After a long summer break and unexpected curveballs, we’re back with a special edition marking the transition into season 4.5! Join us as we share personal stories that have influenced our podcast’s new direction and learn how we juggle our roles at Strategic Healthcare Partners with our passion for delivering insightful content. This mini-season promises engaging conversations, a sprinkle of news, and a few surprises along the way as we look ahead to a full-fledged season five launch in early 2025.
We’re also deeply aware of the recent challenges faced by our southeastern communities due to Hurricane Helene and Milton. As we regroup, our thoughts are with those affected, and we’re committed to bringing you concise and informative discussions throughout this mini-season. Expect guest experts to join us, sharing tips and insights across various fields to ensure you leave each episode with something valuable. So, grab your headphones and join us on this re-energized journey as we offer a mix of quick conversations, topical discussions, and valuable insights.
Guest: Jason Crosby, VP Network Integration & Strategic Planning
Jason currently serves as the Vice President of Strategic Planning & Network Integration for Strategic Healthcare Partners (SHP) of Savannah, GA, with whom he has been employed for 13 years. With SHP, he oversees the Clinically Integrated Network activity, as well as the Business Development and Strategic Planning function.
Prior to joining SHP, Jason served as Finance Director for Georgia Emergency Associates, Decision Support Manager at Memorial Health, and as a Finance Lead with Gulfstream Aerospace.
Guest: Aaron Higgins, Data Manager & IT Strategist
Aaron Higgins has worked with SHP since 2019 as the Data Manager and all around Quality Payment Program expert. In 2021, his role expanded to include IT Strategy to help SHP navigate the changing IT landscape in a post-COVID workplace.
Prior to working at SHP, Aaron worked in various private practices starting in 2008, where he typically held dual roles as both the Health IT Administrator and Meaningful Use/PQRS Manager, and in 2015 he moved to the Savannah area to oversee the Quality Payment Program for a private practice.
Every year, since coming to SHP, Aaron has provided a webinar series updating QPP eligible practices on the proposed & final rule changes coming to QPP (recordings of which can be found on the SHP website).
Transcript
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the podcast. Before we get started, I just wanted to explain that when we recorded today’s episode, there was something a little wrong with our audio, so just bear with us. It’s a short episode. How long has it been? It’s been almost half a year since, I think, you and I had a chance to sit down and record some fresh podcast.
Speaker 2:
You know, athletes have a lot of long off seasons, but this feels even longer. Hopefully we’re not as much rust to knock off, but man, it’s been too long. I’m excited. I’m excited to get back going.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, me too. So there’s been a lot that’s happened in our personal lives over the summer. And, if you noticed, this isn’t summer anymore. We’re recording this now in what is mid-fall, so we’re a little later than we had planned on, but sometimes life throws you a couple of curveballs. So here we are. This is a slightly different episode than what you might be used to for our listeners. We wanted to peel the curtain back a little bit and let you know on some of the changes that you’re going to see to the podcast over the coming months. Let you know about some of the secret sauce, the things that make the stew, so to speak. So, instead of bringing you the latest news headlines or an engaging interview, we just kind of wanted to be a little bit meta and talk about the podcast a little bit.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, in fact a little twist to it. So this will be called season 4.5. We went between the Easter Bunny now it’s almost Halloween in between seasons here of recordings, and so we’ve got a shortened season for you guys, where you’ll get more of Aaron and I unfortunately, or fortunately, however you want to see that but we’ll mix in some news a little bit here and there, a little conversation, topical type conversations between the two of us here in the remainder next couple of months, as we still plan and work on season five to be launched in q1 of 25.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So again, peeling the curtain back a little bit, both Jason and I we don’t do this full time. That might be news to some of you, but both of us work full time for strategic health care partners, the producers and sponsors of this podcast, and sometimes our full time jobs are just that full time. So we work on this podcast when we’re able and with some other things that happen in our lives, some exciting life changes for me and my family and to a certain extent for Jason too.
