I Don't Care

Eight hundred thousand nurses plan to leave healthcare by 2027. One hundred seventeen thousand doctors left the workforce in 2021. The CHQPR estimates more than 600 rural hospitals are at risk of closing. One in five hospitals in California are at risk of closing. These meaningful signals remain after one filters out the noise and distractions. Patient access to care is under threat at every turn in this country. How can the industry expect to improve the health equity landscape when staffing and hospital shortages run the risk of leaving fewer patient access options?

What can and should the industry do about these healthcare challenges?

For context, insights, and some answers to these issues and concerns in the healthcare industry, I Don’t Care’s Kevin Stevenson reached out to one of the foremost healthcare industry experts, Nathan Kaufman, the Managing Director of Kaufman Strategic Advisors and Matterhorn Strategic Advisors, is a take-no-prisoner, no-nonsense, straight shooter when discussing barriers to patient care.

“What kind of healthcare system do we have when the people that save lives, that heal people, that cure people from diseases are losing money, and the people who process their claims are making record profits?” Kaufman said. “That’s the healthcare system that we have.”

Stevenson and Kaufman discuss the following:

• How private payers are putting rural hospitals out of business

• The need for private payer dollars to provide infrastructure support for rural healthcare systems

• Solutions to the challenges facing rural hospitals and other healthcare networks

“Few health systems have the competency to run home-health agencies,” Kaufman said. “And they lose money. We have a client. They came to us and said, ‘We’re losing money in home health.’ So, what we did was an auction. And we brought all the for-profit home health agencies that are making money, and we sold 51% of the home health agency to people who know how to run home health agencies.”

About Nathan

Nathan Kaufman aims to improve healthcare delivery by enhancing providers’ strategic and financial performance. He brings over 40 years of experience as a strategist, executive, and negotiator to his role as managing director of Kaufman Strategic Advisors and Matterhorn Strategic Advisors. Kaufman is considered one of the nation’s healthcare industry experts. He received his BA in Psychology from Emory University and his MS in health systems from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Whether you’re self employed or work for a major company, having a personal brand can be important. But not everyone knows how best to brand themselves, or they’re not comfortable with putting themselves out there in that way. How can someone make their own persona brand and make it work for them?

On this episode of I Don’t Care with Kevin Stevenson, the host talks with Alexandra Powell, Account Management Manager at AMN Healthcare, about making a personal brand, as well as talent staffing in healthcare. Both Stevenson and Powell understand that not everyone wants to make themselves a brand, but with her work, Powell knows how important it can be to market one’s self, no matter their field.

“I think it really starts with self-awareness” says Powell. “If you are a person that says ‘hey, I don’t want to talk about myself’, well, that’s a really great place to start.” From here, Powell says one can take one of many various personality tests to help determine the best way to present yourself and “discovering that sense of self.” It’s all about “self-awareness, plugging into what drives you, what brings you joy, what fills your buckets.” Powell also points out that establishing a personal brand takes time. Good branding “is not something that happens overnight.”

This episode also covers:

1. The importance of helping out others if you have the skills to do so.

2. The importance of endorsements and recommendations from others.

3. Putting yourself out there and being inquisitive.

When it comes to talent staffing in the medical field, Powell brings up the importance of working with her partners to present the best version of a physician to a provider. She knows that her own experience and skills allow her to help those in the medical field reach the right people and places for a job position. “When we work together in collaboration to present providers to our market place partners, we have to make sure that we’re presenting that best clinician, that best provider.”

Alexandra Powell is an Account Management Manager at AMN Healthcare; before, she was their Behavioral Health Account Manager. Powell is also Yoga Instructor and Owner of The Healing Center Texas. She also has a work history of being a consultant for companies like Goldfish Medical Staffing and Marlin Medical Solutions.

As it pertains to doctor-patient relationships, one of the main components of that is confidentiality and professionalism. But another key aspect to successful relationships between a doctor and their patient is also how successful the communication is and whether the doctor is building good rapport with them.

What are some fundamentals of positive patient relationships?

On an episode of the I Don’t Care podcast, host Kevin Stevenson interviewed Dr. Mark Pool, a Cardiothoracic Surgeon at Texas Health Physicians Group, about his perspective on how doctors can improve their patient relationships and form stronger bonds through better communication.

Dismissive or nonchalant attitudes from doctors lead to disparities in healthcare. But if doctors display certain traits, such as active listening, research shows that it will build more trust and improve patient relationships. Dr. Pool added that his own experience as a patient has allowed him to see where doctors can get it wrong.

“As a patient that I’ve gone to see a physician and I'm sitting there in the exam room and the doctor walks in, doesn't look at me, looking down on at something and says, ‘I see you're here for X,’ and it's just always on my mind because I know it can be done better than that, and I think it just starts with the basics of building rapport,” said Pool.

Stevenson and Pool also explored…

The types of traits doctors should possess to encourage patients to be more open with them

Tips and communication styles on interacting with patients and their relatives

Preferred wording and verbiage to use when discussing health issues with patients

Pool added that in his specialty, heart-care patients already have a sense of fear when it comes to their health, so specific wording is important when talking with them.

“Constant attention in being careful with the wording helps disarm it,” he said. “...Carefully word it where it's a little less intimidating and make them feel like I'm on their side. ‘I'm here for you, we are going to get through this together.’ Those are the kind of words that I think patients respond to, and it’s not fake — it's not a show, it's just me intentionally doing it that way so that patients will have less fear, they’ll have less anxiety.”

Dr. Mark Pool is a board-certified Cardiothoracic Surgeon at Texas Health Physicians Group. His work in the medical field also focuses on shifting and changing the way medical professionals communicate with their patients. Pool has been named Super Doctor and Rising Star by Texas Monthly, and was named Best Doctor in D Magazine. He is a graduate of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.

Traditional medicine isn’t generally taken very seriously in the United States. However, Dr. Andrea Small-Howard, President and CSO at GB Sciences explained that “65% of the world still use traditional medicine either as their sole medicine or in conjunction with Western medicine.” Depending on the source, traditional plant-based medicine dates back as far as 60,000 years whereas Western medicine is a mere 3,000 years old.

Kevin Stevenson, I Don’t Care podcast host, sat down with the distinguished Dr. Small-Howard to discuss her work in the plant-based medicine industry. Dr. Small-Howard will also discuss the digital transformation curve with GB Sciences AI-based drug discovery platform PhAROS. This podcast is of great interest due in part to Dr. Small-Howard’s extensive resume. In fact, it is so extensive that the following introduction from her LinkedIn profile barely highlights her expertise.

“Dr. Andrea Small-Howard has 25 years of scientific research and executive experience in the biopharma industry supervising research & development, manufacturing, and quality control divisions in the US and China. Dr. Small-Howard has taken novel biological products from ideation through commercialization. She has been named an inventor on seventy+ patent applications, taken the lead in obtaining regulatory approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (‘US FDA’), and orchestrated commercial licensing deals.”

Listeners might think that they would not be able to understand or relate to such a well-educated scientific mind, but nothing could be further from the truth. Dr. Small-Howard is an engaging speaker filled with enthusiasm for her chosen line of work and her mission to normalize plant-based medicine in the United States.

“My background is in biochemistry, so I sort of see the world through a different lens and I’ve always been obsessed with the power of plant-based medicines. Traditional medicine is often overlooked as being a really powerful force here in the United States,” said Dr. Small-Howard. The doctor joined GB Sciences in 2014 to take plant-based medicine to the next level by utilizing science to maximize the potential of the cannabis plant