Relentless Health Value

Eric is established as a national expert on the impact of health care reform on health care providers and is a respected thought leader in the hospital health system industry. A consultant with deep experience in health plan strategy, design, prevention care, and productivity and behavioral economics, Eric serves as the national leader of direct provider solutions for Collective Health. A former executive at Evolent Health and principal with Towers Watson, he has worked in the employee benefits business for 30-plus years as an advisor to hospital and health system clients, developing health benefit and prevention care strategies that align with the health system's population health business. Eric focuses on improving the poor health of health care workers and professionals as a first step to improving patient satisfaction and quality outcomes. He frequently speaks about the direct link between improving health care workers' health and boosting patient satisfaction and quality outcomes. Eric is a published author, including the book STOP!: 21 Stops to Reduce Stress and Enhance Joy, and has authored more than 20 articles on employee benefit topics, including "Fixing the Broken Triangle," "The Healthcare Benefit Crisis—Ten Years Later" in 2015, "Choice Architecture—A Tool for Ratcheting Up Benefit and Wellness Results," "eACOs—The Health Plan of the Future," and "The Healthcare Benefit Crisis." A member of several "Who's Who" lists for business executives, Eric graduated from the University of Illinois with a BA in psychology and earned his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Today I speak with Brian Peet, president of MediSolutions, and we talk about the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in health care today and its potential for the future. Both AR and VR are bidirectional tools with one main job: engage patients. Because while the patients are engaged, the environment is right for critical education a patient might need to understand how to pull off their treatment plan.

Brian is an innovator in digital life science technology, launching 15 brands across biotech, pharmaceuticals, and technology. Most recently he was the vice president of strategy at Alere, where he led efforts in point-of-care commercial implementation and business process design. In his current role, Brian leads the effort to create and launch cutting-edge VR and AR experiences in health care as well as the evolution of MediSolutions into an industry game changer. You can learn more at medisolutions.healthcare.

Kelly Close founded Close Concerns in 2002; its mission is to make everyone smarter about diabetes. At Close Concerns, Kelly and her team write approximately three million words each year on diabetes, prediabetes, obesity, and digital health for Closer Look, a highly praised service covering the goings-on in the field. Kelly's passion for the field comes from her extensive professional work as well as from her personal experience, having had diabetes for over 30 years. Kelly is the author of more than 30 peer-reviewed manuscripts as well as Targeting a Cure for Type 1 Diabetes: How Long Do We Have to Wait?, a widely praised book published by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in 2013. She also wrote the foreword for the widely praised Bright Spots & Landmines by Adam Brown, published in 2017. Kelly is an associate editor of Clinical Diabetes, a journal focused on diabetes for primary care physicians published quarterly by the ADA. Close Concerns is a winner of the ADA’s “Excellence in Health Communications” Award, and Kelly and her team write a quarterly column in Journal of Diabetes, a peer-reviewed journal based in Shanghai.

Kelly chairs the diaTribe Foundation, a nonprofit established in 2013 to improve the lives of people with diabetes and prediabetes and to advocate for action. She is also the founder of diaTribe.org, begun in 2006 as an educational resource for people with diabetes; diaTribe.org’s free educational mailers go to over 100,000 people every 2 weeks. Before starting Close Concerns and the diaTribe Foundation, Kelly’s work focused on life sciences more broadly. Over nearly a dozen years, she worked on Wall Street (investment banking at Goldman Sachs, equity research at Merrill Lynch) and at McKinsey & Company, where her work centered on life science, managed care, and nonprofit organizations.

You can learn more by going to diatribe.org, follow diaTribe on Facebook and Twitter, and check out diatribe.org/foundation and diatribe.org/brightspots.

Kelly Close founded Close Concerns in 2002; its mission is to make everyone smarter about diabetes. At Close Concerns, Kelly and her team write approximately three million words each year on diabetes, prediabetes, obesity, and digital health for Closer Look, a highly praised service covering the goings-on in the field. Kelly's passion for the field comes from her extensive professional work as well as from her personal experience, having had diabetes for over 30 years. Kelly is the author of more than 30 peer-reviewed manuscripts as well as Targeting a Cure for Type 1 Diabetes: How Long Do We Have to Wait?, a widely praised book published by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in 2013. She also wrote the foreword for the widely praised Bright Spots & Landmines by Adam Brown, published in 2017. Kelly is an associate editor of Clinical Diabetes, a journal focused on diabetes for primary care physicians published quarterly by the ADA. Close Concerns is a winner of the ADA's "Excellence in Health Communications" Award, and Kelly and her team write a quarterly column in Journal of Diabetes, a peer-reviewed journal based in Shanghai. Kelly chairs the diaTribe Foundation, a nonprofit established in 2013 to improve the lives of people with diabetes and prediabetes and to advocate for action. She is also the founder of diaTribe.org, begun in 2006 as an educational resource for people with diabetes; diaTribe.org's free educational mailers go to over 100,000 people every 2 weeks. Before starting Close Concerns and the diaTribe Foundation, Kelly's work focused on life sciences more broadly. Over nearly a dozen years, she worked on Wall Street (investment banking at Goldman Sachs, equity research at Merrill Lynch) and at McKinsey & Company, where her work centered on life science, managed care, and nonprofit organizations. You can learn more by going to diatribe.org, follow diaTribe on Facebook and Twitter, and check out diatribe.org/foundation and diatribe.org/brightspots.

In today's inbetweenisode, we're going to diverge from our normal panel of health care industry experts and speak instead to the person we all work for, and who we all should be aiming to serve as best we can—the patient. Today we are speaking with Crane Stavig, a garden designer in Seattle, and he is going to tell us about his recent experience finding the best place to have  hernia surgery.