Speaker 1:
He’s in a slightly different chapter of life than I am, but it’s certainly eaten into any of the free time that we had available. So, in order for us to fully cook all of the ideas we had for season five, we realized we needed a little bit more time, but we also knew we were probably tired of hearing those reruns. So what we’re going to do for the next couple of months here, until at least through the start of the new year maybe just a little bit past that in season 4.5, we’re going to bring you little quick conversations. Some of those conversations may be more than five minutes, but most will be kind of quick and focused on one or two topics.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and between Aaron and I, like we mentioned, as we get some subject matter experts that’ll come back on for a quick conversation, some tips and tricks, if you will, of various trades that’ll be helpful to everybody. We will have those on. So it won’t just be Aaron and I Come back on for a quick conversation, some tips and tricks, if you will, of various trades That’ll be helpful to everybody. We will have those on. So it won’t just be Aaron and I boring you to death every Wednesday with recordings. We’ll we’ll, you know, bring back in some other folks as we go. But again to Aaron’s point, it’s it’s been an interesting offseason. We also want to be respectful of where we’re recording.
Speaker 2:
In the southeast, as we went through planning in September and October, many folks in our area where we live, but most importantly our clients and the rural communities and their families, were and still are devastated by Hurricane Helene and Milton, and so we want to make sure we keep those folks in our thoughts and prayers. And obviously that impacted us. But we were very fortunate mainly just loss of power for a number of days and water and Internet and that sort of thing. But fortunately in our areas where Aaron and I are and where SHP’s headquartered. We were blessed, but many folks were not, and so, as we think about season 4.5 and being delayed, let’s keep those folks also in our thoughts and prayers. But let’s have some fun these next couple of months. In light of all that and Aaron and I will talk more about SHP, about our jobs We’ll bring some folks in and look forward to an exciting season five in the fall, or in the winter, rather.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and definitely want to send our thoughts and our prayers to everybody affected by Helene and Milton. This has proven to be a very exciting hurricane season, and not in a good way. That’s, I guess, one of the risks of being here in the southeast, but certainly nothing that we’ve experienced in quite a long time down here. But, yeah, looking forward to 4.5, again, it’s going to be shorter than usual. We’re not going to have 15, 30-minute interviews.
Speaker 1:
Most of our stuff is going to be focused on a single topic and we’ll have some subject matter experts to maybe explain a thing that you’ve always kind of wanted to know about. But speaking of that, and as you hear this, is there something you want to know about? Is there something you want to know about? Is there a question of that? Here you are, you’ve been a longtime manager or an administrator of an organization and you have a question that you’re just kind of just too afraid to ask. We’ll be more than happy to help answer it on the air. We won’t call you out by name, don’t worry, but we would love to answer any questions you have, anything about the health care industry, or maybe challenge us on some of the thoughts that we’ve had and we’d love to hear from you, engage with you either directly or indirectly through the podcast. All of our contact information is in the show notes. You can email us, you can call or reach out to us via our website.
Speaker 2:
And we do plan to keep our typical schedule, so we’re not throwing that off as well. So that way, every Wednesday, the first thing you can do and be excited about during hump day is Aaron’s voice with me chomping in some. So, as you’re listening to this, it’ll be the first week of November. Ish, halloween’s behind us. Hopefully everybody’s appreciating Thanksgiving and not skipping right to Christmas, but this is an exciting time of year and we look forward to being a part of it, as usual, yeah.
Speaker 1:
And again, thank you for sticking with us, even through the rerun period. That went a little bit longer than we had planned, but we’ve really enjoyed bringing this podcast to you. It’s something we want to certainly keep up doing and look forward to having more conversations with y’all and with even with you, jason. I’ve enjoyed our times together. So glad to be on this podcast journey with you.
Speaker 2:
It’s been great and we appreciate everybody listening. Look forward to more conversations coming up.
Speaker 1:
Alrighty folks. Thank you for listening. We’ll check back with you next week. This has been an episode of Beyond the Stethoscope Vital Conversations with SHB. Your hosts today have been me, aaron Higgins, and me, jason Crosby. This is a production of Strategic Healthcare Partners. Our executive producers are Mike Skripal and John Kuru.
Speaker 2:
Our editor is Naila Weeb.
Speaker 1:
And our social media manager is Jeremy Miller, with Boost by Design, transcription by Robot and tweet by me, jason Crosby. You can visit our podcast archive on our website at shplccom slash podcasts and learn more about the services and products offered by SHP. Find us on social media, including Facebook and LinkedIn, where you can send us questions and even leave comments about this episode. Thank you for listening and we look forward to visiting with you in our next episode.
Speaker 2:
And I’ll bring this message.
Speaker 1:
It sounded exactly like you, right, yeah?