Are you ready to embark on a new journey with ‘Beyond the Stethoscope: Vital Conversations with SHP’? We’re kicking off our third season with a bang! Join us, your hosts Aaron C. Higgins and Jason Crosby, as we celebrate our first podcast anniversary and revel in crossing over 1,000 listens. Looking back, we’ve had a spectrum of engaging interviews and explored a variety of formats, but this season, we have a truly impressive lineup of guests to introduce.
We’re starting this season off with a deep dive into the latest developments in the healthcare industry. We’ll discuss Costco’s unexpected step into healthcare and explore how a Mark Cuban-sponsored study on price transparency reveals some big discrepancies. Then we look into the future…of our podcast! This season, we shift our focus to feature conversations with CEOs of successful, independent practices and hospitals. We can’t wait to introduce you to some of our upcoming guests: Damien Scott, CEO of Emmanuel Medical Center in Georgia, Kelly Mackin-Marble, CEO of Oswala Medical Center in Wisconsin, and some more stellar “in the trenches” guests.
Get ready for a season filled with enlightening discussions and invaluable insights. Let’s go beyond the stethoscope together!
Guest: Jason Crosby
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
Aaron 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
Aaron C. Higgins:
Hello and welcome to, beyond the Stethoscope, vital Conversations with SHP. I’m your host, Aaron C Higgins. On today’s first episode of Season 3, Jason Crosby and I celebrate some milestones, cover some of the latest headlines and talk about what you can expect from our latest season of our podcast. We have a great slate of guests this season and I’m really excited to get this season going. Now on to Season 3, episode 1. Well, hey, Jason.
Jason Crosby:
Hey Aaron, how are you?
Aaron C. Higgins:
I’m doing great. You know what, Jason? I got a number for you.
Jason Crosby:
Okay, what’s you got Between 100 and 100,? What is it? It’s 1.
Aaron C. Higgins:
1? 1. What’s your anniversary?
Jason Crosby:
Oh, happy anniversary.
Aaron C. Higgins:
Happy anniversary to us. And you’ve also just passed 1,000 listens. Get out, yeah.
Jason Crosby:
Okay, hey, should the listener celebrate, we should all celebrate. Right, that’s pretty yeah. First podcast, first. We’ve done two seasons. How many episodes? About 25, I think 26. 26 episodes recordings.
Aaron C. Higgins:
Yeah 1,000.
Jason Crosby:
That’s awesome, fantastic. Well, obviously, a big thank you to those that are listening, because you’re the ones that made the 1,000 possible.
Aaron C. Higgins:
Yeah, thank you for tuning in every week during our seasons and giving us some feedback and providing us with an opportunity to share some of our thoughts. So we do appreciate you, our listeners. So, jason, as we head into Season 3, so this is the first episode of Season 3. I have to reflect a little bit about the last two seasons. We’ve played with the formats a little bit, we’ve done different things, we’ve had a lot of great interviews and certainly I’m looking forward to Season 3. But before we get into what’s ahead, let’s do talk some news. I think there’s a couple of headlines that have popped up very recently that our listeners will find fascinating.
Jason Crosby:
Indeed, it’s an industry that’s always involved with news, right? So what have you seen recently, in the last couple of weeks? Aaron, let’s grab your attention.
Aaron C. Higgins:
Well, this really falls back to actually what we were talking about a year ago and what we talked about a little bit this spring. But the retailers expansion into healthcare. Most recently, and kind of out of the blue Costco, yes, costco, yeah, the big box store where you can only buy big boxes they have announced that they’re partnering with a company called Sesame and they’re going to raise the price of a Costco membership. But it unlocks fairly cheap, essentially co-pay level visits that their members can have with Sesame. Now I looked into Sesame a little bit. They’re a virtual healthcare company but they actually do have physical clinics too. Right now it’s only in the big cities, primarily on the West Coast, but they have some in New York and I think they’re going to be opening up in Atlanta here soon. So we’ll see what comes of this. But Costco seems to be not just wading into the waters of healthcare but diving into the deep end with this partnership. So it’d be very interesting to see how they, you know, muddle through these waters because you know, walmart’s playing in this space. Amazon, best Buy Still can’t figure out how to lie Best Buy. But you know, here we are, you can go, I guess, get a checkup and a gallon size olive oil.
Jason Crosby:
Well, you know, we’ve talked about before, I think, and maybe last season, as Dollar Generably would get into the game right, or we’d start talking about access to those without access, in particular the Dollar Generals who are out in the rural communities. I feel as though Costco hearing you talk through it is sort of in that same light, that as an industry, we need to go to where the people are versus having the people go to where the facilities are. Right, and if you’re a common, you know Sam’s or Walmart or Target, like you know I tend to do, it was just at Sam’s or the weekend or Costco, if that’s your preferred choice, why not maybe take healthcare there, if that’s where the people are going? I see that as another good thing that the retailers are doing.
Aaron C. Higgins:
Yeah, and certainly you know Costco and Sam’s and Walmart. They already have pharmacies, so in some ways they already have some of the infrastructure set up, so it makes more of an actual sense. I’m still, and we’ll continue, to scratch my head about Best Buy and Dollar General, but again, if it’s that that’s where the people are, then that’s where the healthcare should be To your point.
