Podcast appearances and mentions of Seema Verma

While at the Oracle CloudWorld conference, I had a chance to sit down with Seema Verma, Executive Vice President and General Manager at Oracle Health.  In this wide ranging interview, we cover a broad range of topics starting with her journey from CMS to now one of the leaders of Oracle Health.  Plus, she shares the vision for Oracle Health going forward. Given we're a couple years into Oracle Health's acquisition of Cerner, I wanted to check-in with Verma on the progress they've made merging Cerner into Oracle Health.  Plus, I ask her what long time Cerner users should know about what's happening at Oracle Health and what they can expect going forward.  She talks more about their new EHR and that more details will be shared at the Oracle Health Summit later this month. Learn more about Oracle Health: https://www.oracle.com/health/ Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Seema Verma, EVP and GM of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, discusses her transition from healthcare policy to technology, and how Oracle is tackling key industry challenges – from interoperability to AI and cybersecurity. She shares her vision for connecting the healthcare ecosystem and her hopes for the responsible use of AI in patient care.This episode is sponsored by Oracle.

Meet the Guests:Dora Mills, M.D. the Chief Health Improvement Officer of MaineHealth. Seema Verma, the former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. And Denise Cardo, M.D. She is the director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Key Insights:One of the many lessons to learn from the COVID-19 pandemic is the value and importance of building partnerships. Public-Private Partnerships. Maine achieved high levels of vaccination through partnerships. Companies like L.L. Bean lent employees to staff vaccine clinics. Additionally, breweries and restaurants across the state hosted clinics, offered free beer and food to those who got vaccinated.Adaptive Collaborations. CMS provided several waivers to help healthcare systems during the pandemic. Seema describes the process as iterative, with constant feedback between the different stakeholders.Know, Like, Trust. For creating effective partnerships, Dr. Cardo recommends setting common goals and clear expectations. Develop trust and understanding before a crisis occurs, so that uncertainty can be faced with teamwork. Relevant Links:Check out Dr. Mills' full episodeCheck out Seema Verma's full episodeCheck out Dr. Cardo's full episode

In the uncertainty of today's healthcare industry, we must continue to persevere towards our true north.  The moral imperative to improve the quality of care for patients through better care coordination, including those are underserved, can only be achieved by the realities of the digital age. This transformation will require the medical profession to create a modernized Hippocratic Oath that extends to the broader health ecosystem. The proliferation of interoperable technology and digital health tools has the potential to catalyze value-based care delivery innovation and transparency. However, it must come along with an ethical commitment to guide data sharing, integration, and technical processes. True North will ultimately prevail in connecting value-based networks to those most in need; however, it will take continued progress in amplifying the demand signal for value-based care. On the Race to Value this week, you will hear from one of the top healthcare revolutionaries in our country.  We are honored to bring you, the one and only,Aneesh Chopra - the first chief technology officer of the United States who was appointed by President Obama and the Co-Founder and President of CareJourney. In this episode, you will be party to a powerful conversation on the promise of the digital age in healthcare.  You will learn about how health policy and innovation is ushering in a new era of data flow and interoperability, consumer-driven innovation, price transparency, and clinically-relevant analytics for the future of value-based care delivery transformation. Aneesh Chopra also explains why he feels so strongly why ACO REACH will help us reach True North. Episode Bookmarks: 01:30 Introduction to Aneesh Chopra -  - the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States and Co-Founder and President of CareJourney 04:00 The need for the medical profession to galvanize around the immense opportunity to transform care delivery by embracing the realities of digital age. 06:30 Why do we need a digital Hippocratic Oath to transform medicine? 08:00 The gap between patients being seen on a given day and the 98% of the patient panel that are not. 08:30 Designing database queries and algorithms to Identify patients in need of care. 09:30 Creating a compact between analytics communities and physicians to ensure patients are getting appropriate care. 10:45 The self-imposed barriers to technical and semantic interoperability that come from our current FFS model. 12:00 How the HITECH Act manifested in technology gaps, despite widespread EHR penetration. 14:00 “The delay in the demand signal for value-based care resulted in the de-prioritization in the market for interoperability.” 15:30 The regulatory goals of the 21st Century Cures Act to scale interoperability and eliminate information blocking. 16:45 Cures Act regulatory emphasis on population health is now reaching the market. 17:00 FHIR Interoperability Standards will ultimately deliver on the promise of population health through widespread data exchange and API-led connectivity. 18:00 Ensuring value-based care organizations a “plug and play” approach to unify electronic health records. 19:00 The promise of widespread data exchange in value-based care delivery and how it parallels with the consumer banking industry. 20:30 Similarities between Dodd-Frank Act (banking sector) and the Cures Act (healthcare sector) in regard to consumer data protections. 22:30 JPMorgan cutting off access to Mint because screen-scraping was far less secure than API connectivity. 25:00 If value-based care became the dominant delivery model, the industry wouldn't need so much regulatory oversight. 26:00 The Cures Act is beginning to reverse FFS-driven market failures in order to create a much more rational economic model. 27:00 Referencing the opinion piece in STAT by Aneesh Chopra and Seema Verma about the new price transparency regulations in healthcare.

Jacob sits down with Seema Verma to talk about rapid policymaking during COVID, recent drug pricing legislation, her reflections on her time at CMS and what areas of tech she's most excited about.

Meet Seema Verma:Seema Verma serves on the board of directors for Lumeris, LifeStance Health, WellSky, and Monogram Health. Previously, Seema served as the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). She was also the Founder, President, and CEO of SVC. Seema received an undergraduate degree in Life Sciences from the University of Maryland, and a Master's in Public Health from John Hopkins UniversityKey Insights:From her work at the state level in Indiana to the national stage at CMS, Seema Verma has established herself as one of the nation's preeminent health policy leaders.Determining Priorities. While CMS administrator, Seema focused on issues that impacted large groups of stakeholders and solved multiple problems at once. For example, addressing interoperability improves quality of care and decreases costs. (12:34)Good Business Practices for Government. Under Seema, CMS reorganized to increase efficiency. The regional offices were better integrated with the national team in terms of communication and workflow, and reorganized by centers of excellence rather than location. (19:12)Advice from a Mentor. No matter the job, there will be some level of dysfunction. Successful people are able to navigate an environment, regardless of the hurdles, to accomplish goals and make the most of the experience. (25:52)This episode is hosted by Sanjula Jain, Ph.D. She is a member of the Advisory Council for Her Story, co-founder of Think Medium, and the SVP, Market Strategy and Chief Research Officer at Trilliant Health.Relevant Links:Former Medicare leader Seema Verma joins board of health tech firm LumerisOne-On-One With Trump's Medicare and Medicaid Chief: Seema VermaHealthLeaders Women in Healthcare Leadership Podcast: Seema Verma

