Over half of Americans now live with at least one chronic condition, yet our healthcare system still revolves around episodic, reactionary care instead of continuous, coordinated support.

We talk with Dr. Jaewon Ryu—former CEO of Geisinger and now CEO of Risant Health—about how integrated delivery systems are reshaping the way care is paid for and delivered. With decades of experience spanning medicine, law, government, and leadership at some of the most respected healthcare institutions, Dr. Ryu offers a rare inside look at what it takes to scale value-based care in a fragmented system.

We cover:

🏥 What an integrated delivery system actually looks like—from both the patient and provider perspective

📉 Why two patients with the same condition often face very different outcomes based on their insurance

💡 How value-based care can ease workforce shortages and improve access without cutting corners

📈 What Risant Health is doing to help more systems scale value-based care without sacrificing local autonomy

—

About our guests:

Dr. Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD, is the CEO of Risant Health, a nonprofit created by Kaiser Permanente to expand and scale value-based care across diverse, multi-payer, multi-provider health systems. Previously, he served as President and CEO of Geisinger, Risant Health’s inaugural member. With a mission to improve community health outcomes and healthcare affordability, Risant Health aims to bring the benefits of coordinated, value-based care to a broader national landscape.

Dr. Ryu brings deep cross-sector experience, having held leadership roles at Humana, University of Illinois Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, and in federal government at CMS and the Department of Veterans Affairs. He began his career as a practicing corporate healthcare attorney. From 2018 to 2024, he served two terms on MedPAC, advising Congress on Medicare policy, and currently sits on the boards of NCQA, The Commonwealth Fund, and the KP Medical Foundation. Dr. Ryu earned his B.A. from Yale, and both his M.D. and J.D. from the University of Chicago, completing his emergency medicine residency at Harbor-UCLA.

—

🙏 If you're enjoying the show, we would so appreciate it if you left us a review!

—

📍 Connect with us:

Heart of Healthcare website

LinkedIn

Instagram

TikTok 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Is the digital health IPO drought over? Halle and Michael dig into the Hinge Health IPO and what it signals for the return of digital health companies to the public markets. They explore how much equity founders typically hold at IPO, the growing role of private equity, and why down rounds aren’t the deal-breaker they once were.

Plus: Elizabeth Holmes’ husband launches a head-scratching startup, a former McKinsey healthcare partner faces prison time, and OpenAI teams up with the FDA.

We cover:

📈 What Hinge Health’s IPO means for digital health exits

📊 A new analysis of founder equity and CEO pay at IPO

🤖 OpenAI’s behind-the-scenes work with the FDA

⚖️ Why a startup is suing Epic for alleged anti-competitive behavior

🧪 The eyebrow-raising new diagnostics startup from Elizabeth Holmes’ husband

🚨 The McKinsey partner sentenced in the opioid crisis investigation

—

Show Notes

• How Much Equity Do Founders Own at IPO? Read the full analysis on Substack
• Epic Faces Another Antitrust Lawsuit More on the Epic lawsuit via Fierce Healthcare
• OpenAI and the FDA Are Talking Drug Reviews Wired’s coverage of OpenAI-FDA discussions
• McKinsey Partner Sentenced in Opioid Probe NYT on McKinsey's legal fallout

—

🙏 If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a review!

—

📍 Connect with us:

Heart of Healthcare website

LinkedIn

Instagram

TikTok

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

US healthcare has more unproductive labor and more unstructured data than any other industry, making it both vulnerable to disruption from generative AI and especially unprepared for it.

That’s the provocative thesis of Eric Larsen, president of TowerBrook Advisors. In this episode, he joins host Steve Kraus to explain why generative AI is unlike any other technology we've seen—and why the $4.9 trillion healthcare sector is uniquely exposed.

We cover:

🧠 What makes GenAI a true “general purpose technology”—and how it compares to past innovations like the microprocessor or the internet

🏥 Why healthcare has failed to adopt past tech shifts, and why this time could be different

🔐 The role of the “F-150”—the 150 leaders who effectively control the US healthcare system

🤝 Whether incumbents or insurgents will win the AI race in healthcare

📉 Why GenAI will reduce labor costs and what that means for health systems that spend over half their budgets on people

🌐 How China is sprinting ahead in deploying medical superintelligence

🧬 What a compressed century of biomedical discovery could look like—and why Larsen believes we’re approaching longevity escape velocity

—

About our guests:

Eric Jon Larsen is President of TowerBrook Advisors and a member of the healthcare leadership team at TowerBrook Capital Partners, a $30 billion AUM investment firm based in New York and London. TowerBrook invests across private equity, structured minority, and growth opportunities, with a strong focus on healthcare, partnering with health systems, payers, and other strategics. Notably, TowerBrook is the first mainstream private equity firm to achieve B Corp certification, reflecting its commitment to responsible business practices.

