What does it actually take to move independent physicians from fee-for-service to value-based care, and why is it still this hard?

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Michael Kopko, CEO of Pearl Health, a company built to help providers succeed in value-based care, particularly in Medicare programs where the operational complexity is very real.

Michael spent years at Oscar Health helping build the company during its early growth stage, leading one of the largest P&Ls in the organization. Before that, he worked at Bridgewater Associates under Ray Dalio, where he developed the mental models and systems thinking that now shape how he leads Pearl. He did not come to healthcare through a traditional path, and that perspective shows up everywhere in this conversation.

This conversation explores what it takes to lead a mission-driven company in one of the slowest-moving, highest-stakes industries in the world, and why Michael is more optimistic about the future of healthcare today than he has ever been.

Michael and Michael dig into:

* Why value-based care sounds easy on paper and why actually living it inside a practice is a completely different story

* How Pearl Health helps independent physicians succeed in MSSP and other Medicare programs

* The role incentives play in changing physician behavior and where the system still gets it wrong

* Why most things in senior care are predictable, and why predictable means preventable

* How Michael thinks about leadership under pressure and why equanimity is a skill, not a personality trait

* What Bridgewater and Oscar Health taught him about building in high-stakes environments

* How Pearl thinks about technology investment and what he would do differently if he started over

If you lead a healthcare organization, work in value-based care, build health tech, or advise the healthcare ecosystem, this conversation is for you.

0:00 Introduction and what Pearl Health does

2:40 What physicians say about value-based care when the cameras are off

4:59 Michael Kopko's origin story and early career curiosity

6:50 Why incentives are the real engine of behavior change in healthcare

9:30 What the transition from fee-for-service actually looks like in practice

11:46 Why this work is personal, not just professional

12:15 The mental model Michael returns to when things get hard

14:33 How Bridgewater and Oscar Health shaped his leadership style

15:07 Why progress is happening even when it does not feel like it

18:23 Does a healthcare innovator have the luxury of thinking long-term

19:33 If Pearl Health were a sports team

21:22 Where Pearl is strongest right now

22:20 How to follow Pearl Health and connect with Michael

23:20 What he would do differently if he started Pearl over today

24:30 Closing reflections on progress, patience, and purpose

https://www.pearlhealth.com/

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If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

What does it really look like to lead hospitals for nearly 30 years, starting at 27 years old, and walk away still standing?

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Tom McDougall, a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and author of "Karma Doesn't Need My Help: 11 Weekly Leadership Lessons for Success and Peace." Tom became a hospital CEO at 27 and went on to lead hospitals and health systems across for-profit, nonprofit, government, and academic settings for over two decades.

Tom did not study healthcare leadership from a distance. He lived it. He made decisions with incomplete information, led through COVID with no playbook, survived the staffing crisis, and ultimately walked away not because he failed, but because he was honest enough to know when the seat no longer fit.

This conversation goes deep into what it actually takes to lead in one of the most complex industries in the country.

Michael and Tom cover:

* Becoming a hospital CEO at 27 and learning leadership entirely on the job

* Why the least important person to patient care is the hospital CEO

* The GDO framework for decision making: Gut, Data, and Opinions

* How hindsight bias and heuristic bias quietly destroy experienced leaders

* The four leadership evolutions healthcare executives were forced through in six years

* Why relationships must come before transactions in healthcare leadership

* Reading people and rooms as a core executive skill

* Strategic chess: thinking five moves ahead on both sides of a negotiation

* What Tom wishes he had mastered earlier and what he would tell a 30-something operator today

* Why he retired and what finally made him walk away from the seat

Timestamps:

3:47 Becoming a hospital CEO at 27 years old

6:56 First CEO role: county board politics, Sunshine Laws, and the radio station

10:03 What the staff taught him in the first two years

11:09 The first leadership mistakes he made and why

13:18 The danger of pretending you know everything as a leader

16:52 Why people stop telling leaders the truth

24:49 Decisions he still replays and the weight of bounded rationality

26:13 The GDO framework for decision making: Gut, Data, and Opinions

28:06 The numbers that matter and why relationships outlast margin

29:39 AI, emerging patterns, and what current healthcare operators are missing

33:00 Why the hospital CEO is the least important person to patient care

34:19 How decision making sharpens over time in healthcare leadership

35:49 Hindsight bias and heuristic bias: the traps experienced leaders fall into

40:27 Leading through COVID, the staffing crisis, inflation, and accountability mode

