Modern healthcare is caught between extraordinary clinical possibility and an increasingly strained delivery system: patients have more treatment options, data and information than ever, while hospitals and physician networks must coordinate care amid workforce pressure, rising complexity and limited tolerance for waste. That pressure is only expected to grow, with the Association of American Medical Colleges warning that the U.S. physician shortfall could climb as high as 86,000 by 2036, underscoring why better care now depends not only on medical innovation, but on whether clinicians, administrators and networks can build enough trust to make hard decisions together.

How can healthcare leaders move beyond transactional relationships and build the trust needed for physicians and administrators to make better decisions together — for their networks, their practices and the patients they serve?

On I Don’t Care, host Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Dr. David Foster, Founder and Principal of Clinical Network Collaborative, about leading with purpose across medicine, administration and faith-based healthcare. Their conversation explores Foster’s decades of clinical and executive experience, the role of mission in leadership, the need to unify the physician voice, and why clinical integration may be one of healthcare’s most urgent priorities.

What you'll learn...

• Physician alignment starts with listening, but it cannot stop there. Foster argues that physicians often feel unheard, while administrators are actively seeking clearer clinical input. The opportunity, he says, is to move from a “cacophony” of individual complaints to a unified physician voice that can help leaders set priorities.
• Collaboration is becoming a survival skill in a constrained healthcare environment. Foster emphasizes that practices, hospitals, payers and health systems all operate within networks. When resources are limited, clinicians and administrators must work together to decide what services to invest in, what duplication to reduce and how to keep patient care as the shared North Star.
• Healthcare leaders should stop fighting the tools and start improving the system. Asked what leaders spend too much time worrying about, Foster points to the electronic medical record. His view: EMRs are not going away, so leaders should focus less on resisting them and more on optimizing them to support better practice, workflow and patient care.

Dr. David Foster, MD, MBA, FAAFP, is a physician executive and healthcare strategist with more than 30 years of experience spanning clinical practice, medical group leadership, governance, clinical integration and system-level transformation. He founded Clinical Network Collaborative to help clinicians, administrators, health system leaders and payers strengthen network performance through clearer dialogue, physician engagement and patient-first alignment. Previously, he held senior leadership roles at CommonSpirit Health, CHI St. Vincent, CHRISTUS Health and CHRISTUS Spohn Health System, where he led multi-state physician enterprise operations, grew provider networks, advanced value-based care, improved quality and access, and built governance structures that elevated the clinical voice in organizational decision-making.

For years, nutrition has sat awkwardly between personal responsibility and medical care: important enough for doctors to mention, but rarely supported like a real treatment plan. That gap is becoming harder to defend as diet-related diseases continue to strain patients, employers and the healthcare system. A study in JAMA Network Open found that expanding medically tailored meals in the U.S. could prevent an estimated 1.6 million hospitalizations a year, making the case that food can be more than general wellness advice — it can be part of how care is delivered.

That raises the real question for healthcare leaders, employers and retailers: how do you turn food from a recommendation into a system of support?

On I Don’t Care, host Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Adam DeVito, Founder and CEO of Monj Health, and Maggie Biscarr, a food-as-medicine subject matter expert, about whether food can play a more central role in prevention, healing and healthcare strategy. Their conversation covers the history of food-as-medicine, the behavioral barriers that make healthy eating difficult, the role of culinary skills and community, and why employers and retailers may be uniquely positioned to connect food, pharmacy and long-term health.

What you'll learn...

• Food-as-medicine is having a moment because healthcare costs, chronic disease and GLP-1 demand are converging. Biscarr explains that employers and payers are recognizing that nutrition is not just a lifestyle issue, but a workforce health, productivity and cost issue.
• Behavior change is the missing link. DeVito argues that people do not “eat nutrition”; they eat food, flavor and comfort. Monj aims to make healthy eating joyful through cooking, confidence-building, behavioral science and community.
• The future may depend on connecting systems. The guests discuss opportunities for employers, retailers, pharmacies and food-as-medicine platforms to work together so people can access education, incentives and practical support where they already live, work and shop.

