New year, new beginnings. We covered a lot of ground last year and we're going to keep up the pressure and keep fighting the good fight. Wendy and Matt discuss what and who they appreciated about last year's episodes, and what they're looking forward to in 2026.
Eight months ago, we followed along as Prospect Medical shuttered Crozer Health. In this episode, as promised, several of the doctors, nurses, medical assistants, elected officials and public servants we spoke to initially tell us how they have fared since. A few themes emerged: the unexpected domino effects when a hospital closes, the importance of community, trust, and transparency, the mismatch between healthcare executives in pursuit of profit and medical professionals in pursuit of public service (and the moral injury that results), and their relentless commitment to and hope for the community they served.
We promised to follow up on The Fall of Crozer Health and we'll drop our full episode on Monday. For anyone thinking of selling to private equity, you won't want to miss this.
Was dialysis the canary in medicine's coal mine of corporatization, as neoliberalism took hold in the US? Tom Mueller, journalist and author of "How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death, and Dollars in American Medicine", joins us to talk about how dialysis became a "microcosm of American medicine" and what we can do to fix it.
We make a lot of changes that don't make much difference. Why? In this episode, Wendy and Matt borrow the perspective of rancher and regenerative agriculture proponent, Don Campbell, who said, "If you want to make small changes, change the way you do things. If you want to make major changes, change the way you see things". We apply that big picture thinking to solutions-finding in healthcare.
In 2023, 82% of nurses had experienced at least one workplace violence incident, and nearly half were experiencing even more violence. And it's not just nurses. Surgeons, ER docs, primary care physicians and others know violence in healthcare is on the rise. Erin Pastore and Marie Lopresti, two ED nurses in Philadelphia, share their personal experiences with violence in their workplace, and how to restore the balance we all - patients and practitioners, alike - need. Listener discretion advised.
As the former head of the State Health Benefits Program within New Jersey's Department of the Treasury - one of the largest public health plans in the country - Chris Deacon unmasked the machinery of healthcare and didn't like what she saw. Now a nationally recognized voice for health plan transparency and employer empowerment, Chris joins us to talk about her new book "The Great American Healthcare Heist: Why We're Paying More and Getting Less".
You read that correctly. Sometimes we have to look outside of medicine to be reminded why we love it so much. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning journalist Sam Quinones joins us to talk about "The Perfect Tuba", his new book about people creating something bigger than themselves, hard work, practice, dedication, and community. Sound familiar?
Dr. Carlos Cardenas knows rock n' roll (and gastroenterology). A practicing physician in the Rio Grande Valley, Dr. Cardenas has been playing music for decades as a balm for his heart and soul, and as it turns out, for his patients. In the words of Dr. Cardenas, when it comes to healing people, "music is at the core of it all".
Are we living in The Gilded Age of medicine? So many of the challenges we face in healthcare today are rooted in the motivations of the people holding the purse strings, and unfortunately for us (and our patients) those motivations aren't always aligned with the Hippocratic Oath. Wendy and Matt dig into the history of corporate greed in this country, and how that history may be repeating itself.
Few medical dramas have resonated as deeply with physicians as HBO's The Pitt. Emergency physician Dr. Jacob Lentz, a medical consultant on the series, takes us behind the scenes of the critically acclaimed show and explains how - and why - The Pitt gets ER medicine so right. Credit: Audio clips from The Pitt courtesy of HBO Max.
Healthcare is awash in data. A typical hospital generates 50 petabytes - a million gigabytes - of it each year. But what are we measuring, exactly? Where does that data go? Why is most of it wasted? And does what we're measuring really need to be measured? Wendy and Matt talk about modern medicine's growing obsession with big data, how data drives social behavior, and the questions we all must ask before consenting to more data gathering - from our patients or ourselves.
For over twenty years, Dr. Jeff Goldstein was part of a successful, thriving cardiology practice in central Illinois. And then he wasn't. Dr. Goldstein and his wife, Dr. Kemia Sarraf, join us to share their personal story of how a change in the structure of his practice led to him feeling blocked at every turn, overworked, and underappreciated, and what the two of them did to change it.
We talk to a lot of people. We hear a lot of stories. But for every person who shares their story publicly, there are ten more who hold off because they're afraid of blowback. And we get it. Speaking up is risky. We often think about the costs of speaking up, but what has our silence cost? In this episode, Wendy and Matt talk about the risks of not acting, and what their experience has taught them about how to speak up - and be heard.
Leaders can be infuriating or they can learn to be inspiring. Adam Galinsky, a social psychologist and the Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School, joins us to talk about how our vision, modeling and mentorship can inspire those around us.
What do healthcare and journalism have in common? (Hint: it has something to do with corporate interference and public trust.) Recorded in front of a live audience in one of the oldest surviving press clubs in the country, Matt and Wendy (along with members of the audience) share stories about the breakdown in medicine and journalism, and how we're working to recapture our profession."
Two years ago, Dr. Traci Hurley lost her husband, Dr. Dan Hurley, to cancer. Dan spent the last few years of his life battling his disease - and his insurance company. Before he died, he set himself a goal to, in his own words, help "with the problem of insurance company physicians without expertise denying or delaying care as recommended by the patient's chosen physician." Dr. Traci Hurley joins us to share their story.
Those in healthcare - or elsewhere - facing private equity's relentless encroachment will want to listen up. Journalist Megan Greenwell, author of Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream, joins us to share her reporting on four regular Americans - working in four different fields - who fought against private equity.
The Fall of Crozer Health is a story steeped in grief, greed, and the needs for dignity and for protection. In the final installment of our special series, we unpack the rollercoaster of emotions caused by the health systems' failures, and speak to the lawmakers in Delaware County trying to build the legislative foundation needed to keep this from happening again.
Crozer was not an island, and what happened to them affects all the nearby health systems. In the fourth installment of this special series, we break down how one community's loss becomes a neighboring community's nightmare, lay out the 'private equity playbook', and explore how the financialization of medicine is everywhere - in every state - and how it affects us all.