This week’s episode, on employer-based healthcare, deals with one of the most critically important & rapidly advancing issues in American healthcare today.

Our guest this week is Dave Chase. He is a highly successful serial entrepreneur – who, among numerous other accomplishments, played a leadership role in launching Microsoft’s $2B healthcare platform. Dave has been named as one of the most influential people in Digital Health, and is known for the boldness and integrity of his speaking and writing.

A hallmark of Dave’s approach, as you’ll hear in this interview, is his refusal to pull any punches. Over the past few years he has been on a quest to understand and address the impact of the growing costs of healthcare on employers, employees, as well as the deleterious downstream impact on our municipalities and the national economy. Keep in mind that nearly half of all healthcare costs in the U.S. are paid for by employers and increasingly shouldered by employees.

Fortunately, Dave and his colleagues, as well as numerous others around the country, have been working to optimize the effectiveness & enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery, as well as to very intentionally reduce the significant unnecessary costs of care.

To this end, Dave and his colleagues have formed a non-profit called Health Rosetta, whose purpose is to drive the “adoption of successful strategies and practical tactics to fix the healthcare system through the optimization of employer health benefits programs & healthcare purchasing.” It’s essentially an open source education, training and certifying resource for employee health.

In this episode, you’ll learn about Health Rosetta’s “7 Habits for highly successful employers” – the proven solutions that Dave has discovered and collected.  We’ll also discuss the critical role that “value-based primary care” and “centers of excellence” (high performing provider groups) play in reducing unnecessary healthcare costs for employers. Dave has the refreshing perspective that most of the solutions are already out there – they just need to be identified and deployed effectively. Dave also shares several encouraging examples of employers who have implemented these relatively straightforward initiatives, and reaped huge savings, which return to their bottom line and enhance their ability to extend greater benefits to their employees and their communities.

It’s a real treat to hear Dave discuss these topics with sincerity and fact-fueled passion; but, if you’d like more detailed information, I would encourage you to visit the Health Rosetta website and/or download a free digital copy of his book, “The CEO’s Guide to Restoring The American Dream – How To Deliver World Class Healthcare to Your Employees at Half the Cost”.

Although this interview begins with some stark economic realities and a disturbing vision of a potential future, it ends with a hopeful message.  Dave’s call to action is simple – join the value-based movement.  Dave is practical, purpose-driven, compassionate healthcare leader who brings fresh perspectives, fearless honesty and a selfless commitment to, as he puts it, “leave the world a better place for my kids than the current trajectory.” His work in the domain of employer-based healthcare is a critical endeavor to make a highly opaque and misaligned part of healthcare delivery more transparent and more sensible.

I hope his story and his mission inspires you, as much as it has me.

Zeev