Maggie Troope Biscarr is a food-as-medicine strategist and independent consultant working across the food, retail and healthcare sectors, with current roles including co-lead of the NOURISH Movement, subject matter expert with Clareo Partners, and lead of the GLP-1 Advisory Group for Georgetown’s Portion Balance Coalition. She previously served as Director of Global Partnership Solutions at PepsiCo, where she built cross-sector partnerships focused on health, wellness, sustainability and consumer behavior change, including healthier-choice and recycling pilots with major retail partners. Earlier in her career, she led AARP Foundation’s SNAP and nutrition incentive portfolios, including fruit and vegetable incentive and Food Rx programs, building on her MSW and long-standing focus on health equity and social drivers of health.

Adam DeVito is the Founder and CEO of Monj Health, a food-is-medicine platform that uses behavioral science, technology and coaching to help address obesity, diabetes and metabolic health at scale. He has led innovation and growth across food, digital health, enterprise platforms, nutrition and play, including senior roles at Kraft Foods and Sterling-Rice Group, where his teams developed major new products and brand strategies for leading food and wellness companies. Earlier in his career, he trained in classical French cooking, co-authored a healthy cooking book series for Time Inc., and later became Kraft’s first Executive Chef, helping develop DiGiorno Pizza and launch it into a $1 billion brand.

Healthcare leaders spend their careers designing better systems for patients, but the work looks different when they have had to move through those systems themselves. For Patrick Makarewich, a diagnosis of HPV-related head and neck cancer transformed familiar operational issues — scheduling, access, support services, staff flexibility, and communication — into deeply personal lessons. His experience reflects a larger reality in cancer care: HPV-linked oropharyngeal cancers have been rising, particularly among middle-aged men, making prevention, early detection, and patient-centered care urgent leadership concerns.

How does a cancer diagnosis change the way a healthcare leader thinks about access, empathy, and the people behind every clinical process?

On this episode of I Don’t Care, host Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Patrick Makarewich, FACHE, Clinical Practice Manager for ENT, Head and Neck Surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center, about how surviving HPV-related head and neck cancer reshaped his approach to leadership. Their conversation moves from Patrick’s diagnosis and treatment experience to clinic operations, workforce retention, generational leadership, patient access, and the cautious but promising role of AI in healthcare documentation and care delivery.

What you’ll learn…

• Lived experience can deepen healthcare leadership. Patrick explains that going through cancer treatment gave him insights into patient fear, scheduling friction, support needs, and survivorship that he could not have fully understood from an administrator’s seat alone.
• Staff retention starts with daily leadership. He argues that the most important recruiting happens with the people already on the team, through flexibility, goal-setting, quality interactions, and support for employees’ real lives outside work.
• AI may help reduce provider burden, but healthcare still needs human judgment. Patrick discusses UT Southwestern’s creation of a Chief AI Officer role and describes how AI-supported note-taking could help providers with documentation while still requiring accuracy, oversight, and empathy.

Patrick Makarewich, FACHE, is a transformational healthcare executive with deep experience in physician practice management, service line leadership, operational improvement, and patient-centered care. He currently leads Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery clinic operations at UT Southwestern, overseeing a large multidisciplinary team while improving patient access, provider efficiency, and employee engagement. Across roles at UT Southwestern, Acclaim Physician Group, JPS Health Network, Children’s Health, Cook Children’s, Premier, hospice leadership, and Kaiser Permanente/SCPMG-related consulting roles, he has driven service line growth, Lean process improvement, revenue cycle optimization, workforce efficiency, accreditation success, and multimillion-dollar cost savings.

Primary care in America is under pressure from nearly every direction: physician shortages, long appointment wait times, rising patient demand, and a care model still built around physical offices. The U.S. is expected to face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, according to projections from the Association of American Medical Colleges, while federal shortage-area data continues to show gaps in primary care access across the country. At the same time, virtual care and AI are moving from pandemic-era workarounds to core infrastructure for how patients find, receive, and navigate care.

But as the technology catches up to the need, can healthcare use it in a way that preserves what matters most: the relationship between patient and doctor?

Welcome to I Don’t Care. In the latest episode, host Dr. Kevin Stevenson sits down with Dr. Geoffrey Rutledge, Founder and Chief Medical Officer of HealthTap, to explore the evolution of virtual care, the failures of traditional primary care, and the proper role of AI in medicine. Their conversation spans the early days of online medical information, the rise of telehealth, HealthTap’s shift toward virtual primary care, and why Dr. Rutledge believes technology should strengthen clinicians rather than replace them.

