There’s a Better Way: Smart Talk on Healthcare and Technology

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Episode description 

If you’re prescribed a medication for high blood pressure, you can usually pick it up at the pharmacy the same day. But a prescription for multiple sclerosis or cancer doesn’t go to the pharmacy shelf. It goes into benefit verification, prior authorization, financial assistance and nursing coordination. All of it stands between the patient and their first dose. Closing the distance is what Lucille Accetta calls her North Star. Over more than 30 years, starting behind the counter as a community pharmacist, she’s seen technology reshape what pharmacists can do for patients. Listen in as she explains how connected data gets specialty pharmacy patients started faster, why a quieter pharmacy is a better one, and how technology strengthens the human touch when we use it well.

In this episode: 

0:00 – Intro: what stands between a serious diagnosis and the first dose

1:00 – Closing that gap as a North Star: why a specialty prescription doesn’t go straight to the pharmacy shelf

3:00 – A grandmother with brittle Type 1 diabetes and a community pharmacy in Westchester County: where this work got personal

5:00 – 30 years watching technology scale pharmacy without losing the human touch

6:00 – What specialty pharmacy is: multiple sclerosis (MS), rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, hemophilia and therapies that demand far more than dispensing

7:00 – Benefit verification, financial assistance, prior authorization, clinical education: the work behind a first fill

8:00 – Same-day process for hypertension, complex process for specialty: the friction Lucille is working to remove

9:00 – Lucille’s better way: get patients started fast, then personalize everything around their diagnosis and therapy

10:00 – Three phases for keeping a specialty journey from breaking down after a cancer or MS diagnosis

11:00 – Connecting with the electronic health record to complete the clinical work a prior authorization requires

12:00 – Delivery, financial assistance and social needs support: coordinating the pieces before day one of therapy

13:00 – Scaling a high-touch experience to more than two million patients without it turning impersonal

15:00 – A mom who called at 3 a.m.: why always-on access matters for patients facing complex conditions

16:00 – Where connected data makes the biggest difference: addressing prior authorization requests for more than 80% of patients, more time for patients instead of paperwork

17:00 – Pharmacists as integral members of the care team, and what still has to change to make it real

18:00 – Working at the top of education and training: AI, predictive analytics and rethinking pharmacy workflow

20:00 – A day in the life of a pharmacist: from alert fatigue to clinical insight built for one patient

21:00 – Sharing work across pharmacies when one location gets buried

22:00 – The phone off the shoulder: why a quieter pharmacy is a better experience for everyone

23:00 – A specialty patient’s experience five years ago compared with today

24:00 – Untangling medical vs. pharmacy benefits and turning copay assistance into a link

25:00 – “The pizza tracker”: letting patients watch their therapy move from prior authorization to delivery

26:00 – A portal that ends the phone calls about where Mary Jones’ prescription stands

27:00 – Lucille’s one change for keeping complex care on track: simplification, one person and one family at a time

29:00 – Reflections: technology strengthens the human touch when we use it well

30:00 – Don’t ask patients to navigate the complexity—absorb it for them

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Episode description 

After more than three decades in federal health policy, Julie Barnes still encounters a healthcare system reliant on compact discs, faxes and manual workarounds. On this episode, she explains why change, not technology, remains healthcare’s biggest obstacle, and what it will take to make interoperability, prior authorization and price transparency work for patients.

In this episode: 

0:00 – Making a connected healthcare system something patients can feel

2:00 – A vice president, two hospitals and one disc of medical records 

4:00 – From Capitol Hill to health policy: the experiences that shaped Julie’s career 

5:00 – The puppy, the senator and the story behind Maverick Health Policy 

6:00 – What new interoperability and prior authorization rules mean for patients 

7:00 – Losing the clipboard and letting medical histories follow the patient 

8:00 – Why changing healthcare workflows is harder than changing the technology 

10:00 – Information blocking: what it is and why enforcement may be different now 

12:00 – The three-legged stool: interoperability, prior authorization and price transparency 

15:00 – Regulating healthcare AI at the speed of patient desperation 

16:00 – What happens when policy works

17:00 – TEFCA surpasses one billion records and gains momentum

19:00 – Why coordination across federal health agencies matters now

23:00 – Julie’s better way: technology-supported care centered on the patient

Follow “There’s a Better Way” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen. 

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Episode description

For Anna McCollister, health data access has never been abstract. Living with type 1 diabetes has meant fighting for years to get her own health information from her devices, labs and doctors. She turned that frustration into a career—helping launch #WeAreNotWaiting, advising companies on how to earn patient trust and shaping national interoperability policy through HITAC and The Sequoia Project. Listen in as she explains why most barriers to patient data aren't technically hard to solve—they've simply gone unaddressed—and what changes when patients stop waiting and take action.

