy in rural Zambia once told Dr. Genesis Mwamba that he was about to attend school wearing shoes for the first time in his life. That moment, Dr. Mwamba says, crystallized why he started the Lead Me Back Foundation to provide school supplies and other support to marginalized communities in his native country. As you'll learn in this inspiring installment in our NextGen Journeys series, Dr. Mwamba started the foundation in 2021while still a medical student because he had experienced the power of education as an “equalizer” in his own life, taking him from humble roots to a career in medicine. He and his colleagues have grown the bootstrapped organization to a point where it now provides hundreds of thousands of people across the country with educational access, climate education and community health clinics. “I've always been drawn to opportunities and initiatives that bring help to humankind,” he tells Raise the Line host Dr. Parsa Mohri. This episode also explores: What building "with" a community rather than "for" it looks like in practice; The storytelling strategy that attracted donors and partners; How his mother's untimely death inspired his commitment to preventive medicine. Mentioned in this episode: Lead Me Back Foundation If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast
Send us Fan MailMedicaid and Medicare used to pay first and chase fraud later. That model is changing fast, and the providers who haven't adapted are about to feel it.In this clip from our episode “AI and The Future Of Behavioral Health”, host John Driscoll and Alon Joffe, Co-Founder and CEO of Eleos Health, break down why the shift to audit-first payment in Medicaid and Medicare is an existential threat for behavioral health organizations already operating on razor-thin margins.Listen to the full episode here
Long before cancer survivors organized into a movement, Hollywood had already shaped how Americans understood the disease. Films rarely used the word “cancer,” physicians often withheld diagnoses from patients, and the people who survived were almost nowhere to be found on screen.Recorded before The Cancer Mavericks: A History of Survivorship became a documentary series, this bonus conversation explores where the project first began. Matthew Zachary sits down with his mother, Roz Greenzweig, a retired educator and lifelong film enthusiast whose memories of classic cinema became an unexpected lens for understanding how cancer was portrayed throughout the twentieth century.Together, they revisit landmark films including Dark Victory, Love Story, and other iconic portrayals that reflected an era when cancer was treated as unspeakable, inevitable, and almost always fatal. Their conversation contrasts those carefully constructed Hollywood narratives with the lived reality of a family confronting a brain cancer diagnosis in 1995, revealing how popular culture both reflected and reinforced the fears surrounding the disease.The discussion also foreshadows many of the themes explored throughout the documentary series: the evolution of patient advocacy, the emergence of cancer survivorship, the role of caregivers, and the power of storytelling to influence public understanding. Before policy changed, before advocacy organizations grew into national movements, conversations like these were already challenging long-held assumptions about what cancer looked like and who had the right to tell its story.Consider this the prologue to The Cancer Mavericks. Before the movement found its history, it began with a family trying to make sense of the stories they had inherited.RELATED LINKSAmerican Cancer SocietyNational Cancer InstituteAmerican Film InstituteER (NBC)50/50 (Official)Chasing Life (ABC Family Archive)FEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review The Cancer Mavericks: A History of Survivorship on your favorite podcast platform. For more information, visit CancerMavericks.com. Questions? Email podcasts@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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He reveals how profit-driven systems and flawed education perpetuate false beliefs about sugar and diabetes, sidelining diet-based solutions. #DiabetesTruth #MedicalEducation #ProfitVsPrevention #HealthTalks
Send us Fan MailMore than 160 million Americans live in areas with a shortage of mental health providers. The clinicians who do show up are spending hours on documentation, compliance, and eligibility work that has nothing to do with patient care.Alon Joffe, Co-Founder and CEO of Eleos Health, joins host John Driscoll to discuss how AI is reducing administrative burden for behavioral health clinicians and why workflow efficiency is becoming critical for community health centers facing Medicaid funding challenges.