Your medical records don't make pleasant bedtime reading. And not only are they inscrutable—they're often mutually (and deliberately) incompatible, meaning different hospitals and doctor's offices can't share them across institutional boundaries. Harry's guest this week, Ardy Arianpour, is trying to fix all that. He's the co-founder and CEO of Seqster, a San Diego company that's spent the last five years working on ways to pull patient data from all the places where it lives, smooth out all the formatting differences, and create a unified picture that patients themselves can understand and use.The way Ardy explains it, Seqster “smashes the data siloes.” Meaning, the company can combine EMR data, gene sequence data, wearable device data, pharmacy data, and insurance claims data all in one place. The big goal guiding Seqster, he says, is to put the patient back at the center of healthcare.Please rate and review The Harry Glorikian Show on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:1. Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. 2. Navigate to The Harry Glorikian Show podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.3. Scroll down to find the subhead titled "Ratings & Reviews."4. Under one of the highlighted reviews, select "Write a Review."5. Next, select a star rating at the top — you have the option of choosing between one and five stars. 6. Using the text box at the top, write a title for your review. Then, in the lower text box, write your review. Your review can be up to 300 words long.7. Once you've finished, select "Send" or "Save" in the top-right corner. 8. If you've never left a podcast review before, enter a nickname. Your nickname will be displayed next to any reviews you leave from here on out. 9. After selecting a nickname, tap OK. Your review may not be immediately visible.That's it! Thanks so much.Full TranscriptHarry Glorikian: Hello. I'm Harry Glorikian. Welcome to The Harry Glorikian Show, the interview podcast that explores how technology is changing everything we know about healthcare. Artificial intelligence. Big data. Predictive analytics. In fields like these, breakthroughs are happening way faster than most people realize. If you want to be proactive about your own health and the health of your loved ones, you'll need to learn everything you can about how medicine is changing and how you can take advantage of all the new options.Explaining this approaching world is the mission of my new book, The Future You. And it's also our theme here on the show, where we bring you conversations with the innovators, caregivers, and patient advocates who are transforming the healthcare system and working to push it in positive directions.If you've ever gotten a copy of your medical files from your doctor or hospital, you probably know these records don't make pleasant bedtime reading. They aren't designed to be clear or user-friendly for patients. In fact, it's usually just the opposite.The data itself is highly technical. And on top of that, there's the inscrutable formatting, which is dictated by whatever electronic medical record or “EMR” system your provider happens to use. But the problem isn't just that EMR data is incomprehensible.It's also that different EMRs are often incompatible with each other.So if you're being treated by multiple providers, it can be really tricky to share your data across institutional boundaries. That's why medicine is one of the last industries that still uses old-fashioned fax machines. Because sometimes a fax is the only way to send the data back and forth.But my guest today is trying to fix all that.His name is Ardy Arianpour, and he's the co-founder and CEO of Seqster.It's a company in San Diego that's spent the last five years working on ways to pull patient data from all the places where it lives, smooth out all the formatting differences, and create a unified picture that patients themselves can understand and use.The way Ardy explains it, Seqster quote-unquote “smashes the data siloes.” Meaning, the company can combine EMR data, gene sequence data, wearable device data, pharmacy data, and insurance claims data all in one place.The big goal guiding Seqster, according to Ardy, is to put the patient back at the center of healthcare.At the moment, however, consumers can't sign up for the service directly. Seqster's actual customers are players from inside the healthcare industry. For example, a life science companies might hire Seqster to help them make the experience of participating in a clinical trial more user friendly for patients.Or a health plan might use a Seqster dashboard to get patients more involved in their own care.Seqster did let me do a test run on my own medical data as part of my research for this interview. And I was impressed by how quickly it pulled in data that normally lives in a bunch of separate places. I'm hoping Seqster and other companies in this space will continue to make progress.Because, frankly, I think poor patient access to health data and the lack of interoperability between EMRs are two of the biggest factors holding back improvements in healthcare quality.If we can finally get those two things right, I think it can help unlock the data-driven healthcare revolution that I describe in my new book, The Future You. Which, by the way, is out now in paperback and ebook format at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.When we spoke back in September, Ardy and I talked about better EMRs and many other things. And now here's our conversation.Harry Glorikian: Ardy, welcome to the show. So, it's good to have you here, and you know, for everybody who doesn't know your story and the story of the company, I'd love to, you know, start covering some basics like, you know, the when, the what, the how, the why. What's the founding story of Seqster and what was the problems that you were really trying to go out there and solve when you started the company in 2016?Ardy Arianpour: Thanks so much, Harry. Always been a fan. I think we've known each other for quite some time, but it's been a long time since we've ran into each other since the genomic and precision medicine days. So great to see you. I hope you and your family are well and yeah, look, Seqster is super special and there's a secret story, I guess, that never has been told. It really starts way beyond 2016 when I founded the company. So I spent 15 plus years in DNA sequencing, next gen sequencing genomic market. And during that time in the 2000s to early 2010s, I was fortunate enough of being part of some amazing endeavors and organizations that allowed my team and I to take some risk. And when you take risk, when you're in biotech, pharma, precision medicine, genomics, bioinformatics, you learn new things that most people don't learn because you're you're you're, you know, trailblazing, I guess you could say. And we were able to do that back with one of my old companies where we were able to launch the first clinical exome test, launch the first BRCA cancer panels, launch the first next gen sequencing panels in a CLIA lab. Ardy Arianpour: And then, you know, it wasn't about the testing. It was all about the data, and we didn't realize that till later and we kept on seeing that wow genome data is really only one set of all the other data pieces, right? I think the genomics folks, me being a genomics guy, I guess you could say, for a decade and a half, we're so forward thinking that we forget about the simple things within science, and we never really thought, Oh, collect your medical data and pair it with your genomic data. We never really thought there would be a wearable out there. That data was going to be siloed, too. We never thought there was going to be, you know, many different medical devices and instruments that would be Bluetooth and sensor enabled, where there would be data that would be siloed. Claims data, pharmacy data. Never even crossed our minds. So, you know, when you put this all together, my inspiration with Seqster was actually really simple. And when I founded the company, I wanted to combine the genomic data with your EMR medical data as well as your wearable data, because in 2016, the tailwinds of those other, you know, services was really taken off.Harry Glorikian: Right. Totally understand it. And you know, as we were talking about before I hit record, it's like it was funny because I was just talking to another company that's working on NLP and they're able to look at, you know, papers and see drugs being used in different, you know, medical conditions. And then they figured out, well, they needed to tap into the unstructured data of a medical record to really, like, add the next layer of value to it. So, you know, there's a lot of activity going on about there. But how do you guys, how do you, how do your co-founders, you know, Zhang and Dana play into like the science, the technology and what's the sort of angle that you guys have taken to solve this problem? Or what's your idea on how to fix it? I'm not saying it's been solved yet, because that would be a Herculean task in and of itself. But how are you guys approaching it that? Is a little different than the. You know, maybe any any of your other you would you would consider anybody else out there, the working on this?Ardy Arianpour: Yeah, look for us we spent a lot of time understanding the power of data. But how what makes Seqster different is no one knows the power of the patient better than us. We've spent time with our platform with, you know, tens of thousands of patients: rare disease patients, oncology patients, parents, autoimmune disease patients, patients that have that are seeing functional medicine folks. Patients that were having issues sharing data through telemedicine, clinical trial patients. All these sorts of patients are very different. At Seqster we focused on putting the patient at the center of health care in order to smash all the data silos from their medical institutions to their wearable technology that they wear to the DNA testing that they get and even maybe a COVID test or a vaccine. How do you bring a 360-degree patient view? And you know, you tried the system, so I think you got a small teaser of how we can do that and we've really cracked this large problem. It is Herculean, I believe, and a lot of people believe because it's interoperability, it is the number one problem in all of health care.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, I mean, I had the pleasure of trying it and imported my data and was able to see, you know, individual pieces. I mean, I made some suggestions on what might make it easier for me to hone in in different areas, right, and have the system highlighting different things. But I guess each data stream is being brought in separately and then at some point you're going to create a master dashboard above it, because now each one is separate from when I go into each record, right, When I go into my medical record, it gives me one set of data with my lab results and everything else and the notes, and then it pulls in my wearable data separately that I have to look at, right? So you've got to look at it separately. It doesn't. Then I guess the next step would be creating a master sort of view of how everything would look in a sort of I don't want to say integrated, but at least a timeline view of the world. But. You know, following up on the the sort of the what question, you know, how do you sort of combine data from different EMRs, tests, apps, devices in a sort of scalable, repeatable way? I mean, it seems like to date, that's been a hugely manual process, and I can imagine you could figure out every provider's ontology and then create a table that shows what's equivalent to. And but you know, there's got to be sort of a translation scheme that would be required that that provides some constant readjustment as the main providers tweak and evolve their own systems, right? Because if the provider is tweaking their system, your system has then got to adapt to changes that are happening in that end. So how are you guys managing all that craziness?Ardy Arianpour: Yeah. So I think it all and you hit on so many points, I'll try and cover them if I remember them all. Look, the number one thing for us is we can connect to any data source. It doesn't matter. And you saw it. And just before I continue, just tell the audience how fast, how fast, how long did it take for your data to be populated after you connected it?Harry Glorikian: Oh, it was. I mean, yeah, as soon as I created it, I could see that it was, you know, it was digesting and then populating. And, you know, I was just I was watching it as a matter of fact, when I was on the phone with your person, that was helping me. Yeah. At first I said, Oh, it's not there. And then a couple of seconds later, I'm like, Oh no, it's showing up, right? So it was happening in, I don't want to say real time, but it was happening as as we were watching it evolve, right? It was sort of it was. It was almost like watching time lapse.Ardy Arianpour: And that's actually a great way. That's a great way to actually describe it. We created the time lapse of all your health data. Now let's get to the what and the how. So we connect to any health data source. The patient is fully in control. You own your data, you control it. It's all consented by you. We don't own your data and we connect to every single medical record. And that's huge that we've achieved nationwide coverage. We didn't know what data you have, but we're you're able to connect to it. Why? Because our team, which our engineering team gets all the credit for six years now, almost since founding of the company we have written, I don't know, seven million lines of code, that standardizes and harmonizes all of the ICD 9, ICD 10, SNOMED codes and every single lab result to every single wearable terminology, from biking to cycling to, you know, you name it, VitaminDB, you know, characterized in 40 different ways. You know, we're harnessing data to improve patient lives at scale. We built it for scale because you can't do it by the traditional method of just faxes and PDFs. Now, you know, being able to do that is not a bad thing.Ardy Arianpour: We can bring that service into our platform as well. It's already integrated, but that type of service takes 30 to 60 days and it's static data. It's not real time right now. If Harry goes, I don't know, you go on a bike ride and you fall and you go to the E.R. and you had whatever data connected automatically in your sister portal, it'll be populated without you even touching Seqster. That's how our real time data works and another way that we're totally differentiated than anything else in the marketplace. I was never a fan of API businesses because they're just data in data out. I truly wanted us to create a patient engagement platform, a PEP right, or a patient relationship management system, what I call a PRM instead of a CRM. And that's what we created with Seqster. So that is beyond an API, beyond just data. We're visualizing the data, as you saw. We really nailed the longitudinal health record or the individualized health record. And I think it's, I always say this, health data is medicine. The reason why it's medicine is because our platform has saved patient lives.Harry Glorikian: Ardy, how do you, how are you handling the free form notes, right, because I noticed that I could look at all my notes, but they weren't necessarily, it wasn't pulling from the note and sort of making sense of it. I mean, I could look at all of it and it was all in one place. But the the system wasn't necessarily processing it, sort of. I was talking to Jeff Felton from ConcertAI and they do a lot of sort of, their big thing is the NLP that sort of tries to choose chew through that, which is not trivial, you know, yesterday today, context matters in health care.Ardy Arianpour: Yeah. Look, if we created the the the Tesla of health care, let's just say, right, we're we're changing the game. From static data to real time data. Ok. Well, you're talking about is, are you going to create a helicopter as well? Right, OK. And all right. So, no, we're not going to go create the helicopter. Is there going to be an electric helicopter by Tesla? There's no market for that, right? So that's why they're not doing it now. I'm not saying there's not a market for NLP. It's just the fact that we'll go ahead and partner with a third party NLP provider. And we already have we have like four of them and they all have their strengths and weaknesses because it's not a one size fits all thing. And you know, we can already run OCR, you know, over the free text and pull certain ontology information out. And then, you know, when you partner with an NLP company, once you have a system that can capture data, you could do anything. So people always ask me, Are you going to get into AI? It's just the buzzword. There's a million A.I. companies. What have they really done right in health care? It's not really there. Maybe for imaging they've done some things, but it's more of a buzzword. AI only becomes valuable if you have a system, Harry, that can instantly populate data, then you can run some great artificial intelligence things on it. So NLP, AI, OCR, all those things are just many tools that can add. Now, in your experience, you only got to see about 5 percent of the power of Seqster, and that probably blew you away, even though it was five percent of the power. Because you probably never -- I don't know, you tell me, have you ever been able to collect your data that quickly? It took, what, less than a minute or two?Harry Glorikian: Yeah, well, thank God, I don't have a lot of data. So, you know, just when I tap into my my health care provider, you know, my data is there and it's funny, I always tell people, being a not exciting patient is a really good thing in one way, and it's a really bad thing because you can't play with all the data. But you know, like even when I did my genome, it's an extremely boring genome.Ardy Arianpour: My question is it's not about it being exciting or not, because thankfully you're not a chronically ill patients. But imagine if you were and how this helps, but take a step back. I'm just asking the speed, yes, and the quality of the presentation of the data that seeks to you. It was less than what hundred seconds?Harry Glorikian: Yeah. Well, it was very quick. And I've already it's funny because I texted my doctor and I was like, I need to talk to you about a couple of these lab results that look out of out of norm, right? And they weren't anything crazy. But I'm just curious like, you know, how do I get them in norm? I'm just I'm always trying to be in in the normal band, if I can be.Ardy Arianpour: So it's interesting you say that because as a healthy individual. You know, and even a chronically ill patient, it doesn't matter. The best way to actually QC data is through visualization, and this is what this is. That's foundational to interoperability. So we hit on semantic and structural interoperability with our, you know, backend engine that we've created to harmonize and standardize the data. We built many different types of retrievers and then we parse that data and then it's standardized and harmonizes it. But that visualization, which some people call the Tableau of health data, you know that we've created when they see it, is really, we got to give the credit to the patients. We had so many patients, healthy ones and unhealthy ones that told us exactly how they want it to look. We did this on the genomic data, we did this on the wearable data. We did this on the medical device data and we have some great new features that can superimpose your clinical data with your fitness data on our integrated view and timeline.Harry Glorikian: Oh, that? See, now that would be, you know, another level of value, even for a healthy patient, right to be able to see that in an integrated way. I made a suggestion, I think that when a panel shows up is. You know, highlight the ones that are out of Norm very quickly, as opposed to having to look at, you know, the panel of 20 to find the one that's out of whack, just either color them differently or reorient them so that they're easier to find. But those are simple changes just from a UI perspective. But so. How would you describe that that Seqster creates value and say translates that into revenue, right? I'm just trying to figure out like, what's the revenue model for you guys? I know that you're I can actually, I'm not even sure if I can sign up for it myself. I would probably have to do it through a system if I remember your revenue model correctly. But how do you guys generate revenue from what you're doing?Ardy Arianpour: Yeah, I'll share another secret on your show here from the founding of Seqster. My dream was to empower seven billion people on our little mothership here called Earth to have all their health data in one place. And I had a direct to consumer model in 2016. The market wasn't really ready for it, number one. Number two, it was going to cost $500 million worth of marketing to just get the message out for people to know that it exists. So long story short, in 2016, you know, when I founded the company, not that many people wanted to talk to us. They thought we were just like nuts to go after this problem. 2017, we got some calls from some investors, we raised some great seed funding after I personally put in some money in in 2016 to get the company going. And then in 2018, I got a call from Bill Gates and that was when everything changed. Bill called and wanted to meet in person, I was supposed to get 30 minutes with him. And the reason why he called is because our first beachhead was with Alzheimer's patients. My grandmother, both my grandmothers, passed away due to Alzheimer's disease. Both my maternal and paternal grandmothers and being a caregiver for my mom's mom and being very close to her since she raised me, I learned a lot about a multigenerational health record, so I actually filed patents in 2016 on a multigenerational health record because I wanted to have my grandma's data, my mom's data, my data, and be able to pass it on to research as well as to generations down my family.Ardy Arianpour: Long story short there, Bill gets all the credit for telling me after I showed him our platform, "You got to take this enterprise. You guys built something that Google Health failed at and Microsoft Vault Health Vault failed at." And it's funny we're talking about this. Look, Google just dismantled their health division again. Why? Because tech companies just don't get it. They have a lot of money. They have a lot of power. They've got a lot of smart people. But they they they don't know where, I'll give you an example. It's like a tourist with a lot of money coming into a city. You don't know where the really good local bar is, right? Why is that? You don't know where the really good, you know, slice of pizza is. You're going to go to the regular joints that everyone finds on TripAdvisor and whatever. You know your friends told you, but if you're a local, you know where to get the authentic cocktails and the authentic, you know, drinks and food. Why? Because you've lived and breathed it in the city. So we've lived and breathed it right. And so we know what not to do. It's not about knowing what to do in health care or in genomics or in biotech. It's actually knowing what you shouldn't be doing. Yeah.Harry Glorikian: And knowing I got to tell you, there's some problems where I'm like, OK, I know exactly who to call for that problem, because there aren't, you know, they're not falling off trees in that particular problem. There's a small handful of people that understand that problem well enough that they can come in and sort of surgically help you solve that problem. And you can have all the money in the world and have all the smart people you want. Doesn't mean they're going to be able to solve that particular problem, especially in health care, because it's so arcane.Ardy Arianpour: And it's getting, you know, this is a problem that is growing like cancer, interoperability. Just on this 20 minute conversation with you it has grown by hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you know why? Because data is being siloed.