What you’ll learn…

• Virtual care is no longer just “digital urgent care.” Dr. Rutledge argues that telehealth began as a transactional service for immediate needs, but its real potential is longitudinal virtual primary care, where physicians can build relationships, understand lifestyle factors, and guide patients over time.
• Access problems are not limited to rural communities. While telehealth is often framed as a rural health solution, Dr. Rutledge and Dr. Stevenson discuss how patients in urban and suburban markets also face barriers such as traffic, childcare, mobility issues, and months-long waits for appointments.
• AI should support clinical judgment, not substitute for it. Dr. Rutledge says large language models are powerful tools for information retrieval, differential diagnosis, and reminding physicians of possibilities they may not have considered. But he cautions that AI is still weak at planning, prioritization, and understanding patient preferences, making physician oversight essential.

Dr. Geoffrey Rutledge is a practicing physician, entrepreneur, and digital health leader with more than 30 years of experience applying technology to improve healthcare access, delivery, and outcomes. He is the founder and Chief Medical Officer of HealthTap, and previously held senior leadership roles at Healtheon/WebMD, Epocrates, Wellsphere, San Mateo Medical Center, and First Consulting Group. Dr. Rutledge earned his MD from McGill University and his PhD in medical computer science from Stanford, and has taught medicine at Harvard, Stanford, and UCSD while conducting NIH-funded research in medical informatics.

Emergency departments have become the place where nearly every fracture in the healthcare system eventually shows up: behavioral health gaps, delayed primary care, staffing shortages, transfer disputes and inpatient bottlenecks. As demand rises and care becomes more complex, the ED is no longer just a clinical entry point — it is a pressure test for the entire hospital. Research has linked ED crowding to treatment delays, poorer patient outcomes, violence against staff, turnover and burnout, making emergency care a window into the broader strain on hospitals.

So what happens when the system’s safety net is treated less like a strategic entry point for care and more like a holding area for everything the rest of the hospital cannot absorb?

That’s the question at the heart of the latest episode of I Don’t Care. Host Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Dr. Jim Augustine, a renowned emergency department physician leader and medical director, about what is broken in emergency care, what can still be fixed, and why hospital leaders need to rethink the role of the ED. Their conversation covers emergency department overcrowding, boarding, benchmarking, EMTALA, behavioral health, post-COVID facility design and the future of hospital-at-home models.

What you’ll learn…

• Boarding is not just an ED problem. Dr. Augustine argues that when admitted patients remain in the emergency department because inpatient beds or processes are unavailable, the issue reflects whole-hospital flow, not ED failure.
• Low-acuity patients are not the real cause of emergency department dysfunction. He warns that blaming ED crowding on sprained ankles or minor complaints distracts from larger operational problems, including inpatient throughput and community care breakdowns.
• Emergency departments need new planning assumptions. Dr. Augustine says older design formulas no longer fit today’s patient population, which is older, more medically complex, more behavioral-health intensive and more likely to require extended diagnostic workups or boarding.

Dr. Jim Augustine is a longtime emergency physician and EMS medical director whose career spans emergency department leadership, fire and EMS operations, clinical governance, benchmarking and system design. He has held national leadership roles with the American College of Emergency Physicians, US Acute Care Solutions, the Emergency Department Benchmarking Alliance and the International Association of Fire Chiefs. A clinical professor, consultant, author and speaker, Dr. Augustine is widely recognized for his expertise in emergency care operations, ED data, department design and prehospital care.

As healthcare access strains under specialist shortages, long wait times, and rising administrative burden, some physicians are looking backward to move medicine forward. Patients can wait months for specialty care, doctors are often asked to see dozens of people in a single clinic session, and new care models are emerging around a simple but disruptive idea: bringing the physician back into the patient’s space. The stakes are practical and deeply human: whether healthcare can become faster, more personal, and more present without losing the efficiencies modern medicine depends on.

Can technology restore what modern healthcare has lost: the physician’s presence with the patient, in the home, and at the center of care?

Welcome to I Don’t Care. In the latest episode, Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Dr. Yevhen Pavelko, CEO and co-founder of Inviah, about rebuilding medicine around physician house calls. Their conversation explores how Inviah aims to create a mobile, physician-led care platform with built-in records, referrals and house-call access, while giving doctors more independence and patients faster, more personal care.

Top insights from the talk…

• Dr. Pavelko argues that house calls are not nostalgia; they are a practical response to long waits, rushed visits, and limited access to specialists.
• The discussion examines how in-person care at home can reveal social, environmental, and family factors that clinics or telehealth may miss.
• Dr. Pavelko frames Inviah as a physician-led alternative to the traditional employment model, designed to reduce overhead, restore autonomy, and make medicine more human.

