The Backstory

By Jarrard Inc.News Business News

The Backstory episodes

January 17, 2024High Stakes: 013. Regional and Public & Community Health Systems - 2024 Healthcare Trends to Watch
This week, we continue our series of conversations with Jarrard practice leaders in an episode focused on Regional, as well as Public and Community health systems. In the podcast, senior vice president James Cervantes lays out the trends he’s watching for regional health systems in 2024. Vice president Letitia Fecher offers insight into what matters most for Public and Community health systems moving through the year.
Notable here, as well as in our next conversation about National and Academic systems, is the level of overlap in the challenges and opportunities before different types of health systems – and before the unique individual systems and facilities that comprise both groups. That said, the independent status and small geographic footprint of many public and community providers exacerbates the industry-wide headwinds they face and begets distinct challenges. That status also encourages self-investment and focus on internal engagement and support.
Key points:
Looking inward. In light of labor challenges, regional, public and community health systems alike are reinvesting in their nurses, physicians and employees. The payoff is a team of core caregivers who are there for patients, leadership and the community.
Hard decisions. Whether it’s the realization that they need to partner with a larger health system or a financial threshold necessitating reductions in force, leaders are addressing pressure to make historic organizational changes while working tirelessly to ensure those changes are as seamless as possible.
Relationships remain key. In an era of growing mistrust of healthcare providers, hospitals in both groups are being more intentional about effectively communicating with community members and other constituents, particularly in moments of change.
Technology is the best intermediary. It’s an ongoing theme: In healthcare, technology’s value goes far beyond clinical advancements. Providers can use emergent communications tools, internal- and external-facing, to reach their stakeholders and strengthen those relationships in make-or-break moments.

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23 min
January 03, 2024High Stakes: 012. Health Services - 2024 Healthcare Trends to Watch
Last week, we published our annual piece on healthcare trends to keep an eye on in the new year. This year, our practice leads discussed a number of critical healthcare issues, from cybersecurity to partnerships between health systems and community providers. But, as the title suggests, the core piece of advice our team offered is to select the One Thing that can make the most impact and start there.
Here is the first in a series of conversations with those Jarrard leaders to discuss what they think is coming and their take on pursuing the One Thing. First up is our Health Service practice with Hollie Adams, Sheila Biggs and Dan Schlacter.

Trends to watch:
Same-store growth: 2023 saw comparatively lighter transaction activity than years past, with many companies focused more on maximizing their existing assets. This reprioritization has been a renaissance for portfolio growth strategies; leaders are getting creative in the ways they are engaging internal teams, telling their brands’ stories, acquiring new consumers and other means of ensuring their enterprises are healthy in the long-term.
Investing in people: Considering the above, it’s not surprising that one internal growth strategy focuses squarely on companies’ greatest resource: their people. Employees are the biggest day-to-day ambassadors for their employer brands. Leaders are recognizing this and investing in support and engagement tools that enable their teams to feel connected to the whole.
Cybersecurity: The exponential rise of digital integration is a double-edged sword. Convenience and financial efficiency are clear benefits, but the trend also makes organizations more vulnerable to data incidents. Thus, tamper-proof cybersecurity will be a significant focus area, industrywide, in 2024.
Cross-Pollination: Traditional providers and health service companies are exploring new partnership models to meet the changing marketplace. Prospectors in every subsector are becoming more willing to trade ideas and resources with peers outside their usual purview for the benefit of shared opportunities.

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21 min
December 20, 2023High Stakes: 011. Red Teams and Change Management, with Shawn Evans and Kevin Kearns
Long-term success is contingent on consistent performance. In the context of healthcare’s continual change, leaders are challenged with maintaining performance standards while the walls shift around them. This unpredictability impacts more than the day-to-day — it can rattle the confidence of every stakeholder and create doubt that impedes teams’ ability to act.

In this week’s High Stakes podcast, we discuss the virtues and strategies of thoughtful change management with Shawn Evans, executive coach and organizational advisor, and Jarrard Inc vice president Kevin Kearns, who holds a doctorate in organizational psychology.

