In this episode of Experiencing Healthcare, Matt and Jamie take you on a journey through Matts insights from the Rise Conference, powerful personal stories, and the evolving role of AI and data in healthcare. From the inspiring transformation of UFC fighter-turned-humanitarian Justin Wren to a moving moment at a Texas trade show, this episode reminds us all to remember who we’re fighting for. Whether it’s leveraging telehealth, advocating for better patient care, or innovating through technology, healthcare is about making a lasting impact. Tune in for thought-provoking conversations, a few laughs, and a whole lot of inspiration.
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Welcome to experiencing healthcare with Matt Staub, my name is Jamie, and we're here with Matt Staub, how are you doing? I'm good, Jamie. How are you and let me describe Matt to you. First of all, dashingly handsome. Yeah. So first we've got to address a couple things. As I'm looking as I'm looking around the room, a
real insight into the life of that stop here today. Jamie, Matt.
Matt's, first of all, Matt's desk is only about two feet tall. Must have been a power outage when I first looked at it. I'm like And Matt is quite tall. How tall are you? Six 260, I was giving you one more inch there with shoes on, six three. Okay, six three. He's at least six three. And his desk looks about two feet tall right now because of a power issue we had last week at the office here a couple
weeks ago. I'm usually standing for this podcast. He's usually my standing desk. Yeah, he's
usually at his standing desk, but not today. And then I just look up as I hit record, and Matt has a fake mustache on, so you can imagine what I'm looking at. That's, that's what I appreciate, Matt. Matt has a very good sense of humor. And, yeah,
so, so this company called screaming Sicilian makes pizza, and they make, they make, like a doughless pizza, basically pizza toppings without the crust. Yeah, it's kind of located high, very high protein. It's like, yeah, 27 grams of protein or whatever. That's what I had for lunch. And this little cutout reminded me of of Ted lasso mustache. And I felt like I needed to, yeah, he's
rocking the TED lasso to distract you. Paper mustache. And did a great job there. So, great job. Well, Matt, you were, you were recently in San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio almost watched people falling in a river there. The river walk sounded interesting. I heard about little bit about that, but you were just at a conference called rise, and I heard you learn a lot there.
Yeah, yeah. So I never been to San Antonio, so that was a that was a first for me and a couple of us went to this conference. Several people without our organization, obviously have have attended rise, and have had good things to say about it. And really the focus of of rise as an organization is is really focused around value based healthcare. So this conference was a little bit different, which, which I'll talk about, but attendees there might include providers, like like us might include health payers. So so it might be a payer, not necessarily like a big payer, like United or human, although they do have representation there, but but maybe some local people, and then a lot of tech solution kind of things, people that could help identify gaps and risk adjustment factors and medical records, all kind of there and then. And then one of our friends, Dr Laura Cooley and her colleague Rachel biblow, were there as part of a discussion around patient experience. So that was that was some topics to a lot of talk about automation, generative AI and where that, where that, where that's going with healthcare. But one of the things I wanted to start with today, Jamie was, I think it's important for those of us who have had the opportunity to go to conferences, one of the things that Scott has always asked is, is that, you know, you bring back something, not like something from the trade show, but something you know, that you can share, yeah, pens and paper, pens and paper and Squeezy balls. And right, I did. I did get this cool battery pack, charger, charger that was kind of that was kind of cool, but knowledge, right? And our keynote speaker on the the first day, first full day, was a guy named Justin Wren. And if you are familiar with UFC fighting, or any MMA mixed martial art you probably have heard of Justin Wren, several time world champion, kind of turned humanitarian, if you will, and had a really cool story. And as as an athlete, and you know, somebody who's who's done a little bit of training with, with boxing, I was really interested to hear his story, because we're about the same size. He's pretty big guy. I don't know that I could, I could last a full round with him, but I have a lot of confidence. You know. So I do too, but he was, was an MMA, MMA champion. I wasn't coming out on top. I knew. I knew that for a fact, but his his first question, like he started his speech with, what meaningful impact would you make if you only knew you could and, like, it was a, it was really kind of a wordy question, the way he said it, and even me repeating it, feel, feels just kind of worried, and he said it again, and, you know, I had to sit there and think so I wrote it down and sit there and think about that, like, what meaningful impact would you make if you only knew you could, yeah, and it's kind of a double edged sword