"We have an untapped army of 200,000 PAs that really could step up and drive some change in the healthcare system if we weren't restricted,” says Dr. Jennifer Kolb, capturing her motivation for pushing to update practice regulations for physician associates that date back more than 50 years. As Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Clinical Affairs at the American Academy of Physician Associates, Dr. Kolb has been in the middle of the fight at the state and federal level to grant PAs more independence from physicians, full billing rights, and the increased ability to practice across state lines, among other changes. In this pertinent conversation with Raise the Line host Lindsey Smith, Dr. Kolb explains how these updates could help close huge gaps in access to healthcare, better manage the fight against chronic diseases and improve patient outcomes. Dr. Kolb also addresses: Why the name shift from "assistant" to "associate" took her years to fully appreciate; How a 10-year gap in life expectancy across Chicago zip codes shapes her view of health equity; Why PA's shouldn't wait for permission to start making change in their communities. Mentioned in this episode:American Academy of Physician Associates If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast
Rebecca Bloom is a former employee benefits and executive compensation attorney who spent more than 25 years helping women navigate cancer, work, insurance, disability coverage, and financial survival. She is the founder and author of When Women Get Sick, a book built from decades inside the legal, workplace, and patient advocacy systems most people only discover after diagnosis.Bloom started in Big Law at Simpson Thacher handling employee benefits and compensation work she originally chose to pay off student loans. Then her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Suddenly the language she used in corporate law offices became the language of survival at home. Explanation of benefits forms. Coverage disputes. Second opinions. Disability protections. Medical leave. Bills no one could explain.That collision changed the direction of her life.In this episode, Bloom explains how serious illness quietly turns patients into unpaid administrators managing paperwork, logistics, financial risk, and emotional labor while trying to survive treatment. She breaks down how employer based health insurance shapes nearly every aspect of cancer care in America and why women often carry the invisible burden of protecting everyone else from discomfort while they themselves fall apart.The conversation digs into workplace power, the illusion of the healthcare “safety net,” caregiver exhaustion, and the class divide hiding underneath patient empowerment culture. Bloom explains why educated, insured women with resources still struggle to navigate healthcare bureaucracy and what happens to patients without those advantages.This episode explores cancer care, health insurance, employee benefits, patient advocacy, workplace protections, caregiving, and the structural incentives that force sick people to become project managers of their own survival.RELATED LINKSRebecca BloomWhen Women Get SickBay Area Cancer ConnectionsSimpson Thacher & BartlettFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Democrats, Read the Room: Why AOC, Mamdani and Young Voters Could Decide the Future Republicans are already branding Democrats as “socialists” and “communists” to frighten voters—but should Democrats really let those attacks dictate their agenda? Candidates such as Zohran Mamdani are winning because younger voters want affordable housing, healthcare, economic fairness and meaningful change. They're listening to democratic socialists, liking what they hear and turning out to vote. So why are establishment Democrats fighting the candidates energizing their own base instead of working with leaders such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Karel asks whether Democrats truly want transformative change—or simply want to preserve the political status quo. Also: Working from home remains enormously popular, but a San Francisco landlord reportedly wants to charge residents an additional $200 if they work from their apartments. Is that a reasonable fee, an invasion of privacy or another example of renters being squeezed? Join the conversation: Should Democrats embrace their progressive wing? And does a landlord have any right to charge tenants for working from home? Support The Karel Cast at Patreon. Watch, like, comment and subscribe at YouTube. The Karel Cast streams live Monday through Thursday at 10:30 a.m. Pacific and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Spreaker, TikTok and Instagram. Karel is a history-making broadcaster and entertainer based in Las Vegas with his service dog, Ember. #Democrats, #DemocraticParty, #Progressives, #AOC, #ZohranMamdani, #DemocraticSocialism, #YoungVoters, #GenZ, #MillennialVoters, #PoliticalNews, #USPolitics, #ProgressivePolitics, #ElectionNews, #WorkingClass, #EconomicJustice, #AffordableHousing, #HealthcareReform, #PoliticalCommentary, #PoliticalPodcast, #TheKarelCast, #ReallyKarel, #Republicans, #Socialism, #WorkFromHome, #RemoteWork, #RentersRights, #SanFrancisco, #Landlords, #HousingCrisis, #LasVegas https://youtube.com/live/NFy5RfPDBRs
Most adults who smoke want to quit, and about half try to do so in any given year, yet fewer than one in ten succeed. That persistent gap between intention and outcome is one of the central challenges in public health, and it's exactly the kind of problem that calls for new thinking about how to communicate with people to support behavior change. Dr. Amanda Graham has been a leading force in doing just that in her role as chief health officer at Truth Initiative, the nation's largest non-profit public health organization dedicated to preventing addiction among young people and helping people of all ages to quit tobacco. On this episode of Raise the Line from Elsevier, Dr. Graham, who holds a PhD in clinical health psychology and has done 25 years of NIH-funded research focused on technology-based cessation interventions, helps us understand the interplay between behavioral science and digital communications in the field. "A well-timed message can really be powerful in interrupting what for many people is kind of an automatic behavior, especially via text, which data tell us is an extraordinarily powerful modality,” she explains to host Lindsey Smith. Tune-in to understand where the field is heading, and to learn about: Why "push" technology may work better than apps and websites when it comes to breaking automatic behaviors; How the rise of e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco has scrambled decades of public health messaging; How highschool smoking rates plunged from over 30% to less than 2%. Mentioned in this episode: Truth Initiative Program with Mayo Clinic If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast
