161. Transforming Healthcare: Aaron McKethan's Journey from Policy to Entrepreneurship
Dive into Aaron McKethan's journey from policy nerd to healthcare innovator at Aledade Plus, improving patient care and reducing costs.

Dive into Aaron McKethan's journey from policy nerd to healthcare innovator at Aledade Plus, improving patient care and reducing costs.
Explore the impact and solutions of the Change healthcare cyber crisis with expert analysis and firsthand accounts.
Dive into the world of community health centers and value-based care with Tracy Causey, CEO of Capital Area Health Network in Virginia and Kevin Van Dyke, executive director of Aledade in Virginia. Hear their experience navigating multiple value-based contracts and integrating behavioral health services with primary care. Learn how more accessible patient health data and dynamic support has helped improve preventive care.
Sean and Josh are joined by Rachel Lively, Vice President of Community Health Center Operations at Valley Health, to discuss her experience providing substance use treatments to patients in West Virginia. Rachel shares challenges and successes involving decreasing stigma around substance use disorders, the evolution of treatment methods, and the critical role that CHCs can play in providing individualized care to patients on the path to recovery.
Explore the transformative power of ACOs with Nick Phillis from Florida, revealing positive impacts on patient care and healthcare delivery.
Explore tangible initiatives for health equity with Tamara Thomas, VP of Equity and Inclusion at Aledade
Josh and Brian are joined by Wes Edwards, Chief Financial Officer of Med First Primary & Urgent Care in North Carolina. Wes discusses his clinic’s success with value-based care, the financial sustainability of value-based care models, and the crucial link between exceptional patient care and financial outcomes. Plus, a special farewell as Brian says goodbye to the ACO Show.
In this episode we sit down with Leigh Efird, Director of Pharmacy at Aledade, to dive into the world of value-based care from the pharmacy perspective. She shares the ways she interacts with patients to help them better understand their health and how managing medications can impact that.
Josh and Brian are joined by Dr. Christine Meyer and Casey Korba to discuss Hill Day and how to advocate for value-based care to legislators.
Josh and Brian are joined by Aledade’s Chief Financial Officer, John Doyle. They discuss the economic incentives associated with delivering primary care on the front lines and why health care professionals need to be able to talk openly about the financial forces in the system.
Josh and Brian are joined by Blake Madden, writer, editor and founder of the newsletter Hospitalogy, focused on analyzing health care’s financing, policy changes and more. They discussed some of the positive shifts he sees in the health care system and how he’s making sense of those changes for his subscribers.
Season 5 of The ACO Show kicks off with Josh and Brian joined by Travis Broome, Aledade’s Senior Vice President for Policy and Economics to discuss the 2022 Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) results. As the largest and most successful value-based care program in American history, the results of this program tell us a lot about the progress of value-based care, and what that means for patients and primary care professionals around the country.
Josh and Brian are joined by Lightspeed Venture Partners investor, Galym Imanbayev, MD, to discuss Aledade’s Series F funding round. They delve into what led to this latest round of funding, the transparency throughout the process and how these funds are going to ensure that primary care practices and health centers are receiving the resources they need to thrive in value-based care.
Josh and Brian are joined by Kevin O’Leary and Ryan Russell, co-founders of Health Tech Nerds, a trusted resource in health care helping their members learn, network, build, and grow to maximize our collective impact on the health care system. They drill down on the various value-based care models, how they work, and what they mean for patients, doctors and clinicians.
Josh and Brian are joined by Al Kushner, author of “Virtual Medicare: 10 Costly Mistakes You Can't Afford to Make.” They delve into the active role patients play in enrolling in Medicare, and the high - and often unknown - costs of delay.
In this episode, Josh and Brian hand over the mic to Aledade’s Chief Policy Officer, Sean Cavanaugh, a former Director of Medicare and senior leader at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) as he talks with the two current leaders of his former offices. Sean is joined by Meena Seshamani, M.D., Ph.D., Deputy Administrator and Director for the Center for Medicare, and Elizabeth Fowler, Ph.D., J.D., Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovatio...