question, like, you know, world peace, sure, yeah. Do you know that that's the meaningful impact that you could make? You know? So it was, it was, it was really, it was really, uh, astute question, which kind of led him into, you know, his story. He was, you know, it is. It's a Netflix movie in the making. Gotta be, right, um, you know, this real dorky looking kid, he threw up this, this picture, and talked about his mom putting a cereal bowl on his head and and cutting his hair around the cereal bowl and having a bowl cut. And she did a terrible job. But, you know, talked about being bullied, and then, then had this, this really, this really horrible story about, you know, a bunch of kids picking on him and setting him up. And, you know, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to do justice to the story, and I certainly don't want to repeat it, because, I mean, it was, it was terrible, but, you know, it was kind of a, kind of a breaking point for him, you know, when he talks about stress and talks about anxiety and depression and and having, You know, mental health issues, you know, and a lot of that being a core memory. And so he gets into wrestling in high school, which then gets him into MMA and UFC. And he talked about, you know, one of the things was that he went to this fight, still in training, but not a professional fighter yet. Didn't have a card yet, and the the title match, the the main event match, something happened at the last minute that the person fighting the the the champion didn't show up, couldn't show up, couldn't make it, got sick something. And the champion being, you know, saying, Hey, I feel really bad. All these people paid money, right? I'm willing to fight. There's anybody here, right? So here's Justin. Talk about being three beers in. Says, Okay, I'll do it. Yeah, hold my beer. So we had to go find a mouthpiece and whatever. And you know, this long
story alone is, I mean, because typically, if you're training for a fight, you're training for a fight for a specific person, for a specific person to, you know, have the defense for their offense specifically, and I can't even imagine, just, Hey, let's go. Well,
it wouldn't take you long to imagine because fight lasted 18 seconds. Oh, wow, yeah, he got destroyed. Okay. And, and, you know, talks about what pride he had, not for lasting 18 seconds, but that he was prepared to show up and fight whenever he could. And I was like, You know what? That's a really good point. So he kind of goes on to talk about, you know, his career and and that event was, was kind of a downward spiral for him with some, you know, some substance abuse things, and gets to a real lonely point, and, you know, talks about just, just some real dark places. Let me just, let me just say that and hits you with that question again, what meaningful impact would you make if you only knew you could and he got this calling to go help a friend, and he helped this friend, and this friend had this humanitarian effort in Africa. So Justin kind of retires from a great career, Googling if you want to see a great career. Justin Wren, great career to go help this initiative in in Africa that, you know, is really the poorest of poor third world country, helping these people get water, right, you know? And it's just just a really, very inspiring story. So let me, let me connect it to healthcare. Yeah. So he talks about forming these relationships with these people and and this one kid that you know was five had a relationship with and by the time that you know, he had gone back to United States come back, and by the time he came back, this kid was really sick, sure and wouldn't sure the kid was going to make it come to find out that the the medication that the the kid needed was only $1 Wow, $1 $1 but because of how far he was in that illness, that kid needed a shot, right? Like a vaccine, and that vaccine cost $3 but he didn't get it for $3 $3 yeah, so the shovel to dig his grave cost $6 and the casket to bury him in cost $30 Wow. And really, you know, that was the point he was making about, about proactive and preventative health care, which you can imagine how that that sat with me, just just, you know, very emotional story, but just kind of beaming with with this message of, you gotta remember who you're fighting for, right? Mm,
that's so true. I mean, when you think of your health and, and you think of, I mean, we have, we have a wide variety of patients. Some are fluent, some are not. You know, there's some people that live and, you know, very, you know, meager homes, you know, and, and sometimes I've even heard of stories there was no home, you know, that have been true, that's right. And so, so, you know, there's so many people that your health is fighting for, that's right. And so, so many different stories, and, and, and they all matter, no matter where they're at, and that's on that spectrum, that's right,
you know, he kind of closed his, his, his session with a with, with a proverb, you know, that was, yeah, I didn't write down the source. I'm sorry. I'm a bad student, I guess. But, but the point, the the proverb that he was was quoting was, you know, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. I've heard that one. And, you know, I think that's, I think that's a, really, a very astute point, because there are times that you may want to go fast, right? And you need to go fast, and might have to do that alone, and to be prepared to do that alone, and to show up and be prepared to fight, right? But if you want to go far, you have to go together. And I think there's a balance in those two things. Sure, that was, that was a real takeaway for me, yeah,
