Waller Law is a long-standing partner of Health:Further, and we are proud and grateful to have had the chance to work with them over the past several years. I recently sat down with Jesse Neil and John Haubenreich, attorneys who work at the intersection between healthcare, policy and regulation. They help clients navigate the complexities of our ever-evolving healthcare system, working on compliance and handling investigations when they arise. Our conversation touched on a number of topics, ranging from current regulatory issues to how to approach a lawyer for help.

This is the second part of an informal and miniseries looking at leadership and culture. Last week we heard from Jeff Thompson, CEO emeritus of Gundersen Health, and this week I’m talking to Jenn Lim of Delivering Happiness. Jenn is the Co-founder, CEO and Chief Happiness Officer at Delivering Happiness, an organization built to help companies understand the importance of, and then build strategies around, happiness and employee satisfaction. A lot of this came out of Zappos, which has a remarkable story about company culture and customer satisfaction and - ultimately - business success. Her team spends a lot of time working with healthcare organizations, and the healthcare community is looking more closely at the ideas Jenn and her team bring to the table. In this conversation, we look at case studies such as Northwell Health to show the value of a strong culture in healthcare.

Dr. Jeff Thompson is Executive Advisor and Chief Executive Officer Emeritus at Gundersen Health System in LaCrosse Wisconsin. He is also an accomplished author and speaker, as well as a practicing pediatrician. Dr. Thompson ran Gundersen Health System for 14 years. The organization covers a significant portion of Wisconsin, hundreds of thousands of patients, employes a staff of 7,000, and is consistently ranked as one of the highest quality healthcare organizations in the country. Much of that success comes from Dr. Thompson and his team's work to build and sustain a culture where patients are put first - in practice and not just as a slogan - employees are encouraged to remember why they got into healthcare in the first place, and where business goals and financial imperatives are aligned with the mission of providing outstanding care. In this conversation, we talk about leadership, organizational culture, and how the business of healthcare can and does work closely with the ideal of not just treating sick people, but keeping them well in the first place.

My guest today is Esther Dyson. Many of you will be familiar with Esther’s work, which includes multiple startups and board seats - 23andMe being one - her writing - including the 1997 book Release 2.0, her work in digital health and her investing with EDVentures. And that’s only part of her history. These days, one of her big projects is Wellville, a non-profit focused on community health and community wellness that she founded and chairs.

Change is hard. Whether it's getting a patient to change his lifestyle or adhere to a medication, or convincing an executive to implement a new tool or strategy, getting humans to change course is no easy thing. Hamid Ghanadan of the Linus Group spends his time thinking about how to build products and campaigns that will lower the energy barrier to change. In this episode, Ghanadan talks about the barriers to change and how change management can make a difference for the healthcare system. He also provides some specific examples of how minor changes - nudges - can create an outsized effect. Be sure to check out Gahanadan's books "Persuading Scientists" and "Catalytic Experiences."

Holly Fletcher founded BirdDog earlier this year to bring "slow news" to healthcare, tech and economic issues in Tennessee. The goal is to provide deep reporting on issues that affect the state, including some - like healthcare - that ripple out to the rest of the country. With Nashville as a national hub for the healthcare industry, the response of Tennessee health systems to policies and trends have an effect elsewhere. In this conversation, we talk about Fletcher's approach to covering the news (lots of data), the trends people are talking about (transparency and balanced billing), the things making healthcare companies nervous (again, transparency and balanced billing), challenges to making long-term progress in those areas, and holding policymakers accountable by asking hard questions.

We are taking the next couple of weeks of from releasing new episodes of the Future of Health. We'll be back on June 19. When we come back, we'll have conversations on blockchain in healthcare as part of our new Tokenizing Health Initiative, conversations about behavior change and change management, and a couple of panel discussion around things like transparency and care coordination. In the meantime, check out healthfurther.com for information about the 2018 Health:Further Festival and to sign up for our weekly healthcare newsletter.

Jay Desai is Co-founder and CEO of PatientPing, a care coordination platform that brings an individual’s medical records together to eliminate these problems. The service is built on network effects, sending providers alerts when the patient receives care at other facilities and also compiles their history into “stories” at the point of care. The goal, says Desai, is to reduce costs through fewer redundant tests and treatments, as well as provide insight that will improve care based on past events and reduce adverse outcomes or readmissions.

Dr. Yaa Kumah-Crystal is an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt, as well as a practicing pediatric endocrinologist. Dr. Kumah-Crystal, along with Dan Albert, Associate Director of Health IT Product Development at Vanderbilt, is building EVA (EHR Voice Assistant). It is a voice user interface for physicians that can naturalistically communicate with an EHR to ask questions and get answers back. Erum Khan is CEO of SoundMind, Inc., which creates voice artificial intelligence applications to empower seniors and improve the caregiving experience. The three technologists joined us on the podcast to discuss voice technology and AI, what it can do and what it is doing across health and healthcare.

Dr. Griffin Myers Chief Medical Officer at Oak Street Health. The organization provides fully-capitated care to patients covered under Medicare and Medicaid, so Oak Street is incentivized to provide efficient care with limited resources. Dr. Myers talks about this example of value-based care and how they've been able to reduce hospitalizations by over 40%, the mission of Oak Street health (personal, equitable, accountable care), and what new physicians entering the system need to know.