SPONSORED BY NURP Nurp is algorithmic trading designed specifically for busy professionals who don't have time to watch markets. Check out start.nurp.com/doctors to learn more. --- What if some of the most widely accepted ideas about health deserve a second look? In this rerun episode of BS Free MD, Drs. May and Tim Hindmarsh welcome Dr. Jeremy Ayres and John Gusty for a wide-ranging conversation that challenges conventional thinking about medicine, chronic disease, and personal wellness. Drawing from decades of experience in natural health, Dr. Ayres shares his philosophy of helping the body heal by identifying underlying contributors to illness rather than focusing solely on symptom management. Together with John Gusty, co-founder of Naturally Better, the discussion explores patient empowerment, environmental influences on health, chronic disease, and the importance of asking better questions in modern healthcare. Whether you're a physician, healthcare professional, or simply someone interested in optimizing your health, this episode encourages thoughtful conversation and critical thinking about today's medical landscape. In This Episode Dr. Jeremy Ayres' journey into natural medicine Why true healing goes beyond treating symptoms Chronic disease through a holistic lens The relationship between lifestyle, nutrition, and long-term wellness Environmental factors that may influence health The importance of patient responsibility and education How Naturally Better was created to empower individuals with health knowledge Integrating conventional medicine with complementary approaches Why curiosity and open dialogue remain essential in healthcare Key Takeaways Healing often requires addressing underlying contributors—not just symptoms. Lifestyle choices can have a profound impact on long-term health. Patients who actively participate in their healthcare are better equipped to make informed decisions. Constructive conversations between conventional and complementary medicine can benefit everyone. Critical thinking and continuous learning remain essential in an evolving healthcare landscape. Listen & Subscribe If you enjoy conversations that challenge conventional thinking and explore new perspectives in medicine, subscribe to BS Free MD, leave a review, and share this episode with a colleague or friend. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by guests are their own and are intended for educational purposes. This podcast does not provide individualized medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding medical decisions. This title also aligns well with the original branding while improving SEO by including both guest names and the episode's central theme. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Send us Fan MailWhat if the companies profiting most from healthcare's data problem are also the ones best positioned to explain why it needs to be solved?In this clip from our episode “Health Data Is Broken And We're Paying For It”, host John Driscoll and Michael Meucci, CEO of Arcadia, break down why the free market has proven it cannot fix healthcare data fragmentation on its own, and what becomes possible when health systems stop spending so much money just moving data around.Listen to the full episode here
Vasanta Pundarika built her career inside healthcare investment banking before launching Lotuspring, an advisory firm focused on women's health and behavioral health. She spent nearly 20 years advising healthcare systems, treatment providers, and growth stage companies on mergers, financing, and operational strategy while watching the industry repeatedly misunderstand the people it claimed to serve.The conversation starts unexpectedly with anthropology, bread, and language. Vasanta explains how she spent years changing the pronunciation of her own name to make other people comfortable before eventually reclaiming it. That thread opens into a much larger discussion about adaptation, identity, and what institutions quietly train people to tolerate.From there, the discussion moves into behavioral health, women delaying care, and the invisible labor that healthcare business models routinely ignore. During COVID, Vasanta noticed men's behavioral health units refilled faster than women's units. The reason had nothing to do with demand. Women were still home managing caregiving responsibilities, children, aging parents, and households while their own mental health collapsed in the background.The episode examines what happens when healthcare companies become “snazzy big brands” before building real clinical substance underneath. Vasanta describes the tension between mission and margin inside healthcare startups, private equity backed care models, and behavioral health expansion. The conversation pushes on who benefits when healthcare scales aggressively, who absorbs the operational pressure, and how patient trust erodes long before executives notice it on a dashboard.They also discuss patient advocacy culture, anthropology as systems analysis, healthcare capitalism, prior authorization, investor language, and why some clinically excellent companies never survive long enough to scale.RELATED LINKSVasanta PundarikaLotuspringWomen's Health HorizonsSakhi for South Asian SurvivorsNACDPrinceton University Anthropology DepartmentFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Send us Fan MailAmerican healthcare spends an estimated $110 per member per month just to administer itself, before a single service is ever delivered. Most of that cost exists because health data still cannot move freely between the systems that need it.Michael Meucci, CEO of Arcadia, joins host John Driscoll to discuss why two decades of interoperability policy have failed to solve the data fragmentation problem facing health systems and payers, and why liberating that data and redirecting the administrative spend it currently requires could be the single biggest lever available for improving both the cost and quality of American healthcare.