44:34 Knowing when it is time to leave the seat

48:04 What to master as a 30-something healthcare operator

51:34 Strategic chess: seeing five moves ahead on both sides

54:36 About the book and where to follow Tom's work

59:52 Closing thoughts

Follow Tom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommcdougaljr/

https://badlands.pro/

This episode is for healthcare executives, early careerists in healthcare, operators navigating high-stakes decisions, and anyone who leads people in environments where the margin for error is thin.

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If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

What actually happens inside health plans?

In this episode of the Advancing Health Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Mike McCabe, CEO of On Advisors and a seasoned health plan executive who has spent his career inside health plans, not just advising them from the outside.

Mike pulls back the curtain on what actually happens inside health plans when things go sideways...from network breakdowns and outdated claims systems to the administrative avalanche drowning primary care providers. He shares why the payer-provider relationship is, in his own words, "cantankerous," and what it would take to fix it.

The conversation covers the three core systems every health plan must have working in harmony, why population health management means something different to almost everyone in the industry, and how AI is creating both real opportunity and dangerous blind spots for organizations that aren't ready to govern it properly. Mike also challenges some of the most common misconceptions about health plans, including the myth that they're simply printing money.

Drawing on decades of work across 30+ states, thousands of provider meetings, and high-stakes board rooms, Mike brings the kind of grounded, candid perspective that rarely makes it into headlines. Whether you're a healthcare innovator, a health plan operator, or someone trying to break into the space, this conversation is packed with insights that cut straight to what actually matters.

Topics covered in this episode:

* Where health plans actually break and why no one talks about it

* The three systems that must work together for any plan to succeed

* Why primary care scarcity is quietly driving up costs across the system

* Value-based payments: when they work and when they don't

* The real decision-making structure inside a health plan

* How to evaluate and trust technology vendors in a market full of vaporware

* What structural change would have the biggest downstream impact

Timestamps

00:00 Intro and why health plans are misunderstood

03:40 Mike’s early story, sports, family, and military background

07:40 Where health plans actually break first

12:50 Why payer-provider relationships become cantankerous

20:40 Patterns re-emerging across healthcare

25:35 How decisions really get made inside health plans

28:15 How innovation and AI get adopted

32:50 The one structural issue Mike would fix tomorrow

36:20 Why healthcare is always local

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If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

Every parent knows the moment.

It's 2am. Your child has a fever. Something feels off. And you're standing in the dark trying to decide...wait until morning? Urgent care? The ER?

That moment is exactly what today's guest has dedicated her career to solving.

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, Michael Stamatinos sits down with Dr. Shannon Henning, Chief Operating Officer at Hello Pediatrics, to explore a reality most parents know all too well…when a child gets sick, access to care isn’t always clear.

Dr. Henning began her career as a pediatrician, working directly with patients and families. Over time, she started to see a deeper issue. The challenge wasn’t just clinical. It was structural. Access to care often breaks down in the moments that matter most. And then she did something most clinicians don't. She stepped into the system itself.

Because she realized something important: even the best doctors in the world can only do so much if the system around them is broken.

In this episode, we get into the realities of pediatric care that often get overlooked, the access gaps, the reimbursement failures, and why solving for kids might be the key to reshaping healthcare for everyone.

We also talk about:

→ What it actually feels like to walk into your first day of residency

→ Why pediatricians aren't just treating kids, they're treating the whole family

→ The transition from clinical practice to operational leadership (and why more physicians need to make it)

→ What a telemedicine platform built specifically for pediatrics looks like in practice

→ The 7-7-7 rule and what it has to do with better healthcare

→ What needs to change in the next 10 years and why reimbursement is at the center of it all

Dr. Shannon Henning isn't waiting for the system to fix itself. She's building the fix.