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. And I think, look, I've always I've said this on, you know, whatever show or and I've actually I've written letters to Congress. You know, I think this this needs to be mandated because expecting the large EMR companies to do anything is a waste of time. They're not going to do it on their own if their feet are not put to the fire and it changes. And honestly, I believe that if anything will stop the innovation of health care or slow it down is the EMR systems. You know, if you don't have the data, you can't do the work.Ardy Arianpour: Absolutely. But you know what people don't understand. And not to go off that tangent, but I'll get back to the business model in a second to answer that question because I just recalled in my mind here that I didn't answer that. Look, people don't understand that at least the EMR companies, even though they're like Darth Vader, you know, they needed. They've put some foundation there at least. If that wasn't there, we would be in a much worse situation here, right?Harry Glorikian: Correct, but if Satya Nadella hadn't really changed Microsoft, really redone it right, it wouldn't be the company it is now, and I think they [the EMR companies] are just back in the dark ages.Ardy Arianpour: Of course, I totally agree. I'm surprised, actually. Microsoft, as an example, didn't come up with their own EMR system and launch it to the hospitals to go, compete with the servers and all scripts and Epics of the world. If I was Microsoft, that's what I would do. I would have enough money in power, know exactly what to do. I would take a system like Seqster and I would explode it in a good way and be the good guys and have it completely open source and open network. But that's a whole cocktail conversation if anyone's listening on the on the podcast that wants to talk about that. Give me a call or shoot me an email or find me on LinkedIn.Ardy Arianpour: Let me go back to the business model real quick so people understand. So direct to consumer was what I wanted to do. We built it for the consumer, for the patients. It was the smartest and dumbest thing I ever did. Let's go to why it was the dumbest thing first, because it was really, really hard. It was the smartest because we would not be where we are today. You wouldn't have called me to talk on your podcast and all these other great, you know, amazing people that want to hear about how we're, you know, cracking the code on interoperability now and changing the health care system, changing clinical trials, changing decentralized trials with our system.Ardy Arianpour: Why? Well, it's because our system was built by patients. Right, and so it's a patient centric, real time, real world data platform that layers in engagements for both the providers, the payers, the pharma companies and any other enterprise that white labels our platform. We have both iOS and Android SDK and Web available. It gets fully branded. We're the Intel Inside with the Salesforce.com business model. It's a Software as a Service service that we offer to enterprises. Patients never pay for the service. And we do give VIP codes to chronically ill patients and VIPs, you know, journalists, podcasters and to be honest, anyone who emails me that wants to try it. I've been always giving on that. That costs us time and money, and I'm happy to do it because it's my way of giving back to the community and health care because I know our team and I have built a system that have saved lives. It's been covered by the news multiple times.Harry Glorikian: So, so in essence, a large provider comes, buys the access to the system and then offers it to its patient population to utilize to aggregate all this information, right? How can the platform stay patient centric if the patients aren't directly paying for it?Ardy Arianpour: Ok, very simple. All of these enterprises in health care, whether that's Big Pharma, right, or Big Oayer from Pfizer to Cigna, to United Healthcare group to Humana to even Amazon, right, to other tech companies, they all want to go down a patient centric way. It's just what's happening. You know, I've been talking about this since 2016 because we pioneered patient centric interoperability. That's what we did. That's what Seqster did. That's that's what we set out to do. And we did it. Some, you know, a lot of people say they can do it. Very few actually. Do we fit in that model now, right? And you had the experience yourself. And I think the first time I saw patient centric ads was. 2020. No, sorry. Yeah, 2020, JP Morgan Health Care Conference in January, just three months before the lockdowns and the pandemic started. It was the first time I went to Johnson & Johnson's afterparty in downtown San Francisco. And saw a huge banner saying, you know, blah blah blah, patient centricity. It's the 22nd century, you know, whatever. So they add a bunch of ads that were all patient centric, and I looked to my co-founder, Dana, and I'm like, Look at this, these guys finally caught on. I wonder if they've been, because we've been in discussions with a lot of these folks, long story short, it's not because of Seqster, I think it's just the market was headed that way. We were so far ahead of the market and there was no tailwinds. Now it is all there. And the pandemic afterwards accelerated digital health, as I say, by 7 to 10 years.[musical interlude]Harry Glorikian: Let's pause the conversation for a minute to talk about one small but important thing you can do, to help keep the podcast going. And that's to make it easier for other listeners discover the show by leaving a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.All you have to do is open the Apple Podcasts app on your smartphone, search for The Harry Glorikian Show, and scroll down to the Ratings & Reviews section. Tap the stars to rate the show, and then tap the link that says Write a Review to leave your comments. It'll only take a minute, but you'll be doing us a huge favor.And one more thing. If you enjoy hearing from the kinds of innovators and entrepreneurs I talk to on the show, I know you'll like my new book, The Future You: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help You Get Healthier, Stress Less, and Live Longer.It's a friendly and accessible tour of all the ways today's information technologies are helping us diagnose diseases faster, treat them more precisely, and create personalized diet and exercise programs to prevent them in the first place.The book is out in print and ebook format from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Just go to either site and search for The Future You by Harry Glorikian. Thanks. And now, back to the show.[musical interlude]Harry Glorikian: So the platform combines EHR, genetic, and fitness data, so. Why did you start with those three?Ardy Arianpour: So we started with those three, and I'll get to that, but we also do pharmacy, social determinants of health, and claims data as well. So we've added three other very large pillars. We can connect to any data source. We've created a universal interoperability platform that's patient centric that brings real time, real world data. And we're just super excited about all the business opportunities and the big pain points that we're solving for enterprise as well as for the patient. Why did we start with genomics, EMR, fitness. Ok. Here's the story. So I named the company Seqster after actually going on a five or six mile run in downtown San Diego, coming back and watching The Italian Job. And in the movie The Italian Job, it's one of my favorite movies, actually. I love that movie. I could just keep watching it over again, the real Napster was in the movie, and I used to be a Napster user where, you know, it was the way of actually pulling all your music and having it kind of in one place. Not really exactly Seqster's model, Seqster's model is is much more legal because it's patient centric. Yes, Napster was kind of stealing the data, right? So long story short, I was trying to think of a company name and I'm like, Oh my God. I don't know what hit me. I'll remember that moment like it was yesterday, Harry. Sequster came up because I had dived into DNA sequencing. We are doing everything that you can on next gen sequencing. And so I was like, Wow! Seqster. S-E-Q-S-T-E-R.Ardy Arianpour: And I went on GoDaddy.com. I bought it for $9.99. And the story started from right then. It was just me and the website. No co-founders, no onee else. I was just thinking, this is a great name. Now, you fast forward to why it's medical data plus genomic data, plus fitness data, to begin with. Well, the genomic data was an easy one because, right, I have 15 years underneath my belt on genomic sequencing technologies and clinical diagnostics and doing a lot of great things for patients in that arena. And I knew that it couldn't just be the genome, right? That's where the medical data came in because we knew and I never knew that we would be able to actually build something that would be able to pull it on together. I knew it was going to be really tough. I didn't think it was going to be this tough. We would have never done it if I knew that it was this tough. It's so great that we did because we solved it. But if you go back and say, "Ardy, would you do it again if you knew it was going to be this tough?" I wouldn't, because it's really, it's not the number two problem, it's the number one problem. And we're just, you know, I'm a peon. I'm a very small dot. I'm not anyone special. I'm just very passionate about solving this problem. That's it. And so is my team, and we got a great team and we've execute on. So great.Ardy Arianpour: And then, you know, it was my idea. I was forcing the wearable and fitness data because I was interested in that. And when the Apple Series One Watch came out, it was very limited, but I saw how it was going to change, you know, just connection of data. And my team being bioinformaticians and from the genomics world were so against bringing it in, I mean, I could show you emails of fights about me saying, get fitness data in here. They were not interested. I forced it on them. And then next thing you knew, clinical trials. One of the biggest things was how do you bring sleeping data and wearable data to x y z data? And that market started taking off. Decentralized trials. You can't even do it if you don't have wearable data. And so everyone started saying, you know, OK, you were right. That was one. I get one big pat on the back. And then we realized we can't be limited to just those three pillars. So what are the next three that we can work on? And that was claims data so we can marry it with the EMR and medical data for payers. And then we ran into pharmacy data. We just signed our first digital pharmacy deal three weeks ago with Paragon Health. And if we didn't have those capabilities, we wouldn't have the business opportunities. And the social determinants of health data being our last integrations comes in very handy for various different use cases.Harry Glorikian: So, three sort of things, right? You know, you combine all this data. What can you learn that wasn't obvious before? How do you translate into better health outcomes for consumers or, say, smarter decision making by consumers, right, so those are two potentially different ways to look at it.Ardy Arianpour: Absolutely. So one word for you: Seqster's longitudinal health record drives health economics, outcomes, research. It drives it.Harry Glorikian: Is that your clients doing that, you doing that, a third party group coming in?Ardy Arianpour: Yeah. We don't do that. We're just the patient engagement and data aggregation operating system that gets implemented for enterprise. And then the enterprise can run the analytics on top of it. They can, you know, take all of the raw data. So we're the only 21 CFR Part 11 compliant platform too. We're fully FDA compliant, Harry. It took us 19 months working with the FDA in order to get our compliance letter in September, October of last year, 2020. So about a year ago. And not only are we HIPAA compliance, not only are we High Trust certified and 256 bit encrypted on all the data that comes in, but having that FDA compliance sets us apart number one. Number two, because we're not an API, we have FHIR fully integrated. We have an API for sharing data, but we're not an API business. We're a SaaS business in health care, in digital health. We can make any company a digital health company. Let's say it's Coca-Cola, and they want to empower their 200,000 employees. They could launch a Coca-Cola Seqster white label in 72 hours to 200,000 employees. That's what we've created. Now, take that and imagine that now within pharma, within precision medicine, within clinical trials, within the payer network, which we're the only platform that's CMS ONC interoperability compliance from the Twenty First Century CURES Act as well.Harry Glorikian: So let me let me see if I... I'm trying to figure out like the angle, right? So I mean, ideally for interoperability, if we talk about the highest level right, you really want to get Epic, Cerner, Kaiser, et cetera, all in a room right? And get them to agree to something. Which is like an act of God.Ardy Arianpour: Some people say, we're doing, you know, it's not my words, but again, a figure of speech, people say, we're doing God's work.Harry Glorikian: But stepping back here for a second, what I see you guys doing is actually giving a platform to the patient and the patient is then connecting the record, not necessarily the systems themselves allowing for interoperability to take place.Ardy Arianpour: So yes, but you're speaking of it because of the direct to consumer experience that you had. The experience we gave you is much different than the experience from the enterprise side. We have a full BI platform built for enterprise as well. Right. And then we have the white label for the enterprise where they launch it to a million patients.Harry Glorikian: That's what, I'm trying to think about that, right? So. Coca-cola says, like, going down your example, Coca-Cola says, "Love to do this. Want to offer it to all of our employees." We make it available to them. But it's the employee that has to push the start button and say, yes, I want my electronic medical record to be integrated into this single platform, right?Ardy Arianpour: But that's that's an example with Coca-Cola. If we're doing something with Big Pharma, they're running a clinical trial for 500,000 COVID patients, as an example. They're getting data collection within one day versus two months, and guess what, we're going to be driving a new possible vaccine. Why? Because of the time it takes for data collection at scale. We empower patients to do that and they get something back. They get to track and monitor all their family health.Harry Glorikian: Right. So so it's sort of, you know, maybe I'm being dense, but sort of the same thing, right? Big Pharma makes it available to the patient. The patient then clicks, Yes, I want to do this and pull in my medical records to make it all everything to be in one place. Yes.Ardy Arianpour: Yes. And I think it's about the fact that we've created a unique data sharing environments. So that's, you know, Harry and Stacey and John and Jennifer and whoever, you know, with whatever use case can share their data and also consent is built with E-consent and digital consent is built within that process. You don't share anything you don't want to share.Harry Glorikian: Right. So let me see if I got this correct. So Seqster is providing a translation and aggregation between systems through a new layer of technology. Not creating true interoperability between systems, right?Ardy Arianpour: Yes. There's a spider web. And. We have untangled the spider beb in the United States of America. We've done all the plumbing and piping to every single health institution, doctor's office clinic, wearable sensor, medical device pharmacy, the list goes on and on, Harry.Harry Glorikian: So let's... Another question. So how does the 21st Century CURES Act of 2016 relate to your business? I think you know you've said something like Seqster has become law, but I'm trying to. I'm trying to understand, what do you mean when you say that?Ardy Arianpour: So when we founded Seqster, we didn't know there was going to be a Twenty First Century CURES Act. We didn't know there was going to be GDPR. We are GDPR compliance before GDPR even came out. Right? Because of our the way that we've structured our business, number one. Number two, how we built the platform by patients for CMS ONC interoperability, you know, final rulings and the Twenty First Century CURES Act, which is, they're synonymous. We worked hand in hand with Don Rucker's team and Seema Verma on the last administration that was doing a lot of the work. Now a wonderful gentleman, Mickey Tripathy has taken the role of ONC, and he understands, you know, the value of Seqster's technology at scale because of his background in interoperability. But what was interesting in the two years that we worked with HHS and CMS was the fact that they used Seqster as the model to build the rules. I was personally part of that, my team was personally part of that, you know, and so we were in private meetings with these folks showing our platform and they were trying to draft certain rules.Ardy Arianpour: We didn't know that they were going to be coming out with rules until they did. And then that's when high level folks in the government told us specifically on calls and also even at Datapalooza when I gave a keynote talk on on Seqster, when Don Rucker did as well right before me. You know, we're sitting in the speaker room and folks are like, "You're going to become law in a month." And this was in February of 2020. March 9th, those rules dropped. I was supposed to give a keynote talk at HL7,  at HIMMS. HIMMS got cancelled in 2020. I just got back from HIMMS 2021 in Vegas just a week and a half ago. It was fantastic. Everyone was masked up. There was only three cases of COVID with 10,000 people there. They did a great job, you know, regulating it. You had to show your vaccine card and all that good stuff. But you know, I would have never thought Seqster becomes law when we were founding the company. And so this is really special now.Harry Glorikian: So what does success look like for Seqster?Ardy Arianpour: It depends how you measure it. So we're in the Olympics. It's a great question. Here's my answer to you. We're in the Olympics just finished, right? So we started out in track and field. We were really good at running the 400 Meters and then somehow we got a use case on the 4x1 and the 4x4. And then we did really well there, too. And then because of our speed, you know, we got some strength and then they wanted us to get into the shot put and the javelin throw and then we started winning there, too. And then somehow, now people are calling us saying, "Are you interested in trying to swim?" We got the 100 meter butterfly. Well, we've never done that. So success for us is based off of use cases. And every use case that we deal with, within clinical trials and pharma, we've define 24 distinct use cases that we're generating business on. Within the payer community now, because of the CMS ONC Twenty First Century Cures Act, there's a major tailwind. Within life insurance for real time underwriting, there's, you know, a plethora of folks that are calling us for our system because of the patient engagement. So this patient centricity for us has been a central pillar, and I've never allowed anyone in our company, whether it's the board or our investors or employees, you know, get sidetracked from that. We've been laser focused on the patients and success at impacting patient lives at scale.Harry Glorikian: So as a venture guide, though, right, like I'm going to, there's only so much money on so much time to tackle, so many different opportunities, right? So it's there is a how do we create a recurring revenue stream and keep plugging along and then generate either enough revenue or raise enough money to do more? And so just trying to think through that for what you guys are trying to do, I get the 4x100 and the swimming. But all of that takes money and resources right to be able to prove out, of course.Ardy Arianpour: And here's another thing we're in a different state. Look, my team and I had a major exit before. We built a billion dollar company out of $3 million. And even though we weren't founders of that company, you know, I was the senior vice president and we we did really well. So, you know, that allowed us to not take salaries that allowed us to take our money and put it into doing something good. And we did that in 2016 to seed it. And then afterwards, I raised, you know, millions of dollars from folks that were interested in, you know, this problem and saw that our team had a track record. And I actually was not interested, Harry, in raising a Series A because of our experience, but we kept on getting calls. And then just six months ago, we announced, you know, our series a funding. Well, we actually announced it in March, I think it was, but we closed our Series A in January of this year and it was led by Takeda Pharma, Anne Wojcicki's 23andMe and United Healthcare Group's Equian folks that created Omniclaim and sold to UnitedHealth Group Omni Health Holdings.Ardy Arianpour: So check this out. Imagine my vision in 2016 of having medical data, genomic data fitness data. Well, if you look at the investors that backed us, it's pretty interesting. What I reflect on is I didn't plan that either. We got amazing genomic investors. I mean, it doesn't get better than getting Anne Wojcicki and 23andMe. Amazing female entrepreneur and, you know, just the just the force. Secondly, Takeda Pharma, a top 10 pharma company. How many digital health startups do you know within Series A that got a top 10 pharma? And then also getting some payer investors from UnitedHealth Group's Omniclaim folks and Equian OmniHealth Holdings. So this is to me, very interesting. But going to focus our focus has been pharma and clinical trials. And so Takeda has been phenomenal for us because of, you know, they they built out the platform and they built it out better for us and they knew exactly what to do with things that we didn't know. And with things that patients didn't know on the enterprise, you know, Takeda did a phenomenal job. And now other pharma companies are utilizing our platform, not just Takeda.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, well, they want their data aggregation. They want as much data on the patient aggregated in one place to make sense of it.Ardy Arianpour: So not necessarily that they actually want to empower patients with a patient centric engagement tool. That's pharma's number one thing right now, the data part, obviously is important, but empowering patient lives at scale is the key, and that's that's our mission. And so, yeah, that's that's a whole 'nother cocktail conversation when I see you soon hopefully in a couple of weeks.Harry Glorikian: Hopefully as life gets, or if it gets back to normal, depending on the variants, you know, we'll hopefully get to meet him in person and have a glass of wine or a cocktail together. So it was great to speak to you. Glad we had this time, and I look forward to, you know, hearing updates on the company and, you know, continually seeing the progress going forward.Ardy Arianpour: Thanks so much, Harry, for having me. Big fan of Moneyball, so thank you to you and your organizers for having me and Seqster on. If anyone wants to get in touch with me personally, you can find me on LinkedIn or you can follow Seqster at @Seqster. And again, thank you so much for. For having a great discussion around, you know, the the insights behind Seqster.Harry Glorikian: Excellent. Thank you.Harry Glorikian: That's it for this week's episode.  You can find past episodes of The Harry Glorikian Show and MoneyBall Medicine at my website, glorikian.com, under the tab Podcasts.Don't forget to go to Apple Podcasts to leave a rating and review for the show. You can find me on Twitter at hglorikian. And we always love it when listeners post about the show there, or on other social media. Thanks for listening, stay healthy, and be sure to tune in two weeks from now for our next interview. 