"I always remember feeling like I was part of the clean plate club," says Dr. Christle Guevarra, recalling a childhood spent quietly convinced that her weight was a matter of willpower. That belief followed her through a competitive powerlifting career and medical practice until she finally tried a GLP-1 medication herself and, as she describes it, the constant mental noise around food quieted down. Now a board-certified family and sports medicine physician, traveling team doctor for U.S. Figure Skating, and author of The Beginner's Guide to GLP-1s, Dr. Guevarra brings a rare combination of clinical authority and lived experience to the conversation around obesity medicine. In this episode of Raise the Line from Elsevier, host Lindsey Smith talks with her about what's actually changed in how physicians understand the issue and what it means for patients. "The biggest thing is reframing how we approach weight loss. It's not just a willpower problem, it is a neurobiological problem." Tune in to learn about: Why she said no to a GLP-1 prescription for two years and what finally changed her mind; The real story behind concerns about muscle loss on these medications; What happens when the “food noise" goes silent and a new set of challenges takes its place. Mentioned in this episode: Dr. Christle's website If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast
Send us Fan MailWhen a teenager expresses suicidal thoughts to an AI chatbot, what happens next?In this clip from our episode “Who Sets the Rules for AI in Medicine?”, hosts David E. Williams and John Driscoll and Dr. John Whyte, CEO of the American Medical Association, break down why minors need stronger protections from AI chatbots than adults do, and why the line between a wellness app and a medical device matters more than the industry wants to admit.Listen to the full episode here
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Pam Popper questions routine exams and mammograms, urging personalized risk-based decisions instead of outdated blanket recommendations. #MedicalOveruse #PreventiveCare #RiskAssessment
Brad Power spent years advising major corporations on systems design, process engineering, and decision making before lymphoma shoved him into the patient side of American healthcare. Instead of accepting the experience at face value, he started reverse engineering the machinery around cancer itself. Brad is the founder of Cancer Patient Lab and Open Cancer AI, two projects built around a blunt reality most patients discover too late: the healthcare system rewards people who know how to navigate it. Everyone else risks getting steamrolled by information asymmetry, insurance barriers, administrative friction, and institutional incentives designed around efficiency instead of human survival.The conversation starts with Harvard Business Review and Tumblr blogs before moving directly into the darker architecture underneath modern cancer care. Power explains how hospitals optimize for throughput, how insurance companies reward operational consistency over personalized medicine, and why many patients quietly end up needing a crash course in oncology, reimbursement policy, and behavioral psychology while fighting for their lives.The discussion digs into CAR-T therapy, functional testing, AI assisted decision support, and the growing collision between personalized medicine and standardized care pathways. Power argues that engaged patients often get better outcomes because they learn how to push for off guideline treatments, contest denials, and ask smarter questions. The counterpoint lands hard: patients should never have needed to become experts in the first place.The episode also explores the cultural consequences of AI entering cancer care. OpenAI advertising, data privacy, trust erosion, pharmaceutical influence, and “agentic AI” all collide inside a healthcare economy already drowning in distrust. Power sees artificial intelligence as a force multiplier for patient literacy and access. The larger system still decides who gets approved, who gets delayed, and who gets left behind.By the end, the conversation lands exactly where modern healthcare keeps forcing people to land: survival increasingly depends on learning how the machine works before the machine works on you.RELATED LINKSBrad PowerCancer Patient LabOpen Cancer AIHarvard Business ReviewResearch to the PeopleCAR T Cell TherapyFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The American healthcare system is built around a simple idea: get sick, get treated. But what if the problem isn't how we treat illness — it's that we've never seriously tried to prevent it? In this first installment of a two-part conversation, Jamie sits down with Brody Wall, Division President of Operations at Your Health, to trace the arc from a broken, reactive healthcare system to one where data tells you what's coming before the patient even knows something is wrong. Brody's path to healthcare wasn't through a textbook — it was through a father who was a Methodist minister and a mother who spent her career caring for underprivileged children. The mission was always there. The data just became the most honest way to fulfill it. In Part 1, Jamie and Brody cover: Why fee-for-service healthcare financially rewards volume of sick visits — not health — and how that one incentive structure explains why 17-20% of America's GDP goes to healthcare costs with outcomes that still lag behind other developed nations What Your Health was flying blind on before it committed to building a real data infrastructure — and what gut-feeling decisions look like when data finally proves them wrong How social determinants of health (Z codes) and behavioral health conditions (F codes) reveal which patients are actually at the highest risk of hospitalization The finding that changed everything: patients with four or more behavioral health conditions were ten times more likely to have multiple ER visits — and the clinical response that followed This isn't just a conversation about numbers. It's about what happens when an organization decides that preventing the crisis matters more than reacting to it. Part 2 drops next week. www.YourHealth.Org