Eric is a nationally recognized healthcare strategist with a global advisory portfolio spanning CEOs and boards of leading healthcare organizations. He spent 25 years at The Advisory Board Company—five of those as President—advancing best practices in healthcare delivery worldwide. Following the firm's 2017 acquisition by Optum (UnitedHealth Group), Eric co-led strategic partnerships and market development efforts at UnitedHealth. He is also a Venture Partner at Thrive Capital and SignalFire, and serves on several digital health boards, including Somatus and Contessa Health. Beyond healthcare, Eric is active in the arts as Chairman of The Washington National Opera and trustee of The Washington Ballet. A Georgetown University graduate, he lives in Washington, D.C., and Miami with his wife and three children.

—

🙏 If you're enjoying the show, we would so appreciate it if you left us a review!

—

📍 Connect with us:

Heart of Healthcare website

LinkedIn

Instagram

TikTok 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Over 160 million Americans are served by Optum, yet many still don’t fully understand what it actually does—or why it matters.

Dr. Patrick Conway, newly appointed CEO of Optum and former head of CMS Innovation Center and Blue Cross NC, joins Steve for a wide-ranging discussion on the state of healthcare delivery, affordability, and the potential of value-based care at a national scale. With experience spanning the frontlines of medicine to top government and corporate leadership, Conway breaks down how Optum aims to improve care while controlling costs—and why he continues to practice as a pediatric hospitalist on weekends.

We cover:

💡 What Optum actually does—and how it operates across care delivery, pharmacy, and data

📉 How value-based care is being scaled, and why two-sided risk models matter

🧠 Using AI to reduce cycle times, drive affordability, and improve clinical decision-making

💊 What’s broken—and what’s working—in the U.S. pharmacy system

🧑‍⚕️ What leaders, policymakers, and physicians need to know to truly fix healthcare

🧵 How personal tragedy, frontline stories, and government service continue to shape Conway’s leadership today

—

About our guests:

Patrick Conway, MD, MSc, was named chief executive officer of Optum Rx in August 2023. In this role he leads an integrated pharmacy care services organization that is making drugs more affordable and creating a better experience for consumers, filling more than 1.5 billion adjusted retail, mail and specialty drug prescriptions annually. He joined Optum in February 2020 and

previously served as the chief executive officer of Care Solutions, where he led a portfolio of care continuum businesses serving over 70 million people across acute and post-acute care, care in the home in-person and virtually, mental and behavioral care benefits and delivery, broad population and complex disease health management, specialty care and government health services.

Dr. Conway was president and chief executive officer of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina from 2017-19. From 2011 to 2017, he served as Deputy Administrator for Innovation and Quality at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and as director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and the agency’s Chief Medical Officer. Before joining CMS, he oversaw clinical operations and quality improvement at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Dr. Conway is a practicing pediatric hospitalist. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2014, received the President’s Senior Executive Distinguished Service Award, and was a White House Fellow from 2007 to 2008. He earned his MD with high honors from Baylor College of Medicine, residency training at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Master of Science in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania.

—

🙏 If you're enjoying the show, we would so appreciate it if you left us a review!

—

📍 Connect with us:

Heart of Healthcare website

LinkedIn

Instagram

TikTok 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Women make 80% of healthcare decisions and outspend men two to one on care—yet when it comes to designing, funding, and scaling health tech, they’re still treated like a niche.

In this episode, we break down the broken flywheel holding women’s health innovation back including fewer growth-stage investments, limited exits, and a system not built to serve women as the primary users of care. I’m joined by Carolyn Witte, co-founder of Tia, and Katie Drasser, CEO of Rock Health, to talk about what needs to change—and how we get there.

We cover:

📱 What Rock Health’s latest report says about women as digital health consumers

🚫 Why men shouldn’t be the benchmark for women’s health

💸 How women’s health companies struggle to raise beyond Series A (and what to do about it)

👩‍⚕️ Why every company should be a women’s health company

💡 What founders and investors need to do differently to unlock women’s health at scale

—

About our guests:

Katie Drasser is CEO of RockHealth.org, leading a team of experts in health equity, social enterprise, and design to encourage more equitable innovation in digital health. Drasser has launched programs that address complex global issues with a focus on public health innovation and the role of innovative financing and leadership in systems change. Previously, she curated health content for the Aspen Ideas Festival and was managing director of the Aspen Global Innovators Group, steering global leadership programs to address poverty alleviation and human rights. Drasser has worked internationally on HIV/AIDS treatment strategies in Romania, private health services delivery in Myanmar, and the scale up of Kenya’s national emergency medical system. She designed a network of charter schools and developed Good Capital, a venture fund that invests in social enterprises like the Hub Bay Area and the Social Capital Markets Conference.