This one's for every parent, every pediatrician, and every leader who believes that how we care for kids determines what kind of adults and what kind of healthcare system we build next.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro & who is Shannon Henning

02:48 – The 2am parenting moment that defines the problem

04:25 – First day of residency: imposter syndrome at 100

07:25 – Seeing the cracks in access: ER to Urgent Care to General Pediatrics

08:15 – Did she ever imagine running a healthcare company?

09:33 – What healthcare leaders misunderstand about pediatric care

11:10 – The clinical story she still carries with her

12:22 – Parents, Dr. Google, and why pediatricians actually smile

13:20 – The pivot from clinical to operational

15:28 – Running a company feels like residency rotations

27:42 – The simple rule every parent in America needs to hear

28:44 – The 7-7-7 rule explained

30:28 – What kind of leader she is when things get hard

31:47 – Fast forward to 2036: what does pediatric care look like?

33:27 – How to follow Hello Pediatrics

34:14 – What gives her the most hope right now

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

What does it really look like when a healthcare system proves innovation is possible, then chooses to go backwards the moment the pressure lifts?

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Frank Sawyer, founder of Health Forward and former hospital COO with over 20 years of experience inside some of the most complex health systems in the country.

Frank didn't study healthcare from the outside. He ran it. He lived with the consequences of decisions that had no clean answers, no playbook, and no room for error. When the pandemic ended and the systems he believed in snapped back to the old way of thinking, Frank made a decision. He left. Not to walk away from healthcare, but to push it further from the outside than he ever could from the inside.

This conversation pulls back the curtain on what actually happens inside hospital boardrooms, why great ideas die before they ever reach scale, and what founders and executives need to understand if they want to drive real, measurable change in healthcare.

Michael and Frank dive into the unfiltered realities of healthcare innovation, including:

* What it truly feels like to make high-stakes decisions with incomplete information as a hospital COO

* Why the IT executive is the most underestimated person in any health system boardroom

* The four things every hospital is losing sleep over and how innovators should build around them

* What COVID proved about healthcare's capacity for rapid innovation and why most systems chose to ignore it

* The biggest myth founders believe about hospital finances and margins

* How virtual care and digital assets can unlock the access bottleneck healthcare has never been able to solve

* Why the timeline of health systems and the timeline of innovation companies are dangerously misaligned

* What it takes to build trust inside a health system before a single dollar gets spent

* How Frank evaluates which innovations are worth bringing to hospital leaders and which are just noise

* The real reason healthcare doesn't have an innovation problem, it has a courage problem

This episode offers powerful lessons for health tech founders, hospital executives, digital health investors, and anyone trying to understand why healthcare innovation moves so slowly and what it actually takes to change that.

If you care about the future of healthcare delivery, health system leadership, innovation strategy, and what it takes to bridge the gap between good intentions and real impact, this is a conversation you don't want to miss.

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: / michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

/ 7056196

What does it really look like to lead a hospital when there is no cushion, limited resources, and every decision affects your neighbors?

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, host Michael Stamatinos sits down with Aidan Hettler, the CEO of Sedgwick County Health Center, a county-owned critical access hospital serving rural communities.

Aidan became a hospital CEO at 22 years old, taking on one of the most difficult leadership roles in healthcare. In rural healthcare, there’s no hiding behind layers of administration. If a nurse calls out, you feel it that shift. If infrastructure fails, the entire community feels the impact.

This conversation explores the real leadership challenges inside rural healthcare — from financial pressure and staffing shortages to building culture, expanding services, and making decisions in public view.

Michael and Aidan dive into the unfiltered realities of running a rural hospital, including:

• The unique challenges of leading a county-owned critical access hospital

• How rural healthcare leaders make decisions when resources are limited

• Turning around financial performance while increasing wages and improving culture

• Why people and mission matter more than scale in rural healthcare

• Expanding clinical services and opening a new clinic after 26 years without growth

• Implementing a new EMR system and transforming workflows across the organization

• Recruiting leaders and clinicians to a rural community

• The realities of public accountability in small towns

• How healthcare leaders navigate pressure, uncertainty, and difficult decisions

This episode offers powerful lessons for healthcare executives, hospital leaders, digital health founders, investors, and policymakers who want to better understand the realities of healthcare leadership beyond large urban systems.