Key points
Every change is unique, but leaders’ response strategy can be routine (but not turnkey). Their imperative should be defining the change - proactively creating order out of potential chaos. There should be a process for understanding unexpected developments at a management level, then translating it so that everything is clear when it’s cascaded down to the frontline teams.
Trust is a prophylactic. Change management is both an opportunity to engender good relationships between leaders and their teams, and a muscle test for how much those team members trust their leaders. The best way to prepare for the unpredictable is by garnering the faith of employees so that, when lightning strikes, response efforts are quick and efficient.
Test before launching. Borrowing from his work with the military, Evans relies on the concept of “red teaming.” A red team is a designated group that brings due diligence to change management by critiquing planned organizational response to an initiative. How well is it communicated? Where might managers fall short? What did they do right? This approach can also be used in project post mortems, but is better when it comes on the front end.
Vulnerability is the linchpin to agility, which is a critical trait in change management. Leaders need to be aware that not everything is going to go according to plan. But the right strategic approach, paired with an intentional willingness to discuss problems openly and admit when they don’t understand something, is the first step to learning how to manage the unpredictable.

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26 min
December 13, 2023High Stakes: 010. Care coordination - Better outcomes through better experiences, with Robin Shah of ThymeCare
There’s no single pill to cure all of healthcare’s problems. It’s a vast and incredibly complex organism with a long list of infirmities, each requiring a treatment plan that is simultaneously highly specialized and interoperable with the many other moving parts. Nowhere is this more evident than in the pursuit of value-based care.

Fortunately, there’s a growing market for organizations focused on one problem for the betterment of the whole. In this week’s High Stakes podcast, we spoke with Robin Shah. He is the co-founder and CEO at Thyme Care, a dedicated team of nurses and care experts backed by tech-enabled care coordination and analytics tools. The result? Making value-based care attainable in the oncology space, and helping patients navigate each difficult phase of their cancer battle.

Key Points
Pursuing value-based care means refining the processes and relationships between payers, providers and patients. In the context of specialized care, many health plans are not set up to cover its high costs — creating a need for subspecialty companies to make it possible. Nashville is home to an increasing number of start-ups and organizations doing this work.
In any specialty, if the patient is engaged and supported during the decision-making process, they’re going to have a better experience. Generally, they’re going to have better outcomes at a lower cost. In Shah’s words: “It's a simple principle: If you engage a person through the journey, everything should be better.”
With data playing such a vital role in value-based care, the implementation of AI is a foregone conclusion. However, Shah echoed a common word of warning. Human intervention cannot be bypassed, especially for prognosis. AI can be used to educate patients on their diagnoses, but not without human treatment, interaction and translation.
Most providers are operating in a perfect storm of exorbitant administrative expenses, increasing care costs and, perhaps worst of all, cost inefficiencies. This is a moment for new ideas that aim to disrupt the status quo by creating new structures, workflows and processes that generate better connectivity and efficiency.

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25 min
November 29, 2023Nashville Health Care Council Sessions: Brian Regan, WCAS
Private equity is increasingly part of today’s healthcare’s framework. As a $4+ trillion industry teeming with innovation, healthcare is a seedbed for new ideas and, thus, investments from private equity streams. But as a relatively new trend, at least at this scale, private capital partnerships tend to be shrouded in some mystique.
This week, we continue our Nashville Health Care Council Sessions podcast series with a conversation featuring Brian Regan, Head of Healthcare Group at WCAS (Welsh Carson), a renowned private equity firm specializing in healthcare and technology. In it, we discuss the role of private equity in healthcare, as well as some of Regan’s insights on the industry at large – including the importance of building companies by focusing on people.

Key Points:
Method matters, and each is unique. Faced with the healthcare industry’s outsized scope and complexity, Regan has a methodical process for identifying possible value amid its myriad subsectors. His approach: analyze trends in each vertical, from IT to biopharma to care delivery, independently, then use those insights to identify possible targets for investment.

No matter what sector you’re in, put your data where your mouth is. Top-down, the ability to measure performance is valued just about as highly as financial performance itself. As both a differentiator and an indicator of future value, strong metrics are key to earning the trust of stakeholders, growing the business and discerning what is – and isn’t – working.
Of all the historic developments unfolding in healthcare, biopharma might be the most exciting one today. Meaningful investments and discoveries in areas like monoclonal antibodies, antibody drug conjugates and gene therapy over the past several decades have laid the foundation for a momentous inflection point not just in new treatments but curative therapies. As Regan put it with some understatement, “The potential is enormous.”

“Healthcare is evolving” seems to be the strapline of our industry. However, Regan points out that significant change will come slower than we think. The industry is just too vast and partitioned for a swift, clean turn of the page. That said, real progress will be built on micro steps forward, rather than a few giant leaps.