Carolyn Witte is a visionary healthcare entrepreneur dedicated to creating a personalized, preventive, and human-centered healthcare system. As the founding CEO of Tia — the leading tech-enabled primary care provider for women — she pioneered a new model of “whole-women’s” healthcare, integrating virtual and retail-style clinics, technology, and a multidisciplinary care teams to transform the business and experience of going to the doctor. A former strategist at Google’s Creative Lab, Carolyn brings an interdisciplinary approach to healthcare innovation through design, technology, and brand. Her latest passion project is The XX Factor — a newsletter and community advancing the women’s health category through hard won lessons, shared learnings and collective action. She’s been recognized by Fast Company, Forbes, and Inc. Magazine as a trailblazer for women in business.

—

Show notes:

• Women in focus: understanding women as digital health consumers (Rock Health)
• There’s a Growth-Stage Cliff Plaguing Women’s Health Startups

—

🙏 If you're enjoying the show, we would so appreciate it if you left us a review!

—

📍 Connect with us:

Heart of Healthcare website

TikTok (NEW!)

LinkedIn

Instagram

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this month's Digital Health Download, Steve and Halle unpack the headlines shaping healthcare, policy, and technology—with an eye toward where things may be heading next. From shifting political support for Medicaid and the ACA to state-level action on PBMs, they explore the unexpected ways the system is evolving.

We cover:

🩺 Why more Republicans are backing Medicaid and ACA expansion—and what the data tells us

🧠 Autism in the spotlight (and Halle's favorite show)

⚖ How a new Arkansas law could disrupt the PBM status quo

📊 Bessemer’s new Health AI Adoption Index, including what separates pilots from true deployments

📚 A lawsuit against academic publishers that’s raising questions about access and transparency in research

—

📍 Show notes:

• Enrollment Growth in the ACA Marketplaces (KFF)
• Love on the Spectrum (Netflix)
• Arkansas adopts first-in-the-nation law forcing companies to choose between running a PBM or pharmacies (STAT News)
• Scientists’ suit against top academic publishers lays bare deep frustration over unpaid peer review (STAT News)
• Another Call for Open Access (Halle’s blog)
• The Healthcare AI Adoption Index (BVP)

—

🙏 If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a review!

—

📍 Connect with us:

Heart of Healthcare website

LinkedIn

Instagram

TikTok

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The average American family spends over $24,000 a year on healthcare, and costs continue to rise faster than inflation. Why can't we create a healthcare system that delivers more value for less money?

In this conversation with Ann Somers Hogg, Director of Healthcare Research at the Clayton Christensen Institute, we explore the concept of "Zero Inflation Healthcare" and uncover why traditional health insurance models continue to drive costs up. Ann breaks down why many InsureTech startups initially struggled to disrupt incumbents and how a new approach to business model innovation could finally tame runaway healthcare costs.

We cover:

🌟 The "optimal care business model" that could help transform healthcare

📊 Why InsureTechs like Oscar and Clover struggled initially against incumbents

🧰 If and how insurance companies can fix their reputations

💰 Why health insurance companies' "spend more to make more" profit formula fails to incentivize the desired outcome

🔄 How regulations create barriers to disruptive innovation in health insurance

🛑 Why Haven (the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan venture) failed despite its resources

💡 How the "Jobs to Be Done" theory applies to healthcare choices

—

About our guest:

Ann Somers is the director of health care research at the Clayton Christensen Institute where her research focuses on the structural pathways to improve health. This includes business model design, leadership approaches, customer orientation, and innovation strategy. Prior to joining the Institute, Ann Somers worked for Atrium Health (now Advocate Health), where she served as the AVP of Strategy and Transformation. She started her career in consulting at Oliver Wyman, working to develop value-based care strategies for large payers. Ann Somers holds an MSPH in Health Policy and Management from UNC-Chapel Hill and a BS in Commerce from the University of Virginia. She lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and two children.

—

Show notes:

Read the full paper here: christenseninstitute.org/publication/health-insurance-innovation

If you’d like to learn more about the Institute’s broader work, feel free to explore: www.christenseninstitute.org

—

If you're enjoying the show, we would so appreciate it if you left us a review!

—

📍 Connect with us:

Heart of Healthcare website

LinkedIn

Instagram

TikTok

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Each year, 2 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer and face a fragmented, overwhelming healthcare system with minimal guidance between doctor visits, even as they make life-altering decisions.

In this episode, we talk with Robin Shah, Founder & CEO of Thyme Care, who has devoted his 17-year career to improving oncology care and is now building a virtual support system that has already helped over 50,000 cancer patients nationwide.

