Brian D. Pieninck didn’t take a conventional path to healthcare leadership. He started his career as an 18-year-old IT contractor and spent two decades working across the industry before becoming President and CEO of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield. He now also serves as Chair of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, bringing both local and national perspective to the role. In this episode, Keith Figlioli speaks with Pieninck about what it means to lead a not-for-profit regional payer at a ti...
Jun 19, 2025•45 min•Ep. 79
Kody Kinsley has been called many things—operator, innovator, Medicaid “nerd”—but above all, he’s a fierce advocate for the health and well-being of the populations Medicaid serves. Now a senior advisor at the Milken Institute and recently North Carolina’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kinsley joins Keith Figlioli for a wide-ranging conversation about how Medicaid works, why it matters, and where innovation is reshaping its future. A native of North Carolina, Kinsley brings personal ex...
May 15, 2025•45 min•Ep. 78
Dr. Ali Khan has spent his career at the intersection of medicine, public policy, and value-based care. He’s also been at the forefront of some of the country's most innovative care delivery models—from Iora Health and CareMore to Oak Street Health and now Aetna, where he serves as Chief Medical Officer of Medicare at Aetna, a CVS Health company. In this episode, Keith Figlioli sits down with Dr. Khan for a conversation about Medicare’s future—and what it will take to make the promise of better,...
Apr 29, 2025•49 min•Ep. 77
The first two episodes in this Healthcare is Hard podcast series on “Opportunities in Oncology” explored the relationship between academic medical centers and community care, with guests Dr. Stephen Schleicher from Tennessee Oncology, and Dr. Harlan Levine from City of Hope. For the third and final episode in the series, Dr. Daphne Haas-Kogan joined Keith Figlioli for a conversation that dives more deeply into patient care, innovations in care delivery and the opportunities for entrepreneurs. Dr...
Mar 20, 2025•37 min•Ep. 76
Dr. Harlan Levine began his career practicing internal medicine but soon moved into business leadership roles at national healthcare organizations to help improve the dysfunction with payer-provider relationships that he experienced firsthand as a physician. At United Health Group, Dr. Levine joined as clinical lead of the team that launched Optum, where he subsequently served as chief medical officer for more than six years. He also led the health management practice at Towers Watson and served...
Feb 20, 2025•41 min•Ep. 75
There’s been a massive gap in oncology where people who have been responsible for a dramatic increase in the standard of care have lacked a solid understanding of the business, payment and policy constructs required to deliver it. Dr. Stephen Schleicher has spent the early part of his career working to fill that gap. Dr. Schleicher entered medical school with an interest in oncology, anchored by an appreciation for the psychological toll cancer can have on a person, their family and caregivers t...
Jan 23, 2025•48 min•Ep. 74
Elements of the new Trump administration are coming into focus as announcements of key healthcare appointments and nominations provide indications for what the market can expect starting in January. To dissect the impact these changes might have, Wall Street Analyst Jeff Garro joined Keith Figlioli to wrap up a four-part series of episodes on election implications. Previous episodes featured conversations with JP Morgan’s Lisa Gill , Canaccord Genuity’s Richard Close , and Maverick Health Policy...
Dec 12, 2024•36 min
Healthcare was not a major focus during the 2024 election where other key issues drove most of the discussion. This left a vacuum around specific healthcare policies and what to expect from a second Trump Administration. With few details available and political capital to spend from the ‘red sweep’ this election, healthcare stakeholders are pondering how much of the incoming administration’s preference for disrupting the status quo will extend to the healthcare industry. For the third episode in...
Nov 21, 2024•46 min•Ep. 72
With the White House and Congress up for grabs this election, anticipation in the healthcare industry is high. Shifts in healthcare policy will influence how care is paid for and delivered, which will of course influence the flow of investment dollars in both public and private markets. During the first episode of a four-part series on election implications, beltway insider Julie Barnes laid out potential scenarios for the direction healthcare policy might take depending on election outcomes. Wi...
Oct 30, 2024•31 min•Ep. 71
Julie Barnes has made a career helping health plans, tech vendors, investors and others in the healthcare space decipher health policy. She’s a former Hill staffer who earned her law degree and spent a decade in corporate law serving healthcare clients before moving to policy think tanks, business consulting, and founding Maverick Health Policy. At Maverick, she provides strategic advice on federal health policy to private companies and industry coalitions, with particular focus on health data a...