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16 min
November 15, 2023High Stakes: 009. Buying the Umbrella Before it Rains - Hospital Issues & Advocacy, with David Jarrard & Teresa Hicks
Healthcare providers, traditionally among the most trusted institutions in society, are facing unprecedented scrutiny from regulators, the media, the marketplace and the people they serve. But despite the narrative, this high-pressure moment says more about the state of the industry writ large than than any specific player – particularly providers of care.
In this week’s High Stakes Podcast, industry veterans David Jarrard and Teresa Hicks discuss the ripples that led to this watershed moment, as well as smart ways that healthcare leaders can navigate the choppy waters of high-visibility issues.

Key Points:
Many of the issues in question are nothing new. There have always been unbalanced expectations of what it takes for providers to deliver world-class care that solves the health problems of their communities while remaining financially viable in a competitive market. The high scrutiny of this moment has more to do with external factors that exacerbate these challenges, such as high inflation, the increasing political divide and viral media stories of bad experiences in medical settings.
The industry’s continued transformation is levying new expectations on providers. From the simultaneous rise in healthcare costs and bipartisan efforts to lower them, to the introduction of new technologies, to the progression of value-based care, the complex changes reshaping healthcare are reframing what it means to be a provider. Their work now extends beyond just medical services to encompass education, transportation, housing, nutrition and more.
Scrutiny gets even more complex when there are many voices at the table. Even as they navigate the same issues, hospital stakeholders can have vastly different strategies for solving them. Medical professionals and board members, for example, often have contrapuntal priorities. This can lead to infighting and frustration that does nothing to improve care.
Crystal clear communication, as always, remains key. Healthcare, from any vantage point, is complex. When addressing issues, healthcare leaders should tailor their points to audiences in a way that leaves no room for misinterpretation. Remaining decisive, sympathetic and smartly transparent is critical in every public-facing statement.

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31 min
November 01, 2023Nashville Health Care Council Sessions: Marc Watkins, MD, Kroger Health
This week, we continue our Nashville Healthcare Sessions podcast series with another conversation about the role of retail in healthcare, this one with Kroger Health’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Marc Watkins.
Dr. Watkins was on stage at Sessions with Dr. Kevin Ban of Walgreens. Seeing the leaders of two major retail healthcare organizations sitting side by side discussing the future of their sector was emblematic of the collaborative spirit present throughout the conference. Two competitors in firm agreement that there is plenty of work – and opportunity – for everyone.
In this conversation Watkins talks about food as medicine, continuing to reshape the conversation about health to better include conversations about prevention, and his approach to leadership and team building.
Key points:
You can’t out-train a bad diet. Health isn’t just medicine, it must include healthy eating and lifestyle choices. This isn’t news to anyone, but Kroger Health has put that idea at the center of its brand and messaging and operations when it comes to positioning the organization in the constellation of retail health providers.
Improving health requires a coalition of the willing. The only way we’ll help people live healthier lives and reduce today’s unsustainable healthcare spending is by having everyone – everyone! – at the table. This includes payers, regulators, lawmakers and providers of all types.
Changing our approach to healthcare means reframing the discussion. Money spent on healthcare is money not spent somewhere else. According to Watkins, “Businesses can’t flourish if you’re just worried about taking care of your healthcare costs. Communities can’t flourish.”
Leadership requires authenticity. Watkins himself works to be accessible, transparent and receptive. At the organizational level, this translates into frequent listening sessions to hear from employees (associates) and learn what’s important to them.

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13 min
October 18, 2023Nashville Health Care Council Sessions: Kevin Ban, MD, Walgreens Boots Alliance
This year’s Nashville Healthcare Sessions was a unique meeting of the minds, convening high-level industry peers and competitors to discuss the current state of healthcare. Featuring in-depth conversations between leaders often pitted toe-to-toe in the marketplace, the event provided candid snapshots of healthcare issues and conditions that everyone is facing.
In one panel, Walgreens Chief Medical Officer Kevin Ban, M.D., shared the stage with other leaders in the retail healthcare space to exchange insights on the rising trend of consumerism in healthcare. Afterward, we caught up with Dr. Ban to dive deeper into his perspective on the role of retail in this shift.
Key points:
Retailers’ footprint in B2C healthcare isn’t a fad. From skyrocketing deductibles to the acceleration of concierge health services during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a slow drip of market developments building up to this moment.
For better or for worse, financial incentives drive the most meaningful changes in healthcare. For retailers to truly create better healthcare access for their consumers, there needs to be a financial model that incentivizes them to work with health systems, and vice versa.
Rather than seeing things as zero sum, there is a huge opportunity to create a “we do, you do” partnership between retail healthcare and traditional providers like hospitals and health systems.