In this episode:

0:00 – Intro: what becomes possible when the patient isn’t along for the ride, but at the wheel

2:00 – Anna’s path: from journalism and foreign policy to health IT, and the realization that her own frustrations as a patient were fixable—it was just that nobody had bothered to fix them

4:00 – A continuous glucose monitor whose software only ran on Windows: buying Parallels to see her own numbers

6:00 – “It’s my data. This is my health.” Discussing lab values she could never get

8:00 – How #WeAreNotWaiting started: patients and parents who happened to write software, and two devices locked shut

9:00 – A receiver, an Android phone and a Pebble watch: John Costick’s hack meant parents could monitor their child’s glucose levels 

10:00 – Ben West cracks the insulin pump protocol, and Anna takes the case for open APIs to the DiabetesMine stage with the FDA in the room

11:00 – Loop: a closed-loop artificial pancreas built by patients, free on GitHub, more than 30,000 users worldwide

12:00 – Where the gaps still are: patient portals were a real win, and they’re nowhere near enough

13:00 – Four days to eye surgery, 30 days to the imaging: mail a paper check, wait for it to clear, then wait a month

15:00 – Designing with patients, not for them: inside a genetic testing company built on “patients own and control their data”

16:00 – The trust stack: don’t try to avoid losing trust, try to earn it

17:00 – The annual report that changed minds—publishing every way patient data was used, and watching skeptics become supporters

18:00 – Why electronic health information is a harder fight than devices, and why nothing moves without a sense of urgency

19:00 – The Sequoia Project’s ask of hospitals: rethink data access as user experience, not systemic overhaul

20:00 – Two ideas that need to go: portals are sufficient, and patients don’t want their data

21:00 – Four different LLMs, one mysterious diagnosis: analysis beyond what her physician had capacity to provide

22:00 – The unfinished piece: why personal health records and mobile apps still can’t get a reliable data feed

23:00 – 19 doctors, 170 appointments in a year, and a stack of manual downloads before every one

24:00 – Anna’s better way: put health data on the phone—it’s slowing progress, and it's very fixable

Follow “There’s a Better Way” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen. 

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Episode description

Most Americans live within five to 10 miles of a pharmacy, which means that pharmacists are some of the most accessible clinicians in healthcare. Yet historically they have been among the least connected to it. Ben Bluml of the American Pharmacists Association Foundation is working to change that. Ben has spent three decades building care models, credentialing and data connections to turn pharmacists into fully-fledged members of the care team. Here’s why getting pharmacists onto the health information superhighway may be the fastest fix for a healthcare system that too often leaves its most accessible clinician out of the loop. 

In this episode:

0:00 – Intro: why pharmacists are some of the most accessible—and least connected—clinicians in healthcare

2:00 – Ben’s path: from community pharmacy counter to three decades building pharmacist care models at the APhA Foundation

5:00 – A patient story: 26 pharmacies, 400 patients, and a lipid-lowering program built around a feedback loop

9:00 – “I’m not gonna be here to see my granddaughter get married”: a stroke-risk wake-up call

11:00 – The paradox: 90% of Americans live within 5–10 miles of a pharmacy, yet it’s the least connected part of care

13:00 – From vaccines to bone density screenings: the two faces of advanced pharmacy services

15:00 – What integrated systems like Kaiser get right—and why most community pharmacies don’t have it

17:00 – Project Impact Cardiovascular Health Plus: credentialing and paying pharmacists like their physician colleagues

19:00 – SDOH screening, a stroke risk assessment, and a 30-second EKG: how the AFib program works

21:00 – The results: Afib identified at more than 3x the expected rate across 2,100 patients

23:00 – Getting pharmacists onto the health information superhighway through Surescripts

24:00 – A cautionary tale: a medication reconciliation gap that ends in a broken hip

26:00 – The Sequoia Project Pharmacy Interoperability Work Group: Surescripts, NACDS, NCPA Foundation, and APhA Foundation 

28:00 – Bundling prediabetes prevention and CGM access as pharmacists connect through TEFCA

29:00 – One billion CDAs and counting: why this moment feels different

31:00 – Ben’s bold ask: an integrated EHR in every community pharmacy

34:00 – Ben’s better way: pharmacists plugged into the health information superhighway

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Know someone working at the intersection of healthcare and technology? Share this episode.