Sep 26, 2024•46 min•Ep. 70
OSF HealthCare stands as a model health system for those who want to do innovation right. One of the defining characteristics of the Peoria, Illinois-based system is how it aligns innovation with operations for everyone – all 24,000 employees across 159 locations, including 16 hospitals. Becky Buchen is responsible for driving innovation at OSF HealthCare. As SVP of Innovation Operations she works to engage and educate people on the innovation process, leveraging the eco-system for innovation bu...
Aug 29, 2024•38 min•Ep. 69
With great power comes great responsibility and in healthcare, those words may have never held more meaning than they do with the advent of artificial intelligence. AI most certainly has the power to transform healthcare, and those in the industry working to develop and use it have an immense responsibility to shape principles that ensure these technologies help, not harm. The Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) was created with a mission to be the trusted source of responsible AI in health that serv...
Jul 18, 2024•55 min•Ep. 68
Chris Coburn has been driving health system innovation for decades. He is currently chief innovation officer at Mass General Brigham (MGB), the nation’s largest academic research enterprise with over $16 billion in annual revenue, 1.5 million patient visits and more than $2.4 billion in research expenditures. MGB also has a managed care organization, out-patient facilities and community hospitals. 7,000 of its faculty are appointed at Harvard Medical School. As head of innovation, Chris leads a ...
Jun 20, 2024•44 min•Ep. 67
Optum Rx serves more than 62 million people, processes 1.6 billion prescriptions and generates more than $110 billion of revenue annually. Dr. Patrick Conway, CEO of Optum Rx, is the third and final guest in a series of Healthcare is Hard episodes exploring the transformation of the pharmacy business – following conversations with Mark Cuban and Dr. Troyen Brennan . Dr. Conway brings an expansive view of the healthcare system to this discussion and his role leading one of the most influential or...
May 23, 2024•41 min•Ep. 66
In the first of a series of episodes exploring opportunities for innovation in the pharmacy space, Mark Cuban offered perspective from an outsider intent on disrupting the status quo. In this, the second episode, Dr. Troyen Brennan gives an insider point-of-view from someone who has studied and worked in the space for decades. Dr. Brennan was Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health for nearly 14 years, and before that, Chief Medical Officer at Aetna for two years. He was also a practicing physician ...
Apr 18, 2024•43 min•Ep. 65
Mark Cuban built a career disrupting industries and creating new ones. Now, his sights are set on healthcare. There’s no secret ingredient to Mark’s success. As the world sees very publicly on Shark Tank, his style is the opposite of keeping secrets. It’s based on providing respectful, but direct, honest and unvarnished opinions. He’s bringing that style to healthcare in order to inject what he says the industry is lacking most. Trust. To kick-off a series of Healthcare is Hard podcast episodes ...
Mar 21, 2024•44 min•Ep. 64
In most industries, innovation leads to an improved product or service while ultimately helping to lower cost. Healthcare is the exception. Despite a constant pursuit of new science, technology, operational efficiencies, business models and more, healthcare expenditures in the U.S. have continued to increase for decades with little sign of bending the cost curve downward. What causes this phenomenon in U.S. healthcare, and what can we do about it? In their book, Why Not Better and Cheaper?: Heal...
Feb 15, 2024•46 min•Ep. 63
Through its work with more than 41,000 healthcare facilities and the industry’s largest database of patient feedback, Press Ganey gives organizations the data and insights they need to put the human experience at the center of healthcare. Since it was founded nearly 40 years ago by Professors Press and Ganey at the University of Notre Dame, the company has built a reputation for being the prominent source of patient feedback, but it hasn’t stopped there. Its solutions capture the voice of the pa...
Jan 18, 2024•36 min•Ep. 62
This is the final episode in a four part series with heads of strategy at providers and payers from across the healthcare ecosystem to explore “the new normal” in a post-COVID operating environment. For this episode Keith Figlioli welcomed Sukanya Soderland, Chief Strategy Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, to explore how a regional payer is adapting. This follows previous episodes that offered a diverse perspective from heads of strategy at: A regional health system, OhioHealth...
Dec 15, 2023•37 min•Ep. 61
The previous two episodes of Healthcare is Hard explored the “new normal” from the provider perspective with heads of strategy at an innovative regional health system, OhioHealth , and one of the nation’s largest, CommonSpirit . For the third episode in this series, Keith Figlioli welcomes Humana’s Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer, Dr. Vishal Agrawal, to shift the discussion towards payers and how they’re adjusting to the post-COVID world. Today, Humana is one of the nation’s lar...