Send us Fan MailEighty-one percent of physicians are already using AI in practice, more than double the rate from just three years ago. The tools are moving faster than the rules, and nobody has agreed on who gets to write them.Dr. John Whyte, CEO of the American Medical Association, joins hosts David E. Williams and John Driscoll to discuss why the medical community needs to lead the conversation on AI guardrails rather than wait for Washington to catch up, and why the most urgent regulatory question right now involves AI chatbots in mental health, where one in six American adults are already using them with no meaningful oversight in place.
By the time the paper hit version 71, Dr. Nirosha Murugan had already done the hard part. The data were real. The experiment had worked. A team of researchers had used a wearable bioreactor to trigger limb regeneration in frogs, a result with obvious implications for regenerative medicine. But the science still wasn't getting over the line. The problem wasn't the work. It was the translation.On this episode of Standard Deviation, host Oliver Bogler talks with Dr. Nirosha Murugan, a biophysicist and Tier II Canada Research Chair in Tissue Biophysics at Wilfrid Laurier University, about what happens when a scientist working at the edges of quantum biology, bioelectricity, and tissue regeneration runs headfirst into the unwritten rules of academic publishing. Murugan's research asks biologists to think beyond molecules and chemistry alone, and to consider the physical signals, electromagnetic fields, and invisible forces that shape development and healing. It is ambitious science. It is also exactly the kind of work that can make gatekeepers nervous.Bogler follows Murugan through the less glamorous part of discovery: the hidden curriculum of getting a paper published, securing scientific credibility, and learning that data do not simply “speak for themselves.” Murugan describes how jargon buried the pitch of her own work, how a lack of editorial support left her at a disadvantage, and how the JEDI program at the Life Science Editors Foundation paired her with a former journal editor who taught her how to structure a manuscript, write a cover letter, and survive peer review.The result was publication in Science Advances, but the larger story is about power. Who gets taught the rules of biomedical research. Who has access to grant writers, editors, and institutional polish. Who is left to brute-force their way through the maze. And how one scientist, having finally found the map, now makes sure her own trainees do not have to learn it the hard way.RELATED LINKSDr. Nirosha MuruganWilfrid Laurier UniversityLife Science Editors FoundationJEDI ProgramScience Advances paper on limb regenerationFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Millions of Americans were saddened and outraged by the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012 that took the lives of twenty children and six adults, and were left feeling helpless about the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. that, sadly, continues to this day. But for our guest today, Shannon Watts, her feelings of devastation about the shooting turned to rage and fueled her unlikely rise to leading Moms Demand Action, which she grew into one of the largest grassroots organizations in the country, mobilizing millions of volunteers to push for stronger gun safety laws. “I wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with a badass army of women because that's who gets things done in this country,” she says. In this inspiring conversation with Raise the Line host Michael Carrese, Watts pulls back the curtain on how the group achieved its successes and the philosophy of "losing forward" that kept volunteers showing up year after year. In her recent book Fired Up, Watts describes how she is bringing insights from that experience to a new mission: helping women identify their values, abilities, and desires and acting on them without waiting until everything is perfect. Tune-in to learn about: The "false fires" women mistake for passion; Why losing estrogen and testosterone in midlife might actually make women braver, not less so; The one exercise she does with every woman she coaches. Mentioned in this episode: Fired Up book Moms Demand Action If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast
This week on Facing the Future, Joshua Gordon, a Vice President of Health Care at Arnold Ventures, explains why growing health care costs are a challenge for family, business and government budgets. He also suggests some bipartisan cost control ideas.
