On episode 5 of season 3, the first of this two-part episode, I spoke with Dr. Stephen Klasko about his unlikely journey from OBGYN to the president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health from 2013-2021. Under his leadership, Jefferson expanded from 3 hospitals to 18, and saw its revenue grow from $1.8 to $9 billion. Dr. Klasko was #2 on Modern Healthcare’s “100 Most Influential Individuals”. He is also the co-author of 2020’s UnHealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance with Silicon Valley investor Hemant Taneja, and is currently an executive in residence at General Catalyst.

Dr. Klasko and I began the episode discussing the creation of the Jefferson Italy Center in Rome and partnership with Gemelli Hospital. Jefferson's presence in Italy highlighted one of the ironies of U.S. Healthcare - while we claim to be on the cutting edge of innovation when it comes to healthcare, we create serious barriers to entry. The CEO of Marriott Hotels in Italy can be a CEO in the U.S., but if you are the head of cardiovascular surgery at Shanghai university and you come to the U.S., we make you retake your residency. We also shun the use of alternative medicine, which is used to treat 2/3 of the world’s population, because it doesn’t fall into the familiar categories of surgery or drugs (Jefferson created the Marcus center for Integrative Health which is taking the best of care that happens around the world that is not just drugs and surgery).

Jefferson's uniquely international presence and perspective served the health system well during COVID. Their Italian hospital served as the canary in the coal mine, and allowed Jefferson to have a clear picture of the damage that COVID would ultimately cause long before most of the U.S,. Jefferson had also invested $50 million into Telehealth in 2014 and maintained the pandemic preparedness team it had stood up when Ebola (almost) hit.

We touched on the state-level licensure requirements and how much the emergency protocols reduced tensions around credentialing. The idea that someone might need a different debit card to pull money out in every state is ridiculous, and yet in healthcare, it is the status quo in credentialing because it often aligns with the vested interests of the incumbents.

Dr. Klasko blames the system in its entirety for the fact that while predominantly underserved people died because they didn't get care during the pandemic, insurers quadrupled their net operating income because people they thought would get care died.

You can find the full episode here:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3D26Ayq
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3eZyovm

Dr. Klasko can be found on Twitter and Linkedin.

Please make sure to check out Society for HealthCare Innovation (SHCI) website (http://www.SHCI.org) for more information about our work.