In Episode 27:This mash up episode dives into affordability. We hear clips from five healthcare experts to discuss the importance of affordability, and potential solutions. We gain perspectives on Medicaid, Medicare, and Military health. There are many potential solutions to address affordability, the challenge is deciding which models work together in our complex healthcare system and aggressively pursuing them. Key Insights:Challenge of the decade. Mark Miller, Ph.D., VP Healthcare, Arnold Ventures, explains how affordability is impacting patients. (2:27)Practice variation, within boundaries. Marty Makary, M.D., MPH, Author, “The Price We Pay,” Surgical Oncologist and Professor, John Hopkins University of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health describes how “appropriateness measures” could decrease Medicare costs. (5:51)Medi-Cal. Nancy-Ann DeParle, Managing Partner and Co-founder, Consonance Capital Partners, and former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama, references California's Medicaid model. (7:32)Healthy Indiana. Seema Verma, Former CMS Administrator, describes Indiana's unique Medicaid Expansion. (10:02)TRICARE for all. Elder Granger, M.D., MG, USA, Retired, Former Deputy Director, TRICARE, CEO, The 5Ps, discusses whether TRICARE's model could work for the country, a model which promotes preventive healthcare. (12:00)

In this episode, we sit down with Seema Verma, a former administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The conversation explores implementing the free market in healthcare, Medicare Advantage, fee for service, and more.