I'm a creative and detail-oriented professional gardener with many years of hands-on experience in addition to attending ongoing college courses at Edmonds Community College in their highly regarded Horticulture program. In my previous career, I spent a lot of time working with clients on innovative ways to deliver the results they wanted while keeping an eye on the big picture. Oddly, garden design is quite similar. I always have to keep a budget and overall objectives in mind while developing strategies and tactics, and managing external resources. Specialties: Garden design; excel at delivering innovative solutions to garden challenges. Precision Pruning of specimen trees including Japanese maples and flowering trees. College level and professional training in pruning. 02:30 Why Crane pays out of pocket for his exam. 03:15 The chain of events that Crane, as an average patient, went through to find out the cost for his hernia surgery. 04:20 Why Crane thought to ask for the price of the procedure in the first place. 05:15 What Crane did next when he found out how much the cost of the procedure was going to be. 06:40 David Contorno's price shopping video - check out his episode, EP186. 09:10 Online services patients can go to get a sense of cash prices for certain procedures. 09:45 Why discovering price breakdowns for patients with insurance is so difficult. 13:50 "Generally speaking, the lower the cost, the higher the quality." 15:50 What Crane found out from his research on guroo.com. 18:15 The inconsistency with negotiated insurance prices. 20:20 "Most care provided in this country is not acute." 21:10 Resources to check the quality of the care you are receiving: healthgrades.com, leapfroggroup.org, and medicare.gov/hospitalcompare. 25:50 "Give me more information that I can make a decision on."

Seth PainterSeth is a senior-level business development, sales, and marketing professional at IQVIA, a leading global provider of information, innovative technology solutions, and contract research services focused on using data and science to help health care clients find better solutions for their patients. Seth's background is unique, having sold for and to pharmaceutical companies in addition to having extensive hospital sales experience. As a health care and marketing expert who specializes in consumer insights, marketing effectiveness, and media innovation, Seth works with pharmaceutical, agency, and media organizations to provide targeting, optimization, and measurement for patient/health care provider campaigns. Anton Yarovoy A science nerd turned marketing creative, Anton is behind numerous innovative campaigns, including "Color for the Kids!" and "Be Heard!" With over 18 years of experience across academia and industry, his unique and unexpected multichannel projects empower health care providers to be advocates for the products they use. He has a degree in biochemistry, biology, and neuroscience from Brandeis University and an MBA from Montclair State University, and speaks on the role of digital marketing in the health care space. Alec Pettifer Alec consults with pharmaceutical and life science industry clients to deliver actionable insights to drive business performance. With hundreds of successful projects completed, Alec joined suAzio Consulting in 2017 as senior business consultant to use direct stakeholder engagement to optimize co-creation of patient support programs and digital health solutions. Alec is passionate about patient centricity and is an active member of and volunteer for The Aurora Project. He leverages 20+ years' experience with traditional and cutting-edge methods to support patient-focused drug development. Alec earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Rowan University and has lived and worked in Europe, Asia, and North America throughout his career. Joe Shields As an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker and digital pioneer, Joe infuses storytelling with technology to systematically move audiences to action. Applying his unique perspective to business, he has led global marketing, new product development, digital strategy, and enterprise innovation for Fortune 100 companies in specialty chemicals, telecommunications, biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, and diagnostics. He is currently president and cofounder of Health Accelerators, a business-to-business marketing services agency supporting suppliers to life sciences companies. You can learn more at healthaccelerators.com.

Seth PainterSeth is a senior-level business development, sales, and marketing professional at IQVIA, a leading global provider of information, innovative technology solutions, and contract research services focused on using data and science to help health care clients find better solutions for their patients. Seth’s background is unique, having sold for and to pharmaceutical companies in addition to having extensive hospital sales experience. As a health care and marketing expert who specializes in consumer insights, marketing effectiveness, and media innovation, Seth works with pharmaceutical, agency, and media organizations to provide targeting, optimization, and measurement for patient/health care provider campaigns.

Anton Yarovoy A science nerd turned marketing creative, Anton is behind numerous innovative campaigns, including “Color for the Kids!” and “Be Heard!” With over 18 years of experience across academia and industry, his unique and unexpected multichannel projects empower health care providers to be advocates for the products they use. He has a degree in biochemistry, biology, and neuroscience from Brandeis University and an MBA from Montclair State University, and speaks on the role of digital marketing in the health care space.

Alec Pettifer Alec consults with pharmaceutical and life science industry clients to deliver actionable insights to drive business performance. With hundreds of successful projects completed, Alec joined suAzio Consulting in 2017 as senior business consultant to use direct stakeholder engagement to optimize co-creation of patient support programs and digital health solutions. Alec is passionate about patient centricity and is an active member of and volunteer for The Aurora Project. He leverages 20+ years’ experience with traditional and cutting-edge methods to support patient-focused drug development. Alec earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Rowan University and has lived and worked in Europe, Asia, and North America throughout his career. 

Joe Shields As an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker and digital pioneer, Joe infuses storytelling with technology to systematically move audiences to action. Applying his unique perspective to business, he has led global marketing, new product development, digital strategy, and enterprise innovation for Fortune 100 companies in specialty chemicals, telecommunications, biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, and diagnostics. He is currently president and cofounder of Health Accelerators, a business-to-business marketing services agency supporting suppliers to life sciences companies.

You can learn more at healthaccelerators.com.

Today I talk with Dyan Bryson, founder and partner from Inspired Health Strategies (IHS) about how patient reported outcomes (ie PRO) collected especially during clinical trials and beyond is fast becoming the thing to do. Not only because it tends to make a difference when you go to market, in a big, positive way, but also because policies are changing that mandate the collection of PRO in real time. This is per the old PFDD, otherwise known as Patient-Focused Drug Development.