Dr. Jess Peatross trained in conventional medicine and worked as a hospitalist before she started questioning why so many chronically ill patients kept getting worse inside the healthcare system she trusted. Her perspective carries weight because she spent years following every protocol exactly as taught before walking away from hospital medicine entirely.Raised in Huntington, West Virginia during the opioid crisis, she entered medicine believing the system existed to heal people. Instead, she found hospitals driven by billing codes, liability management, and pharmaceutical dependence while patients with chronic illness, autoimmune disease, mold exposure, and chronic pain cycled endlessly through appointments and prescriptions.Dr. Peatross explains what pushed her toward functional medicine, cannabis therapy, and prevention focused care after watching patients improve only after leaving conventional treatment pipelines behind. The conversation tackles physician burnout, chronic illness stigma, healthcare incentives, and the growing collapse of trust between patients and institutions.The discussion also moves into supplements, environmental toxins, ultra processed food, and the uncomfortable economics behind keeping people permanently sick but continuously billable. Dr. Peatross describes the professional backlash that comes with challenging medical orthodoxy while Matthew connects her experience to the broader erosion of public trust across American healthcare.Together they unpack what happens when patients stop believing the system can help them and start searching elsewhere for answers.RELATED LINKSDr. Jess PeatrossInstagramMarshall UniversityBrave New WeedFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What if failure isn't the opposite of winning — but the gift that makes it possible? In Part 2 of this two-part conversation, Your Health CEO Matt Staub opens up about the present he gave himself at 40: permission to fail. Then he shows what that looks like when life tests it — walking Jamie through a 2025 that brought prostate cancer, his daughter's surgery, the loss of his father, and professional hardship, and the quiet strength it takes to look back and say, "That was a good try. I'm still here. I'm hard to beat." In this episode, you'll hear: How Matt reframes a loss into a "fall forward" — and the simple habit he uses to do it The agonizing leadership question of when to let someone you care about fail Why accountability, done right, is one of the best gifts you can give a friend The danger of only celebrating big wins — and how complacency quietly creeps in Why the only voice that truly matters is the one inside your own head If you missed Part 1, start there for the full arc. Then settle in here for the deeper, more personal half — and walk away with a new relationship to the losses in your own life.
In the United States, nearly 70% of people say they want to die at home, yet the majority still die in medical settings, often after receiving care that may not match their goals and values. Closing that gap between preference and reality is at the heart of the work being done by End Well, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming how we think about, plan for, and experience the end of life. "The gap isn't about people wanting the wrong things. It's that our culture and our incentives aren't aligned with helping those wishes actually happen at the end of life,” says Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, End Well's founder and president. As Dr. Ungerleider explains to Raise the Line host Michael Carrese, End Well sponsors an annual symposium and year-round activities to bring together clinicians, patients, caregivers, and innovators to improve that alignment. Key steps include earlier integration of palliative care, allowing providers time for listening and goal setting with patients, and normalizing conversations about what matters most to people. This compelling conversation on reframing end of life care also covers how to bring wonder, joy, and hope into end-of-life conversations, and End Well's work to change how death is portrayed in the media. Mentioned in this episode:End Well If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast
Andrew Archibald, CEO of MEDMIN, breaks down why the UK's private healthcare sector has been stuck in operational chaos — and what he's doing to fix it. Built on a model where NHS consultants moonlight as private practitioners with zero business infrastructure, the system has forced brilliant surgeons to spend Sunday mornings writing their own invoices. MEDMIN steps in as a total practice management partner, handling admin, billing, marketing, and patient relations so doctors can focus on medicine. The results speak for themselves: new-to-practice consultants see 300% income growth within three years. Andrew also makes the case for embracing AI tools as a non-negotiable business move, and shares how MEDMIN is scaling toward a UK-wide brand that serves both doctors and patients. Key Takeaways: 3:34 — Curiosity is a professional strategy: Andrew attributes his entire career trajectory to a compulsion to understand how systems work and why they break, which drives him toward roles others avoid. 6:08 — COVID exposed a healthcare system already running on empty: the UK's waiting lists doubled during the pandemic and have never fully recovered because the NHS was underfunded through the 2010s before the crisis hit. 15:17 — The problem is personal: top-tier surgeons are spending Sunday mornings reconciling invoices instead of recovering, and that hidden administrative tax is the core inefficiency MEDMIN was built to eliminate. 