I think, I think that's, that is the beauty of of an organization like this, because you do have so many backgrounds, so many people and and look, I mean, think back of day one of SC house calls, yeah, you know, you think, think about, you know, what that looked like. It was it was small. It was small, it was fast. You know, things have gotten a little slower, not much. I wouldn't say they speed it up in different areas, different areas. Yeah, I could never call this organization slow, yeah. But, man, you think of how far it's come over the years, you know, how many
years is it? You know, it's hard to tell. It's hard to tell. So, so technically, we launched SC house calls in 2018 but before that we were LTC Health Solutions, right? Because before that, we were agape, senior got a senior agape, senior primary care. Agape, senior primary palliative care. Yep, you know, so and then obviously, two years ago, made the transition to to your health. But you know, if you talk about the talk about the the early beginnings, you can go back as far as as Scott being a United Methodist minister and and with the, with the mantra and vision of there has to be a better way to deliver health care, yeah, and I think, I think we're still fighting that battle today. Yeah,
100% Yeah. And, and have found better ways, and have found better ways, but as still, as you know, resilient and finding new ways as ever, that's
right, and, and speaking of new ways, one of the other things that that was just kind of, I felt, I don't want to say, out of place there, but providers at this conference were in the minority with the healthcare delivery was, was in the minority there of attendees. So, so talks were really geared more to. Word, kind of, kind of payer, manager, manager talks which, which was interesting to hear from that perspective, but the the last speaker of of the of the conference, was a cool guy who had, who had a sports background, but did like analytics for the NBA, and had done a number of things, and was just giving that perspective as a healthcare person in sports speaking to rise national conference, and he was also from LA and claimed to be a big hip hop fan, even his walkout music was, was a Tupac song, which was, was it hit home, I think, with the crowd. So Jamie, let me take you back for just a second. You'll remember Allie that worked with us in Charleston and and remember, well, I remember one day we were doing that thing where it was like, What's your favorite album? Like, your favorite music album? And, you know, you're getting a lot of, you know, the Beatles White Album, sure. Rolling Stones, Rolling Stones. You know, you get some, maybe in some 1989 Taylor Swift albums, you know, just some real classics. And and getting to ally, who just, just the, the sweetest person, oh yeah, and hers was the Wu Tang Clan in her 36 chambers,
and that doesn't say, and,
like, I just kind of turned around, and it was like, not what you picked your Wu Tang fan. So I tell that story to say that this gentleman also was a Wu Tang fan and referenced the initials cream, C, R, E, A M, which in the Wu Tang world stands for cash rules everything around me. This podcast is just going way all over the place. So he talks about his new mantra of dream, D, R, E, A, M and data rules, everything around me. I couldn't write that down fast enough you can imagine. So, you know, it was, it was just really cool. And he talked about data as a commodity, right? And, you know, I think that we take that a little bit for granted. We use data as a operational tool. We use data as a management tool. We use data in a lot of different ways, but I don't know that we've ever looked at data as a commodity, right? And I think as we look toward the future of your health and what does that look like, you know, our data is is certainly the thing that sets us apart. And I think even you know for myself, I'm looking at, you know, I've got a, I've got a with things scale that syncs to my Apple Health, I've got a boring that syncs to my Apple Health. I log my medication on my Apple Health, please don't steal my identity if you're listening to this. You know, I'm an old Fitbit fan, but have evolved from it. So on top of that, you know, we've talked before, I'm a big Athena health patient portal user, so I'm building my own health record from from different places too. And that's one of the things that he really encouraged, is is that people, patients, us, collect our our own health data and and, you know, have that, have that at the ready. And then they talked a lot about AI and what, how we can use AI, and felt very strongly that AI wouldn't ever replace mass numbers of people, right? That that it would still be a human interface, but data will will help help us go further and faster, if you will. There's, there's
no doubt that AI will replace some jobs, but I think it will open more jobs than it will replace, and I think it just gets us there so much faster. Yeah. And I think, going back to your the analogy that proverb, I think it's one of those things where we can have a lot of people but still go fast. It speeds us up. And I think we can do both at the same time. And I just think that's the beauty of AI, yeah.