Medicaid reform is one of the most complicated and misunderstood policy debates in America today. Luckily, we have Seema Verma to walk us through it. We cover everything you need to know about Medicaid, from its origins and purpose to how it's working today. We also discuss what it will take to build a modern health care system that brings better quality, better outcomes, and lower costs for everyone. Seema Verma is a national health policy expert that served as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from 2017 to 2021, the longest tenure in modern history. As the Senate-confirmed head of CMS, Seema oversaw a budget of $1.3 trillion—nearly a third of the Federal budget—and health insurance programs for over 140 million Americans and managed over 6,000 employees.

Medicare Open Enrollment begins October 15th, and people with Medicare have until December 7th to make changes to their health plans or prescription drug plans or select a new plan for 2021.Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid ServicesAs the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Seema Verma oversees a $1 trillion budget, representing 26% of the total federal budget, and administers health coverage programs for more than 130 million Americans. She was nominated by President Trump on November 29, 2016 – the seventh nomination by the President-elect – and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 13, 2017. This year, the Administrator has set a bold agenda to empower patients and transform the healthcare system to deliver better value and results for patients through competition and innovation. CMS will focus all of its efforts on 16 strategic initiatives across Medicare, Medicaid, and the Exchanges to move the healthcare delivery system toward value. During her tenure, Administrator Verma's strong leadership at CMS has led to many major accomplishments. The agency has: Stabilized the individual health insurance market, where average premiums decreased in 2019 for the first time ever on federally facilitated exchanges, and Medicare Advantage premiums continue to decline, Restored the state and federal partnership for Medicaid with the approval of community engagement demonstrations to promote work and financial independence Introduced the first-ever Medicaid & CHIP Scorecard to provide much-needed transparency on how well Medicaid is serving its beneficiaries Acted across all programs to lower the cost of prescription drugs, including by bolstering the ability of Medicare Advantage & Part D plans to negotiate lower drug costs for patientsTransformed the meaningful use program to focus on interoperability Created novel access to virtual check-ins for Medicare beneficiaries and expanded support for telehealth and remote patient monitoring Updated documentation guidelines and reduced 53 million hours of the administrative burden through the “Patients over Paperwork” and “Meaningful Measures” initiatives Launched the Blue Button 2.0 API, through which more than 1,700 mobile app developers have signed up to provide beneficiaries with access to their claims data and help them achieve better health Advanced bundled payment models to motivate healthcare providers to furnish services more efficiently, coordinate care, and improve quality and  Published guidelines requiring hospitals to post their standard pricing information online in a machine-readable format, updating it at least once a year—a first step toward giving patients the information they need to make the best decisions for themselves and their families. Administrator Verma is a graduate of the University of Maryland and holds a Master's degree in Public Health with a concentration in health policy and management from Johns Hopkins University.  Her editorial commentaries have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Washington Times, and Health Affairs, and she also previously served as Vice President of Planning for the Health & Hospital Corporation of Marion County, Indiana. Most recently before heading CMS, she was President and CEO of SVC, Inc. 

Medicare Open Enrollment begins October 15th, and people with Medicare have until December 7th to make changes to their health plans or prescription drug plans or select a new plan for 2021.Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid ServicesAs the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Seema Verma oversees a $1 trillion budget, representing 26% of the total federal budget, and administers health coverage programs for more than 130 million Americans. She was nominated by President Trump on November 29, 2016 – the seventh nomination by the President-elect – and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 13, 2017. This year, the Administrator has set a bold agenda to empower patients and transform the healthcare system to deliver better value and results for patients through competition and innovation. CMS will focus all of its efforts on 16 strategic initiatives across Medicare, Medicaid, and the Exchanges to move the healthcare delivery system toward value. During her tenure, Administrator Verma's strong leadership at CMS has led to many major accomplishments. The agency has: Stabilized the individual health insurance market, where average premiums decreased in 2019 for the first time ever on federally facilitated exchanges, and Medicare Advantage premiums continue to decline, Restored the state and federal partnership for Medicaid with the approval of community engagement demonstrations to promote work and financial independence Introduced the first-ever Medicaid & CHIP Scorecard to provide much-needed transparency on how well Medicaid is serving its beneficiaries Acted across all programs to lower the cost of prescription drugs, including by bolstering the ability of Medicare Advantage & Part D plans to negotiate lower drug costs for patientsTransformed the meaningful use program to focus on interoperability Created novel access to virtual check-ins for Medicare beneficiaries and expanded support for telehealth and remote patient monitoring Updated documentation guidelines and reduced 53 million hours of the administrative burden through the “Patients over Paperwork” and “Meaningful Measures” initiatives Launched the Blue Button 2.0 API, through which more than 1,700 mobile app developers have signed up to provide beneficiaries with access to their claims data and help them achieve better health Advanced bundled payment models to motivate healthcare providers to furnish services more efficiently, coordinate care, and improve quality and  Published guidelines requiring hospitals to post their standard pricing information online in a machine-readable format, updating it at least once a year—a first step toward giving patients the information they need to make the best decisions for themselves and their families. Administrator Verma is a graduate of the University of Maryland and holds a Master's degree in Public Health with a concentration in health policy and management from Johns Hopkins University.  Her editorial commentaries have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Washington Times, and Health Affairs, and she also previously served as Vice President of Planning for the Health & Hospital Corporation of Marion County, Indiana. Most recently before heading CMS, she was President and CEO of SVC, Inc. 

HealthLeaders Strategy Editor Melanie Blackman speaks with Seema Verma, a health policy expert and consultant, and former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who shares what drives her to work in healthcare policy, her goals in serving as board of director for both Lumeris and Monogram Health, her thoughts on the Biden Administration, and advice for future leaders. Music used: Track: Pixies, Artist: Ketsa, Attribution license: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Sam hosts Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) of the Benjamin Dixon Show and David Roth (@david_j_roth), editor at Defector and host of The Distraction Podcast, to discuss the week's top stories including the second senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump and the Biden administration's Covid relief plans. On today's show: Rep. Raskin argues that if Trump returned to office he would not bother to reign in his supporters' violent attacks on political opponents. Lindsay Graham says he wants an investigation into what Nancy Pelosi knew before January 6. Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) of the Benjamin Dixon Show joins Sam to discuss stories including: Trump's second impeachment trial and the Biden admin's shrinking Covid relief checks. Trump's lawyer argues that his impeachment is "constitutional cancel culture." Sen. Whitehouse says Senate ethics committee should look at GOP senators' role in Jan 6 riots. Dave Ramsey says if you're concerned about difference of $600 or $1400 relief then you have bigger problems in your life. David Roth (@david_j_roth), editor at Defector and host of The Distraction Podcast, joins Sam to discuss where the Trumpist wing of the GOP goes from here. Will Marjorie Taylor Greene actually write laws, or just become a touring aggrievement show? OAN's sentimental tribute to Trump Presidency includes sad piano music, poem by Rudyard Kipling. Speaking about Dallas Mavericks' decision to not play national anthem before games, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says it's like the Jan 6 riots. Mike Huckabee running ads on Newsmax, targeting grandparents to buy their grandkids books on Trump's accomplishments. Brian Kilmeade says media isn't talking about falling Covid cases because Dems can't pass their wasteful stimulus if the numbers are going down. OCTOBER 2020: Seema Verma at Aspen Ideas Festival says governors are on board with Medicaid work requirements, people don't want to be on Medicaid. CNN interviews children of parents who fell deep into Qanon conspiracy. Plus, your IMs. Members keep the Majority Report running. Become a member of the Majority Report today! Check out the Brand New Majority Report Merch Shop! https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ (Merch issues and concerns can be addressed here: majorityreportstore@mirrorimage.com) The AM Quickie is now on YouTube Subscribe to the AM Quickie at https://fans.fm/amquickie Make the AMQ part of your Alexa Flash Briefing too! You can now watch the livestream on Twitch Check out today's sponsors: Tushy: Hello Tushy cleans your butt with a precise stream of fresh water for just $79. It attaches to your existing toilet – requires NO electricity or additional plumbing – and cuts toilet paper use by 80% – so the Hello Tushy bidet pays for itself in a few months. Go to hellotushy.com/majority to get 10% off today! sunsetlake cbd is a majority employee owned farm in Vermont, producing 100% pesticide free CBD products. Great company, great product and fans of the show! Use code Leftisbest and get 20% off at sunsetlakecbd.com Check out Joshua Kahn Russell's friend, activist and organizer Casey Harrell who is raising money to treat his ALS diagnosis. Subscribe to Discourse Blog, a newsletter and website for progressive essays and related fun partly run by AM Quickie writer Jack Crosbie. https://discourseblog.com/ Subscribe to AM Quickie writer Corey Pein’s podcast News from Nowhere, at https://www.patreon.com/newsfromnowhere Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel! Check out The Nomiki Show live at 3 pm ET on YouTube at patreon.com/thenomikishow Check out Matt’s podcast, Literary Hangover, at Patreon.com/LiteraryHangover, or on iTunes. Check out Jamie’s podcast, The Antifada, at patreon.com/theantifada, on iTunes, or at twitch.tv/theantifada (streaming every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7pm ET! Special early stream tonight, 2/12, at 6pm ET) Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @Jamie_Elizabeth @MattBinder @MattLech @BF1nn

November 17, 2020: Today is a great day for science and humanity. Pfizer and BioNTech have come out with a revolutionary genetic coding vaccine. We also discuss cloud, interoperability, price transparency and Zoom 5.0. In the words of Seema Verma, every patient has a right to know the price of their care upfront. There’s a lot of considerations for cloud-based EHR hosting hospitals. CIOs and CTOs weigh in. Interoperability in cities is improving but if you're a smaller system you just don't have the resources or financial incentives. Are our health IT leaders at risk of burnout? And why does the US still have a severe shortage of medical supplies? Key Points:CHIME Fall Forum [00:02:00] Zoom 5.0 upgrade [00:07:40] If you're a smaller system you don't have the resources or financial incentives for interoperability [00:18:45] The price of ransomware. What security leaders need to know. [00:22:10] COVID is going to be the priority in 2021 [00:25:45] Pharmacy drug pricing is a difficult issue to tackle [00:28:10] Disengaging from work is a sure sign of burnout [00:30:55] Stories:Interoperability in cities is improving, but small hospitals lag behind | Healthcare IT NewsYear-Long Study Validates Telehealth Use in Diabetes Prevention EffortsDear Future President, The Women Of America Have A Message For YouWhy the U.S. Still Has a Severe Shortage of Medical SuppliesImplementing a health plan that puts patients first - Washington TimesCenters for Medicare and Medicaid Services announces 51 direct contracting entities | Healthcare Finance NewsThe Price of Ransomware: What Security Leaders Need to Know | healthsystemcio.comConsiderations for cloud-based EHR hosting — hospital CIOs and CTOs weigh inHealthPopuli.comVermont governor deploys National Guard in response to UVM cyberattack | Healthcare IT NewsDepartment Of Justice Announces Massive Healthcare Fraud Takedown Focused On Fraudulent Telemedicine Schemes

00:00 Show Open / U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), discusses the election. 09:20 Lauren Edwards, Chair of the Festival For Good, getting underway this week in Central Ohio. 23:00 Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, discusses open enrollment for Medicare, which is currently underway. 30:00 Shawn Kaeser, a middle school teacher in Dublin, who, with his students, succeeded in making the bullfrog the State Frog of Ohio, and a license plate featuring it is coming soon 44:45 Duane Casares, CEO of Directions for Youth & Families, discusses the stress of being a counselor/therapist.