24:42 — The ROI of removing friction is measurable: consultants who join MEDMIN as new-to-practice doctors grow their earnings by 300% between year one and year three. Quote of the Show (19:21):"People have just learnt to put up with inadequate systems. The healthcare system in the UK is very poor at investing in technology, in the administrative things that make the whole thing get better. And it's about time to say: stop accepting it." — Andrew Archibald Join our Anti-PR newsletter where we’re keeping a watchful and clever eye on PR trends, PR fails, and interesting news in tech so you don't have to. You're welcome. Want PR that actually matters? Get 30 minutes of expert advice in a fast-paced, zero-nonsense session from Karla Jo Helms, a veteran Crisis PR and Anti-PR Strategist who knows how to tell your story in the best possible light and get the exposure you need to disrupt your industry. Click here to book your call: https://info.jotopr.com/free-anti-pr-eval Ways to connect with Andrew Archibald:LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-archibald-363050aCompany Website: https://medmin.co.uk How to get more Disruption/Interruption: Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=disruption+%2F+interuuptionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Farla Efros is a senior retail executive and former CEO who built and sold companies before facing her own breast cancer diagnosis. She brings that same operational mindset into a healthcare system that expects patients to manage complexity while they are at their most vulnerable.She was on a client call in Spain when the diagnosis came through. A clear mammogram had missed it. An MRI caught it. Within hours, she was ordering binders, building a plan, and structuring her treatment like a turnaround strategy. Every appointment became a meeting. Every doctor faced an agenda with dozens of questions. She paid out of pocket for PET scans that were denied and hired a third party firm to validate her treatment path when her own doctors resisted outside input. The conversation tracks what happens when a high-functioning executive enters a system built on delay, denial, and fragmentation. Efros describes negotiating for tests, managing physician relationships, and assembling an “executive board” of advisors across conventional and alternative care. She calls the experience “the worst client I ever had,” exposing how administrative burden shifts onto patients and families.The tension sits between what worked for her and what is inaccessible to most. Her approach requires confidence, time, and fluency in navigating power. The system rewards that behavior while quietly failing patients who cannot replicate it. Insurance coverage still left her paying out of pocket. Doctors pushed standard protocols over precision medicine. Survivorship offered little support once treatment ended.This episode examines how cancer care operates as a series of incentives rather than a coordinated system, and why patients are forced to become operators just to get through it.RELATED LINKSFarla EfrosFarla Efros on LinkedInF*ck CancerF*ck Cancer on AmazonAccentureCTOAMPULL QUOTES“I treated cancer like the worst client I ever had.”“They wouldn't approve the test, so I paid for it myself.”“Every appointment was a negotiation.”FEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Send us Fan MailPeople trust their doctor. They do not trust the bill they get afterward.In this clip from our episode “Why Healthcare Prices Are Like Fight Club”, host John Driscoll and Mark Cuban, Co-Founder of Cost Plus Drugs, break down why pricing transparency, not just lower prices, was the real reason Cost Plus Drugs earned the trust of patients across the country.Listen to the full episode here
Sixty percent of Medicare's mental health workforce is made up of clinical social workers — and they're being reimbursed at 75 cents on the dollar compared to clinical psychologists. That's not a footnote. That's a workforce crisis hiding in plain sight. In this episode, Jamie sits down with Dr. Jimmy Williamson — social worker, NASW Vice President, and seasoned Capitol Hill advocate — for one of the most practical, non-partisan conversations about politics and healthcare you'll hear anywhere. Jimmy just returned from a full day of lobbying on the Hill, and he breaks down exactly what that looks like, what's at stake, and why every healthcare employee — not just the C-suite — has a role to play. You'll hear: Why clinical social workers are fighting to move their Medicare reimbursement rate from 75% to 85% — and how it would actually save Medicare $420 million How the Department of Education's reclassification of nursing and social work is quietly capping the next generation's borrowing limits and shrinking the workforce pipeline The Farm Bill's Hot Foods Act and why a working single mother's ability to buy a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store is a healthcare issue Why politicians want to hear from constituents — and how to get your voice in front of the right people without spending hours doing it The first move anyone can make this week to stop being a bystander and start being a citizen This episode won't make you angry. It'll make you want to make a phone call. www.YourHealth.Org