Dr. Yevhen Pavelko is the CEO and co-founder of Inviah and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Illinois Chicago, specializing in general, foregut, bariatric, minimally invasive, and robotic surgery. He has held surgical and research roles across UI Health, OSF HealthCare, the University of Chicago Medicine, and Lviv National Medical University, with experience spanning clinical care, surgical education, research, and healthcare operations. Through Inviah, he is building a physician-focused model for same-day home medical visits designed to improve access, reduce unnecessary ER use, and restore a more patient-centered approach to care.

Artificial intelligence has moved from experimental promise to boardroom priority, but healthcare leaders are still trying to understand what is real, what is risky and what is just clever marketing. In emergency medicine, where patient status changes minute by minute and operational bottlenecks can ripple across an entire hospital, the stakes are especially high. The core challenge is not simply whether hospitals should adopt AI, but whether they can evaluate it critically enough to avoid wasting time, capital and clinician trust.

So how should hospital executives, emergency physicians and operators decide which AI tools are worth trusting — and which ones are just hype?

On this episode of I Don’t Care, host Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Dr. Maureen Canellas, Associate Chief Medical Officer at UMass Memorial Medical Center, about the practical reality of AI in healthcare. Their conversation moves from emergency department operations and hospital governance to vendor skepticism, boarding, data standards, baseball and even NASA-inspired lessons in resource-constrained decision-making.

Top insights from the talk…

• Most “AI” claims deserve scrutiny. Dr. Canellas argues that hospitals should look past slide decks and ask vendors detailed questions about data inputs, algorithm design, model behavior, privacy and whether the tool actually works in real time.
• Emergency departments need AI that respects clinical reality. In the ED, conditions change minute by minute. Dr. Canellas emphasizes that “real time” should mean real time, especially when vitals, labs and disposition decisions are constantly shifting.
• AI should help solve operational pain, not chase buzzwords. From boarding to throughput, Dr. Canellas says the best use cases are grounded in specific hospital problems, financial modeling and measurable return on investment — not vague promises to transform care.

Dr. Maureen Canellas, MD, MBA, FACEP, is the Associate Chief Medical Officer at UMass Memorial Medical Center, an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School and an emergency physician at a high-volume Level I trauma center. She is an MIT research affiliate in healthcare AI and uses operations research, machine learning and emergency department benchmarking to improve patient flow, care delivery and patient experience. Dr. Canellas also serves on the Emergency Department Benchmarking Alliance Board of Directors, chairs its education committee and previously trained in emergency medicine at the University of Chicago, where she was chief resident and led multiple operations and administration research projects.

Access to clean water is still out of reach for a staggering number of people—and it’s not just a distant problem. According to estimates from WHO and UNICEF, over 2 billion people still don’t have safely managed drinking water at home, a reality that impacts everything from health to education and economic opportunity. As pressure from climate change and population growth builds, there’s increasing recognition that lasting solutions need to be built from the ground up, with communities at the center.

Within that shift, purpose-driven initiatives are emerging that connect individual action with systemic change—focused on creating impact that lasts well beyond the moment.

So what happens when a single individual attempts to run more than 15,000 kilometers across a continent—not for sport, but to catalyze transformation? Can a physical journey spark a scalable model for lifting communities out of poverty?

Welcome to I Don’t Care. In a conversation centered on purpose and impact, Dr. Kevin Stevenson is joined by Veronique Bourbeau, founder and CEO of Run4Humanity, to unpack a continent-spanning effort to transform communities through water, education, and endurance. The conversation spans far beyond endurance athletics, diving into the mechanics of sustainable development, behavioral change, and what it truly means to empower communities from within.

Key takeaways from the episode…

• It’s not about the run—it’s about systems change: The journey is a vehicle to deliver water access, agricultural support, sanitation, and education through locally driven programs.
• Community-first implementation is critical: Every initiative is co-created with local leaders and tailored to the unique needs of each region, ensuring long-term sustainability.
• Behavioral transformation is the missing link: Beyond infrastructure, Run4Humanity emphasizes financial literacy, health, and mindset shifts to break the cycle of poverty.