Seema Verma, CMS Administrator, joins the Pensacola Morning News to discuss open enrollment beginning soon, the opioid crisis affecting people of all ages, not just young people, and therapeutic approaches to taking on COVID-19.

Just like the rest of the country, Geraldo and Erica are feeling the tension four days away from the election. Seema Verma from the White House joins the show to give an update on the covid19 pandemic in light of recent spikes.

Today: Franciscan Health Northwest Indiana spokesman Robert Blaszkiewicz tells us about the changes in visitor restrictions that had to be put in place at the healthcare provider's hospitals in Dyer, Hammond and Munster on Friday because of the surge in COVID-19 cases in northwest Indiana. We also bring back our conversation with Aaliyah Stewart, a young northwest Indiana resident who wants to establish a youth center in Gary and is raising funds toward its construction. Seema Verma, the Adminstrator for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington, D.C. (and a former Hoosier healthcare consultant) talks about the open enrollment period for Medicare for 2021 that is currently underway through December 7th. This is the only time of year when more than 60 million Americans on Medicare -- 1,280,707 in Indiana -- can review their health coverage to find new health and drug plans and new benefits and, in the process, save money. And we have another conversation from the

Joe Biden, the media, and the rest of the left have pivoted from oil back to Coronavirus.  Their latest lie is exposed in todays EBR Show.

October 2020, 2020: Who's the most influential person in healthcare? Is it Judy? Fauci? Seema? And look out. Nasty Emotet malware is lurking. Is your health system ahead of the cyber terrorists? It’s not enough to just be defensive. Do cybersecurity companies have offensive capabilities too? Will it be Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon on our cyber military frontlines? A common issue in digital health is that the health providers and the technologists often live in different silos. How can we get past this innovation barrier? And is the mobile phone the most underutilized device in healthcare? I don't even think we're at the starting gate of what it can do.Key Points:How do you warn others of potential cyber attacks in your system? [00:03:32]Microsoft seeks to disrupt Russian criminal botnet [00:04:35] Walmart knows that the future of healthcare is in the home [00:09:05] Is Judy Faulkner the most influential person in healthcare? [00:09:45] The iPhone 12 is here! [00:14:20] The exciting promise of Livango and Teladoc [00:17:10] It’s odd to expect health system employees to also do sales type of roles [00:20:35] Seema Verma said at the HLTH 2020 conference that free market principles are going to change healthcare [00:24:05] Stories:DHS warns that Emotet malware is one of the most prevalent threats todayMicrosoft wins court order to take down TrickBot, a botnet that threatens election integrity - The Washington PostProvidence rolls Bluetree, Lumedic into new technology and services companyVerma says value-based care models haven't made good return on investment | FierceHealthcareWalmart begins selling health plans in time for Medicare's annual enrollment period | Healthcare Finance NewsHere's how Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple are targeting the health insurance market | FierceHealthcareLyft Teams Up with Epic to Integrate Ride Share Capabilities Into the EHR | Healthcare InnovationCHIME names 2020 'Most Wired' hospitalsWHO warns against COVID-19 lockdowns due to economic damage&

CMS Administrator Seema Verma joins to discuss Medicare open enrollment in Indiana. 10-19-2020 Pat Miller Program

20201017 Radio Night Live Free 1000 Seema Verma Mark Girguis Hour 1 by Kevin McCullough Radio

Because of Trump’s policies seniors are saving 34-60% in out of pocket costs related to Medicare/Medicaid—without the loss of any services. Medicare part D is also saving seniors $100-$1000’s per year.

Medicare Open Enrollment begins October 15th, and people with Medicare have until December 7th to make changes to their health plans or prescription drug plans or select a new plan for 2021. Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services As the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Seema Verma […] The post TMBS E116: Seema Verma, Medicare Open Enrollment appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Bio: As the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Seema Verma oversees a $1 trillion budget, representing 26% of the total federal budget, and administers health coverage programs for more than 130 million Americans. She was nominated by President Trump on November 29, 2016 – the seventh nomination by the President-elect – and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 13, 2017. This year, the Administrator has set a bold agenda to empower patients and transform the healthcare system to deliver better value and results for patients through competition and innovation. CMS will focus all of its efforts on 16 strategic initiatives across Medicare, Medicaid, and the Exchanges to move the healthcare delivery system toward value. During her tenure, Administrator Verma’s strong leadership at CMS has led to many major accomplishments. The agency has: · Stabilized the individual health insurance market, where average premiums decreased in 2019 for the first time ever on federally facilitated exchanges, and Medicare Advantage premiums continue to decline, · Restored the state and federal partnership for Medicaid with the approval of community engagement demonstrations to promote work and financial independence, · Introduced the first-ever Medicaid & CHIP Scorecard to provide much-needed transparency on how well Medicaid is serving its beneficiaries, · Took action across all programs to lower the cost of prescription drugs, including by bolstering the ability of Medicare Advantage & Part D plans to negotiate lower drug costs for patients, · Transformed the meaningful use program to focus on interoperability, · Created novel access to virtual check-ins for Medicare beneficiaries and expanded support for telehealth and remote patient monitoring, · Updated documentation guidelines and reduced 53 million hours of administrative burden through the “Patients over Paperwork” and “Meaningful Measures” initiatives, · Launched the Blue Button 2.0 API, through which more than 1,700 mobile app developers have signed up to provide beneficiaries with access to their claims data and help them achieve better health, · Advanced bundled payment models to motivate healthcare providers to furnish services more efficiently, coordinate care and improve quality and; · Published guidelines requiring hospitals to post their standard pricing information online in a machine-readable format, updating it at least once a year—a first step toward giving

Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome Seema Verma, Administrator for CMS under the Trump administration, a trillion dollar-a-year agency providing health coverage for 130 million vulnerable Americans on Medicaid and Seniors on Medicare. She discusses the agency’s dramatic transformation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including hundreds of waivers lifting restrictions for providers across the country, a swift expansion of telehealth adoption, and Operation Warp Speed’s quest to provide a safe and efficacious vaccine for widespread distribution, once it is approved. She also addresses recent allegations around agency spending questions. To stream our Station live 24/7 visit www.HealthcareNOWRadio.com or ask your Smart Device to “….Play HealthcareNOW Radio”. Find all of our network podcasts on your favorite podcast platforms and be sure to subscribe and like us. Learn more at www.healthcarenowradio.com/listen/

Mallinckrodt ARD LLC v. Seema Verma

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Trump administration, a trillion dollar-a-year agency providing health coverage for 130 million vulnerable Americans on Medicaid and Seniors on Medicare. She discusses the agency’s dramatic transformation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including hundreds of waivers lifting restrictions for providers across the country, a swift expansion of telehealth adoption, and Operation Warp Speed’s quest to provide a safe... Read More Read More The post CMS Administrator Seema Verma Talks Expansion of Telehealth, Development of COVID-19 Vaccine and Answers Recent Allegations appeared first on Healthy Communities Online.

At HFMA's Digital Annual Conference, President and CEO Joe Fifer presented CMS Administrator Seema Verma with the Association's highest honor: the Richard L. Clarke Board of Directors Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to healthcare in a role that involves oversight of a $1 trillion budget, representing 26% of the total federal budget, and administration of health coverage programs for more than 130 million Americans. Following the presentation, Fifer and Verma had a Q&A session in which she addressed price transparency, the pandemic, and the future of value-based care.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator and White House Coronavirus Task Force Member Seema Verma discusses the devastating impact of and federal response to COVID-19 in St. Louis. Hancock & Kelley discuss the results of yesterday’s primary election. See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

Virtual health care has surged during the coronavirus pandemic. Will it last? POLITICO's Mohana Ravindranath and Dan Diamond explain how the virus could change the future of medicine. Plus, more governors announce mask mandates. And Kansas Republicans kill a plan to delay the reopening of schools. Mohana Ravindranath is a health care reporter for POLITICO. Dan Diamond is a health care policy reporter for POLITICO. Jeremy Siegel is a host for POLITICO Dispatch. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO audio. Jenny Ament is the senior producer of POLITICO audio. Read more on the future of telehealth in the Future Pulse newsletter.

Last year, POLITICO broke the story that a top Trump administration health official — CMS chief Seema Verma — was using tax dollars to hire GOP consultants to boost her image. Today, the health department's inspector general released a report confirming the story. POLITICO’s Adam Cancryn and Dan Diamond explain why the controversy is relevant to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Plus, Oklahoma’s governor tests positive for Covid. And American Airlines is telling 25,000 workers they could lose their jobs. Adam Cancryn is a health reporter for POLITICO. Dan Diamond is a health care policy reporter for POLITICO. Jeremy Siegel is a host for POLITICO Dispatch. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO audio. Jenny Ament is the senior producer of POLITICO audio. Read more: Inspector general: Medicare chief broke rules on her publicity contracts Sign up for the Future Pulse newsletter.

Rich talked to American health policy consultant, Seema Verma, of the Trump administration to discuss the latest on federal health protocols. 

Rich Zeoli discussed Joe Biden and his press conference that bashed President Trump, Don Jr. shows that Republicans care about masks too, Phil Murphy prolongs New Jersey's re-opening, and Seema Verma joins the program to discuss the Trump administration's health protocols. 

Tuesday, June 16, 2020 ~ Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force talks about yesterday’s roundtable with President Donald Trump about protecting seniors during COVID-19. Here in Michigan, 34% of COVID-19 deaths have been linked to nursing homes.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020 ~ Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force talks about yesterday’s roundtable with President Donald Trump about protecting seniors during COVID-19. Here in Michigan, 34% of COVID-19 deaths have been linked to nursing homes.

Administrator Seema Verma,Head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and a member of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force, joined AM Tampa Bay to discuss the Federal government’s response to COVID-19 in nursing homes.

This week I cover a lot on telehealth, because it is finally coming to center stage in healthcare. I discuss Epic's foray into the telehealth delivery side of the visit, new CMS regulations about telehealth, and talk about Seema Verma saying "The genie is out of the bottle", referring to telehealth. I also cover a study from KLAS Research about EMR market share and we see who is increasing and who is decreasing. I also discuss the NEJM article about physician burnout, interrupted. It's about the opportunity to reset healthcare in the face of the crisis.