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15 min
October 11, 2023Nashville Health Care Council Sessions: Rob Allen, Intermountain Health, and Dr. Wyatt Decker, UnitedHealth Group
This week, we continue our Nashville Health Care Council Sessions series with an episode focused on the industry’s stepwise progression to value-based care (VBC). The shift to value is something that everyone across the healthcare continuum supports in principle, but achieving it is a massive economic and technological undertaking. Ingrained structural challenges have made the transition slower than hoped.
Onstage at Sessions, speakers talked about how the unsustainability of our current healthcare spend is forcing the issue. That, combined with creative new models from entrepreneurs and national organizations, are helping to finally make an accelerated transition to value feasible for providers, payers, patients and every stakeholder in between.
We spoke with Dr. Wyatt Decker, Executive Vice President and Chief Physician for Value Based Care and Innovation at UnitedHealth Group, and Rob Allen, CEO of Intermountain Health, about the innovations that will be necessary to streamline VBC, as well as their respective philosophies about long-term health in a volume-based world.

Key Points:
VBC is only possible at scale if everyone works together. The most formidable roadblock to value is its operational complexity, requiring every stakeholder to rethink how they administer and measure the success of their services.
The shift to value poses incredible business opportunities for entrepreneurs. From the need for better clinical data tracking to changes in risk sharing to disjointed communication between payers and providers, there is a lot of space to fill for specialized start-ups. Per Dr. Decker: “We work with entrepreneurs of all sizes in terms of their business who have solutions.”
Achieving VBC hinges on better systems for understanding patients’ needs. Large providers and payers will rely more heavily on personal relationships with individuals to ensure the clinical understanding necessary to set and achieve health metrics.
Data is top down and bottom up. While VBC is tailored to the individual, it can only be achieved through a clear understanding of community and population-level data. Data collection and analysis have finally reached a point where the resulting information can be used effectively to drive population health.

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19 min
October 04, 2023 Nashville Health Care Council Sessions: Apryl Childs-Potter, NHCC
Last month, the Nashville Health Care Council (NHCC) launched its inaugural Nashville Healthcare Sessions Conference. The five-day event convened industry leaders from across the country for two days of collaborative panels, in-depth discussions, interdisciplinary problem-solving and relationship-building, followed by over 30 associated events and gatherings. With a focus on innovation, the conference was a seedbed for new ideas from every sector of the industry.
It also represented the spirit of collaboration and unified focus necessary to navigate healthcare’s environment of ongoing change, challenge and pressure. While many of those challenges are borne out of silos and technological lagging, the Nashville Healthcare Sessions Conference facilitated connection and innovation.
To review everything that took place at Sessions and unpack what comes next for the industry, Apryl Childs-Potter, NHCC president, joined the High Stakes Podcast. In this conversation, she offers her perspective on the transforming healthcare industry, as well as Nashville’s role in the middle of it all.
Key Insights:

— In an industry with seemingly 1,000 daily headlines, AI is healthcare’s biggest news. Its uses, merits and ethics are being discussed in every hospital board room and executive suite across the nation. That’s because it’s no longer just a looming possibility…it’s already being implemented at scale by health systems.

— Historically, healthcare has been years behind in technology integration, but adoption is happening quicker than ever before. Tools are more sophisticated and user-friendly, allowing providers to accelerate at the pace of technological innovation.

— Healthcare is at a “watershed moment.” From the changing models of care delivery to value-based care to new technologies, factors are in play that have been discussed in theory for years. Now, these developments are accelerating, in large part because of creative partnerships and that spirit of collaboration among friends and putative rivals alike.

— In the midst of this change, Nashville has an opportunity to elevate as healthcare’s capital. The city breeds collaboration thanks to its artistic, musical roots, but also because of the high concentration of healthcare organizations from large systems to IT to health tech startups. To maintain its position at the top of the industry, however, it needs to channel investments toward continued growth, collaboration and talent development.

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17 min