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Episode Description:

No one understands the patient burden better than Amy Gleason, who lived it as a caregiver navigating her daughter’s rare disease diagnosis before bringing that experience into her work leading national health technology reform. Listen in as she shares how the CMS Health Tech Ecosystem, the effort to “kill the clipboard,” and a renewed push for trust are all working to make healthcare follow the patient—not the other way around.

In this episode:

0:00 – Intro: What if the biggest shift in healthcare is a patient finally getting to own their own story? 

2:00 – A new center of gravity: CMS launches the Office of Health Technology and Products 

4:00 – Amy’s better way: patients getting access on their own terms, without faxes or paper 

5:00 – The TED Talk moment: mysterious symptoms and a week-long wait for biopsy results 

7:00 – “She has a life-threatening disease”: a diagnosis day of canceled tests and a midnight scare 10:00 – What should have been different: faster diagnostics and technology built around the patient, not the paperwork 

14:00 – The real barrier isn’t technology—it’s data trapped in silos 

16:00 – Trust, not tech: how HIPAA myths and misplaced caution keep health data from following patients 

17:00 – Kill the Clipboard, Axe the Fax: launching the CMS Health Tech Ecosystem at the White House 

19:00 – Verified and live: more than 800 companies and the first CMS-certified Medicare apps 

23:00 – TEFCA, QHINs, and CMS-aligned networks: how they work together, not in competition 

25:00 – Prior authorization’s next test: a new pledge with October and January deadlines 

27:00 – Available isn’t useful: why 51 patient portals still aren’t enough 

29:00 – Healthy caution vs. inertia: distinguishing real risk from resistance to change 

32:00 – The clearest sign the change is sticking: patients aren’t waiting anymore 

Follow “There’s a Better Way” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

Know someone working at the intersection of healthcare and technology? Share this episode.

Corporate website: 

surescripts.com 

Intelligence in Action newsletter (subscribe): 

https://cloud.comms.surescripts.com/iia 

Follow “There’s a Better Way” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen. 

As a practicing physician and CMIO, Danny Lee brings insights from the intersection of patient care and health IT. 

Real, meaningful progress has to begin at the point of care. No one knows this better than Dr. Lee, who has firsthand insight into the realities of clinical workflows and the critical role technology plays in supporting—or hindering—care delivery. Listen in as he shares how better outcomes depend on clinician-led use of technology that supports decisions in the moments that matter most for patients.  

Know someone working at the intersection of healthcare and technology? Share this episode. 

We talk a lot about technology and healthcare. We talk about automation. We talk about artificial intelligence. We talk about the promise of what's new and shiny and cutting edge. We're human after all—we build things. That's what we do. And the tools we build help us address big challenges, including those we face in healthcare.  

So it makes sense that we talk a lot about technology and what we imagine our future could look like. But this isn't really about our tools. Not on this podcast—not this season. It's about people. It's about the patient. It's about all of us and the care that we want for ourselves and those we love. 

This season, you'll hear from leaders, clinicians, pharmacists and innovators who are asking not just what technology can do, but how we choose to use it to meaningfully improve patient care.  

The better way in healthcare is one that keeps the patient at the center, keeps care moving forward and on track and uses technology in service of what matters most.  

Don't miss season five of “There's a Better Way” premiering on all major podcast apps in June.  

When Patrick Leddin started his career jumping from Army planes, he quickly discovered the importance of leadership—and the power of bold moves.   

Now, the bestselling author and speaker has distilled insights from his work in entrepreneurship, leadership consulting and research into a new book cowritten with James Patterson. In this episode, he shares takeaways from a three-year research project studying positive disruptors in the world framework for thriving in uncertainty. Tune in to hear how disruption can be good for your own health and for healthcare as a whole. 

From policy to technology, Seema Verma has a long history of transforming healthcare at scale. 

As the former Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator, Verma directed initiatives, such as the historic Patients over Paperwork, that helped advance care for patients and providers. Now, as EVP of Oracle Health, she uses technology to improve patient outcomes and care delivery. Listen in as she shares her optimism on how better technology, data and AI can help bridge gaps in care. 

“I think many organizations aren't really designed to innovate,” says Scott Howell, M.D. 

When it comes to opportunities to innovate healthcare, Dr. Howell sees low-hanging fruit everywhere. But, he claims, “the rule is you can’t touch it.” As a young provider, Dr. Howell saw firsthand the consequences of healthcare inefficiencies. His frustration with a flawed system inspired him to pursue his MBA and work to improve healthcare on a bigger scale. Follow Dr. Howell’s journey and learn how he believes we can achieve innovation that drives better access to care.