I think so, you know, one of the things that positions that they had put in place in an organization he worked at was using a artificial intelligence coach. And that wasn't AI coaching them, it was it was somebody that was kind of being. You know, maybe, like an old school chief data officer, right? Or, you know, medical informatics, or, you know, something along those lines, but, but a person that's really looking at, how are we using AI, how are we leveraging that, and then looking at Integrity, too, of ensuring that we were using, you know, they were using it for good, yeah, ethics, AI, ethics, certainly, and, and, you know, all of that was just, I guess again, kind of from a from a different lens, was helpful for me to hear, okay, this is what payers are thinking as the predominant audience. How do we leverage that from from a healthcare delivery side? So this was last week and and while this was going on, there was a very intense undertone at a healthcare conference, because there was, there was a deadline for the federal government that right if something wasn't done, then there would be a government shutdown. And part of the result of that government shutdown would have been the the telehealth offerings that were established back in when we were in COVID and march the 17th, 16th, 2020, would be rolled back at the end of this month. So as I was having conversations with people at the conference about that, I didn't talk to one person that was like, You know what? This telehealth thing really isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Like everyone there was unified in the commitment of, you know, telehealth isn't necessarily the future of healthcare by any means, but definitely has a place in healthcare. Because, you know, if we go back to to 2008 with the Affordable Care Act, access was, was one of the things that that was touted as part of that, and telehealth has, has certainly allowed us to do that, yeah,
and it's, let's pause for a second, because I want to remember as well go back to that COVID year. SC house calls literally stood up a talk about fast. Stood up an entire telehealth, you know, center, center department, yeah. I was like, What's the word for there? Yeah, telehealth center, pretty much overnight,
yeah, 48 hours we had done within 48 hours we had, had done our first several telehealth visits, yeah? And just an incredible time for innovation. You know, we was talking about silver linings from from a dark spot, but incredible time for innovation, seeing nurses, nurse practitioners, use their skills differently, yeah, and having to adapt and
fighting through that too. Because I think a lot of them that were probably skeptical was like, How can I really do what I do over the phone or over, you know, a video chat, you know? How can I do that? And they figured it out, you know.
And while that might have been the quest, the internal question Jamie, that wasn't what, what they were saying, they were saying there are people out there that need help, yes, and that's what I signed up for. Yeah. And quite inspiring. So, so, but yeah, certainly, during this past week, had some, some of our colleagues, reach out and say, Hey, what's going to happen if this telehealth gets rolled back? You know, I do a lot of telehealth. I'm a tele provider. I love this organization, like, like, what's going to happen? You know, and and try to provide some levity with that of saying, you know, well, my crystal balls in the shop, kind of famous for saying, might have hit at the wrong time. But, you know, I think there wasn't, there wasn't a wavering of telehealth commitment from from, from your health. You know, I think that we were committed to, and still are committed to taking care of patients, wherever they are, yeah, with whatever they need. You know, who, whoever they are, and and telehealth is a tool in our toolbox, right? Not only you know just telehealth, but but certainly having community health workers and physical therapy assistants and CODAs and you know all these, all these rock star people that show up into patients houses to help them out and then help facilitate a telehealth visit with a pharmacist, with a physical therapist, with a doctor, with a nurse practitioner, with PA, you know, it's ingrained in us, and there's, there's no way that we could roll it back as an organization. And I think I spoke with a lobbyist, you know, and his point, again, was the. The longer that telehealth goes on, the harder it's going to be for it to be rolled back. And, you know, I just don't think it'll, it'll ever happen.
