Healthchangers

For nearly a decade, the federal government has been trying to find ways to make medical records more accessible for Medicare and Medicaid clients. The initiative is known as Blue Button. Earlier this year, that initiative introduced a new version of Blue Button—Blue Button 2.0. It's now easier for Medicare patients to access their health care data and also to share it. To get a better idea of what this transparency could mean for health care consumers, we spoke with Allison Oelschlaeger, Chief Data Officer at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services with the federal government, and Meg Dryer, the Vice President of Consumer Experience at Cambia.

When Peggy Maguire’s father was diagnosed with lung cancer at 48 years old, it came as a complete shock to her family. They did everything they could to fight the disease, treating him with aggressive radiation and chemotherapy. However, they felt as if “his final days were very medical in nature” and felt residual guilt afterwards, wondering if there was something they could have done differently. Peggy's experience has fueled her passion to improve awareness of what palliative care is and how it can change the way people living with serious illness - and their family caregivers - experience health care. In this interview with StoryCorps, Peggy shares her story with Dr. Tony Back from the University of Washington.

If you or someone you know is living with a chronic illness, it can feel like you never get a break. You have to track medications and monitor your symptoms, constantly worrying what will happen if you’re alone when a health crisis hits. There is, however, a platform that is working to change all this. Livongo Health is a company with a solution designed to empower people with chronic conditions, so they can live healthier and better lives. In this episode of HealthChangers, we have a conversation with Livongo Health's CEO Glen Tullman and ask him what the inspiration was behind Livongo, a company committed to helping people with chronic conditions and also an investment company of Echo Health Ventures.

October 27th is National Prescription Drug Take Back  .  Turning in old medications ensures they’re disposed of properly, but take back events can also prevent drug addiction and overdoses. The 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found a majority of abused prescription drugs came from family and friends’ medicine cabinets.  In this episode of HealthChangers, we’re taking a closer look at opioid abuse and the family and community work it takes to deal with this national crisis. Dr. Jim Polo, Behavioral Health Medical Director at Cambia moderated with a discussion at the Cambia Grove, a health care innovation in Seattle, and spoke with folks who’ve experienced opioid addiction, and recovery, first hand. Two regional experts, who are working directly with populations impacted by the opioid crisis, participated in the Conversation.

In this HealthChangers Podcast, Brodie shares how the health care industry continues to adapt, working to strengthen the quality of services and patient experience, through telehealth. His personal story of delivering his baby helped personify for him the work Cambia is doing to transform the health care consumer experience. 

Millennials are the largest generation in the United States, and their influence continues to grow and be felt across industries. Health care is no exception. Traditional consumer health care experiences do not align with the mindsets, influences and habits of millennials —and health care brands must either adapt or be left behind. In this episode, we meet with three millennials who are in different places in their professional lives, ranging from a college student an intern and a young professional, Rachel Day who is the host for today’s show. They join Heather Burton, Director of Marketing for HealthSparq, who is working to empower people to make smarter health care choices based on their individual benefits. They will share their experience with health care and are representative of some of the most game-changing ways millennials interact with the health care system.

In this episode of HealthChangers, we bring you a panel discussion that followed the screening of the Netflix documentary 'End Game' with Dr. Pantilat and Dr. Ungerleider, led by Cambia Health Foundation president and board chair, Peggy Maguire and Mark Ganz, Cambia President and CEO.

This episode features a conversation between Rob Coppedge, Chief Executive Officer of Echo Health Ventures and Ben Albert, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Upfront Healthcare Services. Echo Health Ventures is Cambia’s strategic investing arm to accelerate health care startups’ growth and bring their innovations to scale nationally. Upfront Healthcare Services is an Echo Health Ventures portfolio company and enables patients to prepare for their appointments, while streamlining administrative operations for providers.

In episode of HealthChangers, we share a fireside chat between Bruce Greenstein, former Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Lee Huntsman, professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, recorded at the Cambia Grove. Together they explore the ripple effect of government innovations on the quality and cost of health care throughout the industry and what this means for our future.

On this episode of StoryCorps, David and Steve share their story as friends and co-leaders of PRIDE and their work to have Cambia participate in Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index.

In this episode of HealthChangers we speak with Burt and Bryce who will share their passion behind the cultural, person-focused shift in health care and how they’re leveraging the inspiring stories of people who were left with no options and had to create their own solutions to transform their health care experiences and those of others.