April 11, 2020 | Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Seema Verma, Big & Rich | HUCKABEE by Huckabee

Administrator Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and a member of the President's Coronavirus Task Force joined Marcus and Kurt on The Morning Drive. Hear some information about how CMS is helping health care facilities do their work more efficiently.

The latest on the unprecedented government reaction to the Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic hosted by Larry O'Connor. Today's special guests: SEN. TOM COTTON Senator from Arkansas ADMN. SEEMA VERMA  The Administrator of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Member of Coronavirus Task Force LEE SMITH Investigative Journalist on the FISA abuse scandal

4-1: Seema Verma, Coronavirus Task Force by KCMO Talk Radio

The WH calls out reporters for fear-mongering and spreading fake news.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, Larry O'Connor is joined by: ADMINISTRATOR SEEMA VERMA Head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)  A member President Trump's Coronavirus Task Force MORGAN ORTAGUS Spokesperson for the United States State Department PETER SCHWEIZER New York Times Bestselling Author of "Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison"

Dr. Seema Verma, with the Centers for Medicare and Medicade Services, discusses the federal response to COVID-19

Special edition: Listen to a replay of AARP’s Coronavirus Information Tele-Town Hall event held on Tuesday, March 10. At the live Q&A event health experts covered several topics including caregiving, travel, health safety tips, telehealth services, and more.  Featuring: Dr. Brett Giroir, Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services; Dr. Nancy Messonnier, Director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Seema Verma, Administrator at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Matt Schlapp weighs in on the latest coronavirus nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With so many unanswered questions about COVID-19, Geraldo asks a couple of experts about what can be done for children and seniors during this situation. Dr. Amy Edwards of Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital about how kids have been affected. Later, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seema Verma joins the podcast to talk about what the Trump Administration is doing to care for senior patients.

Seema Verma is the Administrator for CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She oversees the federal agency that provides vital healthcare programs to over 100 million Americans. There, she is aggressively pushing regulatory change to reduce administrative burdens on providers and improve transparency and outcomes for patients. I'm your host, Senator Bill Frist. We are broadcasting from the Lake Nona Impact Forum in Lake Nona Medical City, Florida. Visit A Second Opinion's website here: https://asecondopinionpodcast.com/ Engage with us on social media at: Facebook Twitter Instagram

FDA says up to a million people will be able to be tested by the end of the week..President’s CMS director Seema Verma tells people at a Coronavirus Task Force Meeting that she is looking at what Medicare and Medicaid will cover.. by default she’s looking at what services they will not cover. Is this the time to be looking at scaling back coverage during a pandemic?

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services are about to put a rule in place that allows insurers and pharmacy benefit managers to get paid TWICE for some of your prescriptions. This policy is called “the copay accumulator,” and it allows insurers to accept payment for a drug without applying the payment to your deductible. In the first episode of the Patients Rising Podcast, we discuss copay accumulators, and what patients need to know about them. We also talk about a looming deadline to comment on a proposed federal rule on the topic. How to take actionThe deadline to comment on the rule regarding copay accumulators is 11:59 pm eastern standard time Monday, March 2nd, 2020.Let your voice be heard. Send your comments directly to Seema Verma, Administrator, Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS).Tell her to honor your already high out of pocket costs, and to allow copay assistance to be applied to your deductible. You can also do this directly from our websiteGuest:Carl Schmid, Executive Director, HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.Carl Schmid has been a national policy and advocacy leader in the HIV community for over 20 years.  He spent 16 years with The AIDS Institute, where he served as its Deputy Executive Director and led the Institute’s HIV and viral hepatitis federal policy work before the executive agencies and the Congress. In December 2019, he left The AIDS Institute to form the HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute, which promotes quality and affordable healthcare for people living with or at risk of HIV, hepatitis, and other serious and chronic health conditions.Mr. Schmid helps lead the HIV and hepatitis communities’ advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C., to ensure domestic HIV and hepatitis programs, including the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative, the Ryan White Program, CDC HIV and hepatitis prevention programs, and NIH AIDS Research, are based on sound public policy and receive full funding. He has expertise in healthcare financing systems, including Medicaid and Medicare, and leads efforts to ensure that the Affordable Care Act meets the needs of people living with or at risk of HIV and hepatitis. As part of HIV + Hep’s work in advocating for people with HIV and hepatitis, Mr. Schmid works extensively with other patient and disease groups on collective efforts to ensure that patients, particularly those with chronic conditions, have access to quality and affordable healthcare, including prescription medications.Mr. Schmid served as a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in 2018-19.  In July 2019, he was appointed to the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board.He was a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS from 2007-09 and chaired its Domestic Subcommittee.  In 2010, he was named by POZ magazine as one of the 100 most effective AIDS fighters and by Whitman-Walker Health as one of the 25 individuals who have played prominent roles in the fight against HIV in D.C. In 2016, he was named the Champion of the Year by the ADAP Advocacy Association. Mr. Schmid earned a B.A. in Public Affairs and a M.B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.Hosts:Terry Wilcox, Executive Director, Patients RisingDr. Robert Goldberg, “Dr. Bob”, Co-Founder and Vice President of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.Kate Pecora, Field Correspondent 

A few weeks back the Trump administration made an announcement. They rolled out a new health care policy called the Healthy Adult Opportunity. It’s a policy that would give states the option of reducing benefits for millions of Medicaid patients. This is only the latest in a line of attempts to scale back the Medicaid program by Seema Verma. Why is this such a priority for the Trump administration and Verma herself? And how are Republicans trying to square cuts to such a popular program in an election year? Guest: Dan Diamond, host of Pulse Check and writes the POLITICO Pulse — a morning briefing on health care politics and policy. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few weeks back the Trump administration made an announcement. They rolled out a new health care policy called the Healthy Adult Opportunity. It’s a policy that would give states the option of reducing benefits for millions of Medicaid patients. This is only the latest in a line of attempts to scale back the Medicaid program by Seema Verma. Why is this such a priority for the Trump administration and Verma herself? And how are Republicans trying to square cuts to such a popular program in an election year? Guest: Dan Diamond, host of Pulse Check and writes the POLITICO Pulse — a morning briefing on health care politics and policy. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the this episode of #CareTalk, David Williams (Health Business Group) and John Driscoll (CareCentrix) discuss hospital pricing transparency, the Dexcom outage and much more. Overview: (0:30) Will Trump's hospital pricing transparency initiative be a "big thing?" (1:31) How concerned should we be about the Dexcom outage? (2:52) What's all the noise around Medicare Advantage about? (4:25) Are primary care physicians (PCP's) becoming "concierge doctors?" (6:44) Is Medicare For All going to become a reality in 2020? (7:08) How will Washington's "tightened work requirements" for Medicaid and food stamps play out for healthcare? (8:02) Why are mobile phones sending so many people to the ER? (8:53) Why is Seema Verma looking for reimbursement for her missing jewelry? Subscribe to the #CareTalk Podcast iTunes: https://apple.co/2DIDTcr Google Play: https://bit.ly/2RobqMB Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uKu-RIHoVgc

Medicare’s new Plan Finder makes it easy to review and compare Medicare Advantage and prescription drug plans. Plan Finder provides a personalized experience to help you learn about different options and select the coverage plan that best meets your needs. My guest is Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Medicare’s new Plan Finder makes it easy to review and compare Medicare Advantage and prescription drug plans. Plan Finder provides a personalized experience to help you learn about different options and select the coverage plan that best meets your needs. My guest is Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Bariatric surgery reduces waistlines but not wallets. The home state of Seema Verma is delaying one of her key policies. And one of the biggest healthcare companies will be getting into patients' homes.

As the Medicare program's top clinical official, Dr. Kate Goodrich has played a major role in the wave of nursing home regulatory scrutiny coming from Washington and Baltimore over the last few years. Goodrich and CMS administrator Seema Verma have placed skilled nursing facility compliance and oversight at the top of their to-do lists, with a litany of accomplishments already under their belts — from an overhaul of the five-star rating system to the public identification of properties under consideration for the Special Focus Facility program. SNN sat down with Goodrich to learn more about what's been driving this enforcement push, as well as what additional moves the federal government may have in store for the future. Listen to this episode to learn: -The inner workings of CMS's enforcement strategies for nursing homes -Why the agency is focusing on beefing up state-level survey efforts -Goodrich's vision for the long-term future of value-based care

Obamacare is old news for the political left. Now, the big item is Medicare for All—a single-payer, government-run health care system. But what kind of impact would that have on Americans’ lives? In this episode, we discuss that and more with the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seema Verma, who joins us for an exclusive interview. Plus: The New York Times caves to pressure from the left by changing a front page headline, putting President Trump in a more negative light. We’ll discuss.We also cover the following stories:-Gun-control advocates surround Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home.-Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., strikes bipartisan deal aimed at reducing the threat of mass shootings.-Pentagon says it won’t overreact to North Korea’s renewed missile tests.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, and Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Guest: Alex Azar Recorded live at the American Medical Association’s meeting on the new value-based approach to primary care, Alex Azar and Seema Verma take turns explaining the CMS Primary Cares initiative, which aims to put the focus back on keeping patients healthy as opposed to ordering procedures. As the 24th Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar is pursuing four objectives, including lowering prescription drug prices and making individual insurance more affordable, while Seema Verma as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is working towards improving E/M codes to save providers’ time and money.

Guest: Alex Azar Recorded live at the American Medical Association’s meeting on the new value-based approach to primary care, Alex Azar and Seema Verma take turns explaining the CMS Primary Cares initiative, which aims to put the focus back on keeping patients healthy as opposed to ordering procedures. As the 24th Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar is pursuing four objectives, including lowering prescription drug prices and making individual insurance more affordable, while Seema Verma as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is working towards improving E/M codes to save providers’ time and money.

Guest: Alex Azar Recorded live at the American Medical Association’s meeting on the new value-based approach to primary care, Alex Azar and Seema Verma take turns explaining the CMS Primary Cares initiative, which aims to put the focus back on keeping patients healthy as opposed to ordering procedures. As the 24th Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar is pursuing four objectives, including lowering prescription drug prices and making individual insurance more affordable, while Seema Verma as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is working towards improving E/M codes to save providers’ time and money.

An older physician, practicing family medicine for 46 years, opens his door one day and finds an individual who says he works for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), demanding to see medical records.In short order, the agent leaves the premises with charts, and later, the family physician finds himself facing the prospect of a trial by jury that the DOJ is demanding to quantify civil monetary fines and penalties. What could have possibly triggered this investigation?Reporting this developing story during this edition of Monitor Mondays is Shannon DeConda, founder and president of the National Alliance of Medical Auditing Specialists (NAMAS). DeConda, who personally talked to the rural West Virginia physician, will report on the latest development in the case of a healthcare professional who plans to tell a jury of his peers that he didn’t swindle Medicare for money at their expense.Other segments to appear during the live broadcast include:RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel returns to the broadcast to report on the latest audits by Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) and other third-party auditors. Emanuel, a member of the RACmonitor editorial board, is a partner in the Potomac Law Group.Monday Focus: John K. Hall, MD continues his reporting on the now-infamous blog post of May 2, by Seema Verma, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator. Hall reports that he expects that providers can expect more Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) audits as a result of her blog. Hall is the founder of the Aegis Firm.SDoH Report: Ellen Fink-Samnick, a nationally recognized expert on social determinants of health (SdoH), has the latest news on this trending topic that is attracting significant media attention. Ellen will also conduct the Monitor Mondays Listener Survey.Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser returns to Monitor Mondays with his popular segment, in which he reports on Split Shared Evaluation and Management EM Services.Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds with another installment of his popular segment.