While Elsevier's most recent Clinician of the Future Report shows increasing adoption of artificial intelligence tools among physicians and nurses, and optimism that they will improve quality of care in the future, a majority raised concerns about trust and reliability. To increase the level of trust, 60% said transparent citations of evidence-based and peer-reviewed research will be key. How to provide that transparency is our focus today as Raise the Line host Lindsey Smith welcomes Elsevier colleagues Rhett Alden and Raman Kaur to guide us through the complexities involved, including the concept of traceability and what role it plays in how AI tools such as Elsevier's ClinicalKey AI are built and deployed. “Traceability changes the confidence that a clinician has in an AI tool so that they aren't trusting the AI, they're trusting the underlying evidence they're consuming from the AI-assisted platform,” says Raman, who brings years of experience as a primary care practitioner to her work. It's also important, Rhett adds, to provide additional information, pulled from both the clinician's query and the patient's medical record, to inform clinical thinking. “ClinicalKey AI can be more than a response engine by establishing a larger context to provide a more precise answer for that individual patient.” In this thought-provoking discussion, these experts also provide insights on: Mitigating bias in AI results; Using AI responsibly with sustainability in mind; What type of clinician will benefit most from AI Mentioned in this episode: ClinicalKey AI Clinician of the Future Report If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/podcast
In 2020, Emily Mendenhall drove from Washington, DC to Okoboji, Iowa, a town of 800 that swells to 200,000 every summer, and walked into a pandemic that looked nothing like the one dominating national headlines. Inside gas stations and bars, masks marked you as an outsider. In one stop, a man told her family they would not be served if they kept theirs on. Her 6 year old daughter cried, confused. Mendenhall, a medical anthropologist at Georgetown University, did what she always does. She started asking questions. Over months, she interviewed neighbors, former classmates, and local officials, including her own brother in law who helped lead the local COVID response. The result became Unmasked, a case study in how community identity, economics, and politics shaped public health decisions in real time. That work led directly into her latest book, Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVID, where she tracks a much older problem. Patients with chronic illness, especially women, often fail to meet medicine's demand for proof. Without a clear diagnosis, they lose access to care, insurance coverage, and legitimacy. Mendenhall argues that long COVID did not create this failure. It exposed it.This conversation centers on how healthcare systems reward certainty and punish complexity. Long COVID clinics send patients to 17 specialists without resolution. Insurance structures require diagnoses that many conditions cannot provide. Medical training still struggles to integrate trauma, mental health, and chronic disease into a coherent model of care.Mendenhall brings lived experience into the conversation. After COVID, she dealt with months of fatigue and escalating anxiety that altered her baseline health. She does not claim the label of long COVID, but she understands how quickly the system becomes harder to navigate once symptoms stop fitting clean categories. The stakes are not theoretical. In the United States, access to healthcare, disability benefits, and treatment still depends on whether a condition can be measured, coded, and reimbursed. For millions living with invisible illness, the burden of proof becomes the illness itself.RELATED LINKSEmily MendenhallInvisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVIDScience PoliticsGeorgetown UniversityFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
At 25, Jace Yawnick was building a career in health and wellness sales, chasing growth, status, and the usual young adult fantasy of getting somewhere fast. Then his body stopped cooperating. Fatigue turned into chemotherapy. The diagnosis was primary mediastinal B cell non Hodgkin lymphoma, and the rest of his life split into before and after. Now in remission, he talks about cancer the way people actually live it, not the way nonprofits package it. He gets into survivorship, mental health, young adult isolation, and the deadening absurdity of prior authorization. One of the sharpest parts of the conversation lands on a simple American insult disguised as policy: treatment innovation means very little when insurance can still deny the scan, the drug, or the next step. Jace has seen that firsthand, including during routine monitoring after active treatment. This episode tracks what happens when a young cancer patient becomes a public voice and refuses to play mascot. It covers oncology, insurance, remission, advocacy, and the long mental hangover that follows survival. It also names the part too many institutions dodge: the system works great right up until it doesn't, and when it fails, patients get handed the bill, the panic, and a camera if they want anyone to care. RELATED LINKSJace Beats CancerJace Yawnick on LinkedImConquer Cancer ArticleCURE Today ArticlePyure BrandsFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.