Joining us in this episode of HealthChangers is Ellen Goodman, the co-founder of The Conversation Project, which is dedicated to helping people talk about their wishes for end-of-life care.  With National Healthcare Decisions Day during April 16-22, 2018, it’s important for families to feel empowered around advance care planning. You don’t have to be seriously ill to begin the conversation with the people who care about you; talking about your goals and wishes takes the guesswork and guilt away from anyone acting on your behalf.

A year ago, we launched the HealthChangers podcast, presented by Cambia Health Solutions. Our goal was to spotlight the challenges facing health care today and the innovations and innovators that are changing the health care landscape. To mark our one-year anniversary, we’ve highlighted our favorite moments from our five most popular podcasts.

In this HealthChangers podcast, we talk with Robin Heffernan, the Co-Founder and CEO of Circulation, a digital platform that offers a straightforward and accessible solution to coordinate convenient and reliable nonemergency transportation for all areas of health care. Join us as we learn how future trends in health care technology can start by solving the most basic logistical health problems from those needing to go to a routine health care appointment to those going through dialysis or chemotherapy, the simplest solutions can have a positive disruptive effect on the health system.

Entrepreneurs hoping to succeed in the health care have to consider the needs of many stakeholders. These stakeholders--sometimes called the “five points” of healthcare--are patients, payers, providers, purchasers and policy makers. Joining us in this episode of HealthChangers are Jessica Hauflaire, Business Operations Manager at Cambia Grove, and Kate Isler, a 5 Points Conference moderator and CEO of Daysaver, an automated scheduling service for business and health care providers.

In this HealthChangers podcast episode, we’ll be speaking with two seasoned hackathon organizers, Dan Anolik and Northon Rodrigues, two engineers who are eager to make hackathons go mainstream as a way to improve the experience of health care for consumers. When you think of a hackathon, you might think of tech developers, engineers, and other IT professionals working on their computers solving coding problems. Hackathons at their simplest are problem-solving sessions with a lot of people, from different professional backgrounds, working across teams to share problems and brainstorm solutions.

In the health care investment space, more money does not always mean more success. While there’s no shortage of investors and startups looking to disrupt the health care sector, successfully navigating the different needs of payers, providers and patients can prove daunting. That’s where strategic corporate investors come in. They work with corporate entities that invest and build up startups with the goal of improving the health care system. These investors connect corporations with fresh, new solutions from entrepreneurs, while providing startups strategic counsel in navigating red tape and understanding how different solutions will play out in the marketplace. In this episode of HealthChangers, we talk to two strategic corporate investors: Matt Hermann, Senior Managing Director at Ascension Ventures, which invests on behalf of a system of hospitals and health systems Matt Karls, a partner with Echo Health Ventures, a strategic investing firm focused on next-generation companies that are transforming health

In Uganda, nearly a half million people from surrounding war-torn countries have sought safety in refugee settlements. The U.S. organization, Medical Teams International, operates health clinics in Uganda to help the refugees and locals with their medical needs. But the slow, paper-based system impacts the time it takes to treat patients as well as identify outbreaks of diseases like malaria. Also, it can take up to a month to manually collect and send data from health clinics in Uganda to the United Nations. Two years ago, Medical Teams decided to find a solution to this problem. They partnered with skilled volunteers, people with specific expertise who are willing to share what they know, to build a technology solution to automate the process and help transform the way refugees in Uganda receive health care. In this episode, we spoke with two of the volunteers chosen for the project, Heidi Brown and Jason Dempsey, who both work in Cambia's IT department.

Too often, health care focuses on “what's the matter” instead of “what matters” when a person is diagnosed with or experiencing serious illness. Palliative care plays an important role in helping people and their families navigate a complex health care system in a way that respects their cultural belief systems. To try and answer some of these questions, the Cambia Health Foundation created the Sojourns Scholar Leadership Program. It's an initiative designed to identify, cultivate and advance the next generation of palliative care leaders. On this episode of HealthChangers, we talk to two palliative care physicians, Dr. Dulce Cruz and Dr. Justin Sanders, both recipients of the Sojourns Scholar grant. Their research and work focuses specifically on navigating cultural beliefs with education and communication.

There's little debate that health care in this country needs improvement. Costs are high, paperwork is cumbersome and confusing, and patients can get lost in the shuffle. Some believe technology will drive improvements in health care. But the guest on today's podcast disagrees. Aneesh Chopra was the first ever U.S. Chief Technology Officer serving under President Obama. He says technology's role isn't to drive change, but to enable doctors, hospitals and even patients to create change. He dropped in for a conversation before a crowd of health care innovators at the Cambia Grove in Seattle. The interviewer for the event was Lee Huntsman, President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Bio-Engineering at the University of Washington.