The Scopewell Podcast

What happens to a patient’s medical history when a hospital switches to a new electronic health record? For the clinician at the bedside, the test is whether they can find what they need in the middle of an emergency.

Jason Theunissen, a former cardiovascular ICU nurse and Director of Client Services at MediQuant, joins James Leuthe on The Scopewell Podcast to discuss how health systems can retire legacy systems while keeping patient records accessible. We talk about what to bring into the new EHR, what to archive, and how organizing data from disconnected systems can lay the groundwork for analytics and AI. Jason also shares where he’d start before a migration: take inventory of the applications you have and find out who still relies on them.

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#ScopewellPodcast #HealthcareIT #EHR #DataArchiving

Healthcare has spent years collecting data. The harder problem is turning it into something a community can actually use.

Dr. Juan "JC" Rojas, Associate Chief Medical Information Officer at Rush University System for Health, is building the systems that close that gap, one map, one pilot, one clinician at a time.

What we cover:

• Building Rush's Health Equity Data and Analytics Studio, and the question every new team should ask first: do we need to exist?
• The Chicago Health Map, built with the CAPriCORN research network, and how it turns clinical records into a public, hyperlocal view of community health
• Why census-tract-level data reveals patterns ZIP codes hide
• A pilot AI tumor board orchestrator agent designed to cut cancer care team prep from 15–20 minutes to about 5
• Why curiosity may be one of the most important AI skills for clinicians

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Innovation is often thought to flow in one direction: from high-income countries outward. Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah has spent her career challenging that assumption.

In this episode of The Scopewell Podcast, James Leuthe sits down with Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah, Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and Co-Founder and President of the Ghanaian Diaspora Nursing Alliance (gDNA), to explore reciprocal innovation and how research, community leadership, and diaspora partnerships can improve health outcomes across borders.

The conversation explores why diaspora-led organizations often outlast traditional grant-funded global health programs, how a solution developed for rural Ghana could help address challenges in rural America, and what it takes to turn promising ideas into lasting impact.

What we cover:

• Why diaspora-led organizations often outlast grant-funded global health initiatives
• How gDNA has grown into a global network spanning more than 30 African countries
• MAMA-CVD: training unemployed midwives to detect heart failure using portable ultrasound
• The concept of reciprocal innovation, and why ideas can flow in every direction
• What most healthcare leaders get wrong when trying to move from idea to outcome
• Dr. Commodore-Mensah's vision for the future of global health and the role of the diaspora

Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah is Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, President of the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association, and Co-Founder and President of the Ghanaian Diaspora Nursing Alliance (gDNA).

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Your zip code shapes your health outcomes more than your genetic code. On Chicago's South Side, the Center for Better Aging (CBA) collaborative is doing something about it.

In this episode of The Scopewell Podcast, host James Leuthe sits down with Executive Director Estrelitta Harmon to discuss the challenges facing older adults on Chicago's South Side and what CBA is building to help them age safely in their own communities.

They talk about whole-person care, building trust, coordinating support across organizations, and what it takes to create a model that can improve lives at scale.

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Youth mental health care faces two distinct challenges: a shortage of clinicians to deliver it and the stigma that keeps young people from seeking it. Dr. Mike Stevens, Executive Director of Hopebound, on a model designed to address both at once.

Health care rarely fails at detection. It fails at what happens next. Angela Adams, founder and CEO of Inflow Health, on why care coordination breaks down at the transitions that matter most and what it takes to close the gap.

Sham Firdausi is the Deputy Chief Financial Officer of Santa Clara County Health System, one of the largest public safety net health systems in the country. In this conversation, he shares what it takes to lead finance during a period of historic pressure, why the future CFO must think like an operator, and how public health systems can teach the rest of healthcare about mission driven leadership and breaking down silos.

Welcome to The Scopewell Podcast. Each season, host James Leuthe, CEO of Scopewell Solutions, goes deep into a different industry and the leaders driving meaningful change inside complex organizations. Subscribe now so you don't miss Season 1.