We cover:

🏥 Robin's origin story saving his father's oncology practice during the 2008 financial crisis

💊 How community oncology has consolidated from independent doctors to large corporations

🚀 Key insights from scaling Flatiron Health as employee #3 and co-founding One Oncology

📈 How value-based care is creating new opportunities in specialty care

🔮 The future of cancer care coordination beyond active treatment

—

About our guest

Robin Shah is the Founder & CEO of Thyme Care, an oncology population management company providing virtual clinical support for cancer patients. His career in oncology began by helping his father's community practice survive both the Great Recession and aggressive competition from hospital systems. Robin was an early employee at Flatiron Health and a founding team member of One Oncology before launching Thyme Care, which now supports over 270,000 people across the country with a team of 400 employees.

—

🙏 If you're enjoying the show, we would so appreciate it if you left us a review!

—

📍 Connect with us:

Heart of Healthcare website

YouTube (NEW!)

LinkedIn

Instagram

TikTok

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Health insurance has a Net Promoter Score of around 0-10 industry-wide, one of the lowest ratings of any industry. This is exactly why the founders of Oscar Health, with no background in healthcare and a distaste for the industry, started the company in 2012. Since then, Oscar has grown to 1.7 million members, gone public, and achieved profitability—all while receiving an NPS significantly higher than the industry average.

In this episode, we talk with Mario Schlosser, co-founder and CTO of Oscar Health, about building a tech-first health insurance company in an industry notorious for poor customer experiences.

We cover: 

🏥 Why outsiders without healthcare backgrounds decided to tackle the insurance industry

💰 How Oscar grew to 1.7 million members while maintaining a 60+ NPS score in a hard-to-please industry

📊 The balance between denying unnecessary care and empathetically supporting members

⚙️ How ICHRAs (Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements) are disrupting traditional employer-sponsored healthcare

🧶 The beginning of the unraveling of the employer markets

💼 The changing employer healthcare market and why small businesses are seeking alternatives

—

About our guest:

Mario Schlosser is the Co-Founder & CTO at Oscar Health. In this role, Mario leads product and engineering, with a focus on building Oscar’s technology platform for the future and continuing to set the strategy for the +Oscar strategy.

Previously, Mario served as CEO of Oscar, leading the company from inception to serving over 1M members across Individual & Family, Medicare Advantage, and Small Group health plans.

Before co-founding Oscar, Mario also co-founded the largest social gaming company in Latin America, where he led the company's analytics and game design practices. Prior to that, Mario was a Senior Investment Associate at Bridgewater Associates and worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company in Europe, the U.S. and Brazil.

Mario also spent time as a visiting scholar at Stanford University, where he wrote and co-authored 10 computer science publications, including one of the most-cited computer science papers published in the past decade, in which he developed the EigenTrust Algorithm to securely compute trust in randomized networks. In May 2019, Mario and his co-authors, Sepandar D. Kamvar (Mosaic Building Group Inc) and Héctor Garcia-Molina (Celo), received the prestigious Seoul Test of Time Award from the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) for this work.

Mario holds a degree in computer science with highest distinction from the University of Hannover in Germany and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

—

🙏 If you're enjoying the show, we would so appreciate it if you left us a review!

—

📍 Connect with us:

Heart of Healthcare website

LinkedIn

Instagram

TikTok

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this month's Digital Health Download, Steve, Halle, and Michael take a deliberately optimistic look at key headlines in healthcare technology. From the impressive impact of AI scribing tools on physician satisfaction to encouraging survival rates among digital health unicorns from the ZIRP-era, the hosts highlights bright spots in an often challenging industry.

We cover:

🏆 Rock Health's 10th annual Consumer Adoption Survey revealing how each generation uniquely engages with digital health

🤖 How AI-powered ambient scribing is transforming physician documentation and reducing burnout

👩‍⚕️ The concerning trust gap between younger generations and healthcare providers

💊 The effectiveness but not yet cost-effectiveness of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic

💼 New analysis showing 89% of digital health unicorns from the pandemic era are still operating

🏛️ Potential opportunities for innovation within the current administration's healthcare policies

—

Show notes:

• Rock Health's Consumer Adoption Report
• JAMA article: Lifetime Health Effects and Cost-Effectiveness of Tirzepatide and Semaglutide in US Adults
• Halle's article: What Happened to the Digital Health Unicorns of 2020-2022?
• JAMA article: Clinician Experiences With Ambient Scribe Technology to Assist With Documentation Burden and Efficiency

—

🙏 If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a review!

—

📍 Connect with us:

Heart of Healthcare website

LinkedIn

Instagram

TikTok

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.