I don't think it could happen. I mean, there it would, it would, honestly, it would hurt a lot of Americans like and I don't want to be doom and gloom, but it would, it would cause deaths, you know, because there's people that we get to that need that help, that wouldn't have it, wouldn't have access to health care anymore. And that's, that's, unfortunately, will be the causation.
Now, my crystal ball does tell me that it'll change. Yeah, sure, what hasn't always changes. What hasn't, what hasn't changed in health care, it's inevitable. But, you know, my takeaway again, from from the rise conference was, you know, there are a lot of people that are committed to to a better way and certain, certainly, we're one of them. And you know, I'm just, I'm grateful for the opportunity to just meet some new people and hear their stories and know that we're not out there fighting a fight alone of better health care. Yeah? So, right, definitely inspiring.
Yeah, that's great. I think anytime, yeah, I think conferences are great. They're they're amazing and and it's also, it's, it's, you know, you go to get, but man, you also go to give. Because you meet these other people, you get to inspire, even if you're not a keynote speaker, you get to meet a lot of people, and get to share what you're doing, share, you know, what your organization is all about and inspire others. It's not, it's about what you can give as well at those things. And you never know. I mean, how many times have you met somebody to conference? You're like, Man, if I wouldn't have met that person?
So this is my last story. So we were at the trade show, and we're, you know, trade shows have really evolved since, since I've been, I've been going to conferences. And sometimes, you know, the people that are working on those booths, I mean, it's tough, you know, standing on your feet a lot of times, on concrete, you know, and and you're trying to make a sale or whatever. And sometimes they can be a little a little pushy, like, sure, you know, they don't want you just coming by, grabbing their goodies and going, if you're going to do that, you know, you got to talk to everyone. But outside of all of that, I try to go, because they're spending their time. You never know what you can learn or who you can meet. So so we stopped at this one booth and and they were talking about, you know, helping with medical records. And it was probably, probably four or five people from this organization at this booth, and they were all, you know, they had all gone into their pitch of what they do. And you know, we were saying, you know, we had said, I said, we're in healthcare delivery, and this one lady behind all of them looks through the crowd of her coworkers and sees our name tags that say your health, and pushes her way in front of all of her colleagues to the front and says, Do you work for your Health? And you know, you kind of, like, when somebody's that excited, like, yeah, yes. And she was like, That used to be SC house calls. And we were like, yes. She said, You guys changed my life. Wow, I like a froze like this. Just enormous chill just comes over my body. And she tells a story about her mom being in Beaufort Memorial Hospital and not knowing what to do, and being engaging our palliative team at Beaufort Memorial and then going home with your health and meeting Christine Pappalardo and having her take care of her. She lived out on Fripp Island, and just couldn't say enough good things to us. And as she was saying this, like, I'm just, you know, it's, it's like, you're in Texas, right? I'm in Texas at a trade show. Like, just so weird. And so I just look at her, and I didn't know what to say. I said, Are you a hugger? And she said, yeah. I said, I'm coming around. I'm giving you a hug like that was, that was a lot just, yeah, just such a cool, such a cool moment to be able to be the representative that that gets to hear this lady story, and she says she tells all our friends about it, and everything, you know, was just, was so great for for her and her mom. That's amazing. Was, was just such a cool story. Remember who you're fighting for? Exactly.
Remember who you're fighting for, absolutely 100% and that's it, right there. I think that story kind of puts a bow tie on this. Yeah, and, man, that's, that's powerful moment. And, you know this, it really is making a difference. In people's lives, and we can sleep easy knowing that and Matt, thanks so much. Thank you, Jamie, appreciate it, and we'll talk to you next time.