If you care about the future of healthcare delivery, rural health innovation, leadership under pressure, and building resilient healthcare organizations, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

Most people talk about healthcare innovation.

Very few people have to make it work inside a real health system.

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, Michael Stamatinos sits down with Justin Brueck, System Vice President of Innovation and Research at Endeavor Health, to explore what it actually takes to move ideas through a complex healthcare organization.

Justin didn’t arrive in healthcare with a master plan. His journey began in rural Iowa, where a chance encounter with a healthcare executive opened a door that would shape the rest of his career.

From starting as an administrative fellow to leading enterprise innovation and research across one of the largest health systems in the Midwest, Justin has spent years learning how healthcare systems actually adopt change.

In this conversation, Michael and Justin discuss:

• Why good healthcare innovation ideas often fail inside health systems

• The hidden complexity of getting new technology adopted in clinical environments

• How frontline clinicians shape whether innovation succeeds or dies

• The role genomics and personalized medicine will play in the future of care

• What startups and founders often misunderstand about selling to health systems

• Why healthcare will always remain a deeply human business despite rapid technological change

Justin also shares the surprising leadership lessons he learned early in his career and the story of how one mentor changed the trajectory of his life.

If you care about healthcare leadership, innovation adoption, digital health, genomics, and the future of health systems, this episode offers a rare inside look at how innovation actually happens behind the scenes.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

03:00 What innovation inside a health system actually looks like

08:00 Justin’s unconventional path into healthcare leadership

16:00 Why good healthcare innovation ideas fail

23:00 The future of genomics and personalized medicine

26:00 Building a business case for innovation in health systems

28:00 Leadership lessons from inside large healthcare organizations

31:40 Quickfire questions with Justin Brueck

33:30 The human side of healthcare and the future of patient care

About Justin Brueck

Justin Brueck is the System Vice President of Innovation and Research at Endeavor Health, where he leads initiatives spanning clinical genomics, enterprise innovation, research operations, and emerging healthcare technologies. His work focuses on translating new ideas into real-world solutions that improve patient care, support clinicians, and strengthen health system performance.

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

Leadership in healthcare is often framed in headlines. Big strategies. Big bets. Big promises.

But most of it does not look like that.

In Episode 175 of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, Michael Stamatinos sits with Regine Villain, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Oschner Health for a conversation about the part of leadership that rarely gets named.

The pressure.

The energy drain.

The moral weight of knowing that if something breaks, a patient feels it.

Regine grew up in Haiti. She thought she would become a pediatrician. Life moved her toward engineering instead, and eventually into healthcare operations. Early in her career, she walked into a CEO’s office unannounced and asked what it would take to sit in that chair one day. Not out of ego. Out of hunger to understand how systems work.

That instinct still drives her.

This episode is not about supply chain mechanics. It is about healthcare leadership as stewardship.

Regine speaks plainly about:

• The difference between title and expertise

• The mistake of making decisions without the right voices in the room

• Cultural misalignment that quietly erodes trust

• Burnout at the executive level

• Learning to say no in a field that rewards overextension

One of the most striking moments in the conversation comes from a loading dock.

To most people, it is inventory. Boxes. Movement.

To Regine, it is a pacemaker inside cardboard. A grandmother waiting for surgery. A clinical team depending on reliability.

“It’s not just a box.”

That line is not metaphor. It is operating philosophy.

Healthcare innovation often centers on technology. This conversation centers on responsibility. On the discipline required to stay steady when systems strain. On protecting energy so leadership does not become martyrdom.

Viewers will leave with something more durable than tactics.

* A clearer lens for resilient healthcare leadership.

* A deeper respect for culture as infrastructure.

* And a reminder that access is not a slogan. It is operational.