Jason Crosby:
what services do they provide? And then secondly, of course, healthcare reimbursement can’t be a simple transaction, right? How does that work that? I’ll be interested to see how that lays out. Over time We’ll see.
Aaron C. Higgins:
Yeah, we will. Okay now. So what headline do you got for us?
Jason Crosby:
Yeah, I tell you in the same light, so to speak. But I’m always intrigued about Mark Cuban, whether it’s the Dallas Mavericks which I’m a basketball fan, I admit or all the things he’s trying to do in healthcare which, like it or not, I think is a positive right. It’s a disruptor. So he recently funded a study related to one of our favorite things the last couple of years, and that’s pricing transparency. The study was actually published in the gym of internal medicine, maybe just here in September, so pretty recent. And what that study did was compare online cash price estimates for vaginal childbirth and brain MRI services, and they gathered those estimates via believe they quoted as secret chopper calls right. So the study looked at 60 different hospitals. They were grouped as either top ranked safety net or neither, so a variety of hospitals. The affiliates involved were Baylor Medicine and Mark Cuban’s company, the Cost Plus Drug Company, and so there was a lot of substance behind the study. And of course, they found, as part of the trying pricing transparency issues with the no Surprise Act of 2020, there’s still a lot of non-compliant facilities. But back to those 60 hospitals only 22 provided online or phone estimates for vaginal childbirth and among those, only three hospitals provided matching estimates. So think about that. Prices all over the place, right? 10 hospitals provided estimates within 25% of each other, but nine differed by 50% or more. So if you’re just an average consumer, obviously those in the industry like ourselves, we’re aware of these things that occur. But if you’re an average consumer of healthcare, having that price discrepancy is a pretty darn big deal. And on the brain MRI side it’s pretty similar. 31 of the 47 hospitals they survey provided online or phone estimates. Out of those, 20 or 12 hospitals differed by more than 50% on the price estimate Pretty statistically significant figure when you look at it, right. And so really, what the study showed was it provides a lot of the data behind it the cost, which range, for example, vaginal childbirth zero to 55,000. I mean pretty significant. So a couple of things caught my attention there. One that again Mark Cuban is back in the news just trying to bring information to light. Not good, not bad, just being informed consumers. And secondly, pricing transparency compliance or not is still just a big issue in our industry.
Aaron C. Higgins:
Yeah, yeah, and I think as more hospitals become pricing transparent, compliant which, even though they’re supposed to be we’ve seen it out there that a lot of hospitals still are bucking the system as best they can we’re going to see more information like this. Well, hopefully that helps to drive down the cost of carrier and makes the healthcare space more competitive, with a heavy hitter like Mark Cuban out there doing the Lord’s work, so to speak, that that could be helpful to shed some light on that. So, thanks for sharing. Certainly I know we’re running a little short on time here. What do we have to look forward to over this next season? So over the next two, four months thereabouts? What do we have on deck?
Jason Crosby:
Yeah, I’m really excited about this season. So those have listened. Before the first two seasons we included other vendors, other consultants and subject matter experts. That provides a lot of insight into the various practices. Administrators of hospitals listening this season it’s focusing on the provider side, and so we’ve got lined up CEOs of successful and pretty large independent practices, as well as CEOs of a couple of hospitals and, lastly, a chief medical officer, and so what we’ve gotten lined up is Damien Scott, ceo of a manual medical center in Georgia. We have Kelly Mackinmarble, ceo of Oswala I’m gonna mess that up and I apologize Medical Center in Wisconsin. Craig Kilgore, who’s CEO of Charleston ENT, and Allison Griffin, ceo of Urological Associates All those from the provider side, and then Dr Eric Brecker, chief medical officer of Simplify Health, who himself has a very large following on his educational videos, youtube, linkedin, et cetera. So a very excited lineup this season that we’re looking to launch in the next couple of weeks.
Aaron C. Higgins:
Oh man, I’m looking forward to it. And of course, during all that time we’ll have our little news episodes too to keep you all updated on the latest headlines, so you can kind of be aware of what’s happening in the industry. So with that, jason, I think this first episode’s done.
Jason Crosby:
Wow well, so hopefully we’ll get 1,001 downloads after this, but let’s reiterate Again, we are extremely blessed and thankful for all of you listening. Aaron and I, we have a good time just doing this. Hopefully it’s of help to you all, the providers. We’re all consumers of providers, let’s face it, and so we hope this is beneficial to you all as well.
Aaron C. Higgins:
Yeah, thank you all for listening. You have a great day.
Jason Crosby:
You’ve been listening to Beyond the Stealth Scoop Bottle Conversations with SHB. This has been a production of strategic health care partners.
Aaron C. Higgins:
Your hosts are Jason Crosby and me, Aaron C Higgins. This episode was produced and edited by Nile and Weaver. Our social media content producer is Jeremy Miller.
Jason Crosby:
The transcribers Heather McLean, and our executive producers are Mike Scribner and John Currie.
Aaron C. Higgins:
For more information about SHP, the services we offer, including the back library of episodes, episode transcripts, links to resources that we discussed, and much more, please visit our website at shpllc.com. Slash podcast. Thank you for listening. We’ll see you next time.