Seema Verma, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator, has raised the anxiety levels of healthcare providers with her blog post on May 2, 2019. With an ominous warning, Verna said that the RAC ADRs will be guided by the volume of claims a provider submits based on an undefined “type” of a claim. Does this signal that observation claims could be reviewed simply based on the volume of claims? Reporting this developing story during the next edition of Monitor Monday will be John K. Hall, MD, founder of The Aegis Firm. Other segments to appear during the live broadcast include:RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel will return to the broadcast to report on the latest audits by Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) and other third-party auditors. Emanuel, a member of the RACmonitor editorial board, is a partner in the Potomac Law Group.SDoH Report: Ellen Fink-Samnick, a nationally recognized expert on social determinants of health (SdoH), will have the latest news on this trending topic that is attracting significant media attention. Ellen will also conduct the Monitor Mondays Listener Survey.Monday Focus: Several different trends are simultaneously affecting physician payment even delimiting consideration to the Medicare program. Reporting on these trends and their impact on physician reimbursement and compliance requirements will the author, educator and consultant Duane Abbey, president of Abbey & Abbey Consultants, Inc.Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser will return to Monitor Mondays with his popular segment, in which he reports on problematic issues facing providers.Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds with another installment of his popular segment.

Today's edition of the CMS: Beyond the Policy Podcast will focus on the CMS Innovation Center. The CMS Innovation Center acts as a developer and testing ground for innovative payment and service delivery models to improve quality of care for Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP beneficiaries, and to save taxpayer money. The episode features a discussion on the direction of the CMS Innovation Center with the CMS Administrator, Seema Verma and the CMS Innovation Center Director, Adam Boehler moderated by Tom Corry, the CMS Director of the Office of Communications.

The head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administers the health care plans of 130 million Americans and oversees around 26 percent of the federal budget. It's a big job. And for Seema Verma, it's one that requires a complicated balancing act with her family back in Indiana.

Dan is joined by Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), to talk about how patients should be given control over their data and medical records. Also, in the "Final Two" Dan talks about how Turkey is trying to ban US electronics and the latest on Elon Musk and Tesla.

Listen NowAccording to a recent Kaiser/Washington Post survey 59 percent of Americans support Medicare for All (M4A).  Per a March New England Journal of Medicine poll 61 percent of physicians said single payer would make it easier for them to deliver cost-effective, quality health care.   Currently, before the House is legislation titled the "Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act" with over 120 sponsors.  (The legislation has been introduced every session since 2003.)   The House has recently also formed a Medicare for All caucus with 70 Democratic members and if the Democrats win back the House this November they have promised M4A hearings.  The Senate has a parallel bill, the "Medicare for All Act of 2017," currently with 16 cosponsors, several of whom are potential 2020 presidential candidates.  Though there is, again, substantial criticism of M4A, e.g., CMS Administrator, Seema Verma, recently denounced it as "government run socialized health care" (an odd complaint since that is exactly what the current Medicare and Medicaid programs are).  Because of the disruption, dismantling or sabotage of the ACA under the Trump administration and moreover because health care continues to be ever increasingly unaffordable (and bankrupt, the Medicare Part A Trust Fund is now projected to be insolvent in 2026), as is frequently phrased, M4A is, again, on the table. During this 37 minute conversation Professor Friedman provides a general definition of Medicare for All healthcare, how it would be financed and how savings be derived and what amount.  He explains what is current public opinion, what are credible criticisms of M4A and what promising single payer efforts are underway in the states.   Dr. Gerald Friedman is Professor and Undergraduate Program Director of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  Prior to, he worked as research staff for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.  Professor Friedman is the author of multiple books and articles on labor relations and healthcare economics.  He has been a correspondent to television and media outlets, a consultant to labor unions and has drafted funding plans for campaigns for single payer health insurance in several states including New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Oregon and Washington and a federal plan for the US.  He serves on the Board of Advisers to the Business Initiative for Health Policy.  Professor Friedman earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia College and his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

Electronic health records have a lot of promise, but they’re not where they need to be. The ultimate goal is interoperability, which would enable patients’ medical data to follow them anywhere. But that’s not happening—just ask Seema Verma, MPH, the head of Medicare and Medicaid, and Janae Sharp, a health IT key opinion leader. In this episode, we dig into their stories and document the rise of the medical record. For more stories like this one, check out our mothership, [Healthcare Analytics News](http://www.hcanews.com/)™.

A potential subpoena for Seema Verma, voter confidence on Trump and North Korea, primary results and more in today's Audio Briefing.

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 stories included Cigna's deal to buy Express Scripts; Seema Verma, Alex Azar, and Scott Gottlieb, MD, made the rounds at health conferences; an analysis finds FDA's accelerated approval pathway has been a success with hematology and oncology drugs. Read more about the stories in this podcast: Healthcare Mergers Continue With Deal for Cigna to Acquire Express Scripts: www.ajmc.com/newsroom/cigna-to-acquire-express-scripts-in-67-billion-deal What We're Reading: Verma on Health Data; More Medicaid Work Requirements; NJ Individual Mandate: www.ajmc.com/newsroom/what-were-reading-verma-on-health-data-more-medicaid-work-requirements-nj-individual-mandate Azar Tells Insurance Industry Patients Must Be in Charge of Their Own Data: www.ajmc.com/newsroom/azar-tells-insurance-industry-patients-must-be-in-charge-of-their-own-data FDA's Gottlieb Blames Rebates, Reimbursement Issues for Holding Back Biosimilar Market: www.ajmc.com/newsroom/fdas-gottlieb-blames-rebates-reimbursement-issues-for-holding-back-biosimilar-market What We're Reading: Azar to Announce Healthcare Actions; Opposition to CMS Opioid Limits; Diabetes Disagreement: www.ajmc.com/newsroom/what-were-reading-azar-to-announce-healthcare-actions-opposition-to-cms-opioid-limits-diabetes-disagreement Expedited Approval Is Successful for Cancer Therapies, FDA Says: www.ajmc.com/focus-of-the-week/expedited-approval-is-successful-for-cancer-therapies-fda-says The Shift From Episodic to Continuous Care: Wearable Technology and Telemedicine in Cardiology: www.ajmc.com/managed-care-cast/the-shift-from-episodic-to-continuous-care-wearable-technology-and-telemedicine-in-cardiology American College of Cardiology’s 67th Annual Scientific Session & Expo: www.ajmc.com/conferences/acc-2018

Medicaid Medicare Admin Seema Verma on what we do with Prescriptions Costs

Aaron Carroll is making a play to be America’s doctor, or at least the physician we need to bust medical myths. The pediatrician from Indianapolis is a best-selling author of medical advice books, a featured writer in the New York Times, and even a YouTube celebrity, with more than 250,000 subscribers to his channel. So how did he do it? In a bonus episode of PULSE CHECK, Aaron joins POLITICO’s Dan Diamond to discuss his path from blogger to New York Times contributor (Starts at the 1:35 mark), his critical analysis of Medicare-for-all proposals (11:20), his view as an Indiana-based doctor of that state’s health reforms, led by Mike Pence and Seema Verma (15:50), why Congress is failing on CHIP and what policies they should pursue (20:35), Aaron’s mythbusting on what you should, and shouldn’t eat(23:00) and more. 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 or tweet him @ddiamond. Stories and podcasts referenced on the podcast:  PULSE CHECK’s interview with Austin Frakt, Aaron’s writing partner: https://soundcloud.com/politico-pulsecheck/news-roundup-and-austin-frakt Aaron and Austin’s New York Times interactive tournament of the best health care systems in the world: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/18/upshot/best-health-care-system-country-bracket.html?_r=0 Aaron discussing his new book, THE BAD FOOD BIBLE: HOW AND WHY TO EAT SINFULLY: https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/healthcare-triage-the-bad-food-bible/

South Asians are the top minority in the Trump White House- with Ajit Pai, Seema Verma, and Nikki Haley among the most prominent. Shalabh Kumar was one of Trump’s “mega donors” – donating almost $1 million to Trump, getting Trump to mimic Modi’s famous “Ab Ki Baar Trump Sarkaar” line. And finally, there were a … Continue reading What Explains the Rise of the Desi Right in America?

This week included the much-anticipated report from the Congressional Budget Office releasing rating of the GOP's health plan; the Senate voted to confirm Seema Verma for CMS administrator; and President Donald Trump nominated Scott Gottlieb, MD, to lead the FDA.

My daily letter to President Trump for Thursday, March 9th, 2017

Pan-cancer screening test developer Grail bags more than $1bn in funding; Trump bashes US FDA; fight likely in Senate over Seema Verma's appointment to head CMS; "FDA Precheck" floated by agency; a deep-dive look into the surgical robot market.

Seema Verma isn't a household name in health care — but she's about to be. President Donald Trump's pick to run CMS has been a health policy consultant for multiple Republican governors, including then-Gov. Mike Pence in Indiana, and she's facing her Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday. So what's waiting for Verma, and what would her likely confirmation mean for the health care industry? We talked to two people who would know. First, Tom Scully — the irascible health care lawyer and investor who ran CMS under President George W. Bush — joins PULSE CHECK to discuss leading the agency, why one of his first decisions was to change the name to "CMS," the advice he's given Verma and what he thinks she needs to do to be successful (starts at the 1:40 mark). Then after the break, Joan Alker — the executive director of Georgetown's Center for Children and Families — talks with POLITICO's Dan Diamond about Republicans' plans to reform Medicaid, what Verma's track record suggests she'll pursue if confirmed and the impact on the social safety net (starts at the 29:25 mark). 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.

Healthcare Futurist, Best-Selling Author & former Hospital CEO, Josh Luke, recently wrote that “Obamacare is D.O.A.” under the new administration.  That is a scary thought for millions of Americans now living with health insurance, and he recently joined Gavin & Zac to discuss.  Why does he think that an initial repeal could be largely ceremonial, how does he think most people will feel the impact of a repeal in 2017 and what do the nominations of Tom Price (Health & Human Services) and Seema Verma indicate about Trump’s vision of the future of the American healthcare system?  All this and more on this episode PopHealth Podcast.  Make sure to subscribe so you won’t miss upcoming episodes with CA Insurance Commissioner, Dave Jones, Chair of the Senate Health Committee, Dr. Ed Hernandez, and many more during these monumental changes!

Another day, another round of Cabinet picks from President-elect Trump. Kai Ryssdal and Marketplace's Washington Bureau Chief discuss what the appointments of political veterans Tom Price, Elaine Chao and Seema Verma and a possible choice of Mitt Romney for Secretary of State mean for the political outsider-elect. Got questions about the economy under a Trump presidency? Tweet them to us @Marketplace, @KaiRyssdal and @radiobabe.