This episode is for:

* Healthcare executives absorbing pressure that no one sees

* Women stepping into rooms where they are still underestimated

* Health system operators responsible for access and reliability

* Leaders wrestling with culture that does not match the slide deck

* Anyone who has felt the cost of always saying yes

If you are a healthcare executive, clinician, operator, founder, or investor trying to understand what steady leadership actually requires, this episode is worth your time.

Learn more about Regine:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginehonorevillain/

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

What does it really mean to lead a safety-net health system?

In this powerful episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, Michael Stamatinos sits down with Dr. Ngozi Ezike, President and CEO of Sinai Chicago, to talk about leadership, health equity, innovation under constraint, and what transformation actually looks like on the ground.

Before leading Sinai Chicago, Dr. Ezike served as Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health during the COVID-19 pandemic. But long before the cameras and press conferences, she was and still is a physician rooted in community care.

This is not a surface-level healthcare interview.

This is a deep conversation about:

• What “safety net” really means and why most people misunderstand it

• Leading a health system serving Medicaid and uninsured populations

• Innovation without unlimited resources

• Why Sinai invested in a new Epic electronic health record despite financial constraints

• Community health workers and why they are a “win-win-win” model

• Transportation barriers and how vans improved patient show rates

• Medical literacy, social determinants of health, and real patient stories

• The bold bets required to transform urban healthcare

Dr. Ezike shares candid reflections on leading under constraint, building trust in historically marginalized communities, and why safety-net systems are essential to the health of an entire city.

If you care about healthcare leadership, hospital innovation, public health, community-based care, or the future of urban health systems...this conversation is for you.

Sinai Chicago serves Chicago’s West and South Sides for more than 100 years, and Dr. Ezike is working to ensure it thrives for the next 100.

Learn more about Sinai Chicago:

https://www.sinaichicago.org

📣 LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE

If this conversation moved you, challenged your thinking, or sparked an idea, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe for more episodes with healthcare leaders who are not just thinking differently, they’re building differently.

About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes that move beyond theory and into the heart of what’s really possible in healthcare.

Join our group, Advancing Healthcare Innovation Forum on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7056196/

Healthcare has more data than ever.

So why do so many leaders still feel stuck?

In this episode of the Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show, Michael Stamatinos sits down with Khan Siddiqui, MD, CEO and Chairman of HOPPR and former Founder and CEO of higi.

This conversation is not about trends.

It is about judgment.

Khan shares how growing up with a mother who still runs a clinic in Pakistan shaped his view of service, responsibility, and care. He explains how that foundation led to an early decision to aim his life’s work at impacting one billion people, and why that goal forced him to think differently about scale, technology, and leadership.

Michael and Khan talk honestly about what breaks when healthcare grows. Why pilots succeed but systems fail. Why trust erodes even when the data improves. And why many leaders confuse more tools with better decisions.

This episode is for people who carry responsibility in healthcare. People making decisions with real consequences. People who want systems that hold up when pressure is real.

You will not leave with a checklist.

You will leave thinking more clearly about what actually matters.

👥 Who This Episode Is For

* Leaders who feel the weight of decisions that do not have clean answers

* Operators tired of tools that promise change but do not follow through

* Founders trying to build for scale without losing trust

* Investors who care about durability, not noise

* Anyone trying to lead with judgment under pressure

https://www.hoppr.ai/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/hopprai/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/khansiddiqui/

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About the Show

The Advancing Healthcare Innovation Show is hosted by Michael Stamatinos, a nationally recognized connector, strategist, and advocate for innovation with purpose. Each week, Michael interviews healthcare leaders who are driving meaningful change—highlighting stories of access, resilience, equity, and transformation.

The AHI Show started with the idea of wanting to highlight stories of what healthcare innovation truly looks like in action. Our mission, highlight real people who are really innovating within healthcare. Guests include healthcare entrepreneurs, providers, payers, and professionals from the investment community. We showcase little wins as well as valuable lessons learned from setbacks through these interviews. The real innovators in healthcare are often the ones in the trenches doing the work with razor-sharp focus. We find these innovators and bring their stories to light.

🔗 Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstamo

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