Veronique Bourbeau is an ultra-endurance athlete, author, and global humanitarian. A former journalist turned humanitarian leader, she combines expertise in international development, partnership-building, and community-led program design with elite ultra-endurance achievements, including a 3,010 km run across Japan and a record-setting 444 km race victory in Malaysia. Through Run4Humanity, she leverages large-scale endurance initiatives and global partnerships to advance water security, economic resilience, and long-term behavioral change.

Electronic medical records (EMRs) have moved from a back-office upgrade to a frontline determinant of care quality, clinician burnout, and hospital economics. With U.S. hospitals often spending tens to hundreds of millions—sometimes exceeding $100 million—on EMR implementations, the stakes have never been higher for getting both the technology and the human adoption right. As healthcare continues shifting toward interoperability, outpatient care, and data-driven decision-making, the conversation around EMRs is no longer technical—it’s strategic.

So what does it really take to build a business in the EMR space—and more importantly, how do you know when it’s time to walk away from it?

Welcome to I Don’t Care, hosted by Dr. Kevin Stevenson. In the latest episode, Dr. Stevenson sits down with Mark Embry, partner and co-founder of MedSys Group, to unpack decades of experience in healthcare technology consulting, the evolution of EMR implementation, and the personal side of exiting a company after 30 years.

Top insights from the talk…

• How EMR consulting evolved from niche staffing to mission-critical healthcare transformation work: What started as staffing has become strategic work shaping how health systems operate.

• Why user adoption—not just technology—is the biggest determinant of EMR success: Without workflow change and clinician buy-in, even the best systems fall short.
• What founders should consider when transitioning out of a business they’ve built from scratch: A strong exit balances financial outcomes with team, culture, and timing.

Mark Embry is the co-founder and EVP of Client Relationships at MedSys Group, where he has spent nearly three decades leading EMR advisory, implementation, and healthcare IT consulting services for providers across the U.S. He played a key role in building the company from its origins as Genesys Group into a nationally recognized firm supporting major initiatives, including federal EHR modernization projects with the DOD and VA. With over 20 years in IT consulting, Embry specializes in strategic partnerships, healthcare technology transformation, and scaling consulting organizations to deliver high-impact client outcomes.

Healthcare systems are under pressure almost everywhere, but the strain is especially visible in lower-resource settings where demand is rising faster than infrastructure. In Pakistan, that pressure is playing out across a system that has to serve more than 250 million people with limited public investment. Public health spending remains below 1% of GDP, making the need for smarter, more scalable healthcare delivery increasingly urgent. That is why major projects like the Jinnah Medical Complex are drawing attention as potential models for what the next phase of healthcare reform could look like.

That raises the real question at the center of this episode: can a major new medical complex help transform healthcare delivery in Pakistan, or will lasting progress depend on broader system design far beyond a single hospital?

Welcome to I Don’t Care. In the latest episode, Dr. Kevin Stevenson speaks with Dr. Muhammad Faheem Anwar, Chief Operating Officer of the Jinnah Medical Complex & Research Center, about the future of Pakistani healthcare. Their conversation explores the structural realities of Pakistan’s healthcare system, the ambitions behind the Jinnah Medical Complex in Islamabad, and the larger issues of digital health, oncology, workforce retention, prevention, and primary care reform.

Key takeaways from the conversation…

• Pakistan’s healthcare system is not simply underdeveloped. It is highly uneven, with world-class care in some institutions but fragmented access and high out-of-pocket costs for much of the population.
• The Jinnah Medical Complex is being positioned not just as a large hospital, but as a replicable model for operational discipline, clinician training, digital health, and internationally benchmarked public sector care.
• The biggest long-term opportunity in Pakistan may not be tertiary expansion alone, but building a stronger primary care foundation, better data systems, and a more sustainable care delivery model.

Dr. Muhammad Faheem Anwar is a healthcare operations and public health leader with more than 20 years of experience overseeing large multispecialty hospitals across Pakistan and the Gulf region, with deep expertise in hospital commissioning, operational readiness, governance, digital health integration, and health system strengthening. He currently serves as Chief Operating Officer of the Jinnah Medical Complex & Research Center, where he is leading the operationalization of a 1,460-bed quaternary care hospital, following senior leadership roles at The Indus Hospital, Central Park Teaching Hospital, Punjab Health Facilities Management Company, and the Punjab Information Technology Board. His career highlights include improving operational efficiency at scale, advancing quality and patient safety systems, leading HMIS implementation, and advising on health system reform, climate resilience, and performance improvement in low- and middle-income country settings.