Nov 16, 2023•38 min•Ep. 60
CommonSpirit Health is one of the nation’s largest integrated health systems comprising 142 hospitals and 2,200 care sites across 24 states. Three years ago, at the height of the pandemic, CommonSpirit’s Chief Innovation Officer, Rich Roth, and now former CEO, Lloyd Dean , spoke with Keith Figlioli on the Healthcare is Hard podcast to discuss their approach to leading the organization through healthcare’s most challenging times. As the country emerges into a new normal, CommonSpirit’s Chief Stra...
Oct 26, 2023•41 min•Ep. 59
There are many reasons why central Ohio is a fertile ground for innovation and why the areas surrounding Columbus are ideal for testing new approaches to consumer behavior. It’s a diverse city with five Fortune 500 companies and 19 Fortune 1,000 companies in a wide range of industries, from banking and insurance to fashion. No single industry contributes more than 18% of GDP and together, they bolster a region that’s experiencing active and sustainable growth. In addition, Columbus has a relativ...
Sep 21, 2023•40 min•Ep. 58
Before taking responsibility for operational performance of Booz Allen Hamilton – the $9+ billion technology and consulting leader with 32,000+ employees worldwide – Kristine Martin Anderson built a career pioneering healthcare IT. Most notably, she spent nearly 14 years at an early innovator in the space, CareScience, where she helped advance work in quality measurement before overseeing the launch of the nation’s first web-based clinical decision support system for hospitals, and the nation’s ...
Aug 17, 2023•40 min•Ep. 57
Earning a Presidential Management Fellowship after law school gave Kristen McGovern firsthand experience working inside many of the agencies and offices that drive U.S. healthcare policy. Over a two year period with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) she worked at organizations including the National Cancer Institute and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). She eventually landed at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) just as the HITECH Act was ...
Jul 20, 2023•38 min•Ep. 56
Peter Durlach grew up around computers and was exposed to innovative technology at an early age by his father, who helped run a lab in the electronics department at MIT. After graduating college in the 1980s, Peter caught the entrepreneurial bug way before it was cool, and was employee number four at a company developing the first voice user interface for the Macintosh. Peter’s work put him at the center of bringing voice recognition and artificial intelligence (AI) to healthcare – work he conti...
Jun 22, 2023•48 min•Ep. 55
Many physicians today choose to pivot their careers and apply their clinical knowledge to the innovation and digital transformation side of healthcare. Dr. Rasu Shrestha was an early pioneer of this trend and as he explains, went from “the dark side of radiology to the dork side of informatics” more than two decades ago. In addition to spanning both technical and clinical roles, Dr. Shrestha brings a worldly view of medicine to his work as EVP and Chief Innovation and Commercialization Officer a...
May 11, 2023•50 min•Ep. 54
Understanding healthcare spending growth in America is a critical component of any initiative attempting to improve care quality and affordability. This holds true for every person or organization focused on improving healthcare – from policy makers, to traditional healthcare incumbents, new entrants, and the entrepreneurs driving digital health innovation. There are few people who understand healthcare economics in the U.S. as well as Michael Chernew, PhD, who has dedicated his career to studyi...
Apr 20, 2023•42 min•Ep. 53
When Joel Vengco started his thesis during the third year of a MD-PhD program, it was the beginning of the end of his time in medical school. It changed his career path and kicked-off what he says is a love for data. The field of Big Data didn’t exist yet, but it’s essentially where Joel was focused. And thanks to a professor who was also the chief scientific officer at Eclipsys (which later merged with Allscripts), Joel had access to extensive datasets to drive his work. He initially found a lo...
Mar 16, 2023•39 min•Ep. 52
Advocate Health is the nation’s fifth largest nonprofit health system, operating 67 hospitals and more than 1,000 sites of care to generate revenues topping $27 billion. This new entity was formed by combining two like-minded, not-for-profit health systems in December 2022: Midwest-based Advocate Aurora Health and Southeast-based Atrium Health. While this was among the biggest mergers ever in the nonprofit healthcare ecosystem, it wasn’t the first for Scott Powder. In the early 1990s, Scott bega...
Feb 16, 2023•49 min•Ep. 51
The digital transformation of healthcare has been a long and winding road, but one that is starting to open new possibilities in every aspect of business operations, care delivery and consumer experiences. The critical aspect to all of this is a newfound access to data. Dale Sanders and Ryan Howells have been at the forefront of the movement to unlock data in healthcare and help organization leverage it to actually drive business and clinical performance. As Principal at Leavitt Partners, Ryan w...
Jan 19, 2023•49 min•Ep. 50