Josh and Brian are joined by Sachin Gangupantula FACHE, MBA, MS, Director of Operations at Valley Diabetes & Obesity, an Aledade member practice in Modesto, California. They discussed the benefits of value-based care and joining an ACO despite challenges in the health care marketplace, including new tools and data so they can provide even better care for their patients.
Josh and Brian are joined by Allison Sesso, the President and CEO of RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit established to reduce medical debt for low-income individuals across the country. They discussed the dark truths behind why medical debt leads so many people to forgo medical care, how RIP Medical Debt uses an innovative approach to fight these trends and how Aledade’s recent donation helped abolish nearly $95 million in medical debt for more than 100,000 patients.
Josh and Brian are joined by Lee Fleisher, MD, Chief Medical Officer at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality. They discuss a recent publication, “Aligning Quality Measures at CMS” in the New England Journal of Medicine which Dr. Fleisher co-authored, and the art and science behind the selection of health care quality measures.
Josh and Brian are joined by Doug Jacobs, MD, MPH, Chief Transformation Officer in the Center for Medicare at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and Michelle Schreiber, Deputy Director for the Centers for Clinical Standards and Quality at CMS, and Director of the Quality Measurement & Value-Based Incentives Group at CMS. In the first part of this quality-focused series, they discuss the work they are doing to align quality measures across CMS and improve the system to be...
Josh and Brian are joined by Phuong Phillips, Chief Legal Officer at Aledade, where they discuss her personal journey, what drew her to Aledade and how corporate legal teams and leadership interact.
For this episode, Josh and Brian hand the helm to Aledade CEO and Co-Founder, Farzad Mostashari, MD, and Bryan Roberts, partner at Venrock and lead of Venrock’s investment in Aledade. They give a behind-the-scenes look into the conversations that go on between CEOs, board members and investors regarding the challenges of running companies and how to create long-term solutions. Learn more about Bryan's "Roberts' Rules of Life (& Venture Capital)" here: bit.ly/3KXxT2G...
Josh and Brian talk with Dr. Mitch Edmondson, the lead physician for the Aledade FIRST program, and Dr. Caleena Longworth, a 2nd-year resident at St. Mark’s Hospital in Salt Lake City who’s participating in Aledade FIRST about this new program introducing medical residents to the benefits of physician-led value-based care.
Josh and Brian are joined by Aledade’s Chief Financial Officer, John Doyle. John provides a brief recap on the recent J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, how Aledade’s alignment as a company drew him in, and the many factors companies take into consideration before going public.
Josh and Brian are joined by Aledade’s CEO and co-founder, Dr. Farzad Mostashari, and Amy Simmerman, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, to discuss the idea of a public benefit corporation - what it is and what it means, why Aledade has decided to become one, and what this means for the health care industry as a whole.
Value-based care is often more focused on adults, especially the elderly who have the most burden of illness and, on average, the highest health care costs. Josh is joined by Dr. Karin McLelland, a pediatrician in North Carolina, and Carissa Praytor, Manager of Medicaid Performance at Aledade, to discuss how Aledade’s pediatric ACO in North Carolina was able to enable more primary care and reduce costs for this often-overlooked population of our nation’s youngest patients.
Josh and Brian are joined by Dr. Sarah Mullins, co-owner of Stoney Batter Family Medicine in Wilmington, Delaware, and Senior Regional Medical Director at Aledade, to discuss the role of care management programs in value-based care, how to build and sustain them, and the value they provide to patients and practices.
Josh and Brian are joined by Mike Stanzione, Aledade’s Director of Medicare Advantage Network Performance, to discuss the state of Medicare Advantage (MA), its rapid growth, regulatory evolution, and how the Aledade model of care applies to MA.
Josh and Brian are joined by Dr. Asaf Bitton, executive director of Ariadne Labs, and Associate Professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. They discuss the need to move to value-based care and change the payment structure. They also reflect on the historical underfunding and undervaluing of primary care.
Josh and Brian are joined by Dan Bowles, Aledade’s Chief Growth Officer, to discuss the state of the value-based care landscape and how to distinguish the various models fellow travelers are implementing in the space.