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This episode features Sean Kelley, Founder & Managing Partner at Texas Medical Management, a Free Market Medicine solution for surgical procedures that offers competitive, transparent prices on surgical procedures across a broad range of specialties. Here he discusses being diagnosed with cancer as a child, his career journey, and the importance of pricing transparency. He also does a deep dive into how they can be competitive while still being profitable and having the best providers.

Sean Kelley is the Founder & Managing Partner at Texas Medical Management. His passion is revolutionizing healthcare. Currently, he is developing new business models and the enabling technologies needed to advance the transition from fee-for-service to value-based healthcare. He is focused on building the foundational elements for future marketplace for healthcare delivery products. TexasFreeMarketSurgery.com (TFMS) opened in July 2016 and offers bundled prices for outpatient procedures. TFMS is inspired by Dr. Keith Smith and his partners at Surgery Center of Oklahoma who have blazed a trail for us and others to follow. They are building an innovative new delivery system and signing up high-quality surgeons as fast as they can. They are working with innovative self-funded employers and their brokers to improve surgical outcomes and lower costs 50-60% from their PPO network pricing.

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In this episode Ron chats with Dr. Frank Dumont, Commercial Medical Director at Virta Health. Virta Health helps people reverse type 2 diabetes. Their approach helps people lower blood sugar and lose weight, even while eliminating the need for medications, including insulin. Here, Frank discusses what makes the Virta approach different, the almost unbelievable results they are seeing in their patients, and more. Frank even shares that he spent 20 years as a PCP writing more medicines. Now he spends every day deprescribing medicines.

Dr. Frank Dumont currently serves as a clinician and Commercial Medical Director at Virta Health. Prior to joining Virta, he worked in a hospital-owned clinic for nearly 20 years, where he practiced outpatient and inpatient medicine and served as medical director of the wellness service line for the medical center. Dr. Dumont has been devoted to improving healthcare delivery for over two decades, participating in organized medicine as a young physician representative to the AMA and serving on the Colorado Medical Society Board of Directors. He received his MD from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and today is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Dumont lives in Estes Park, Colorado at the eastern entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.

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In this episode Ron chats with Stacey Richter, Host of the Relentless Health Value Podcast. Here she discusses her biggest takeaways from the excellent guests she has had on her podcasts over the years. She does a deep dive into the best innovation and ideas happening in healthcare today. She touches on insurance, primary care, digital health, the future of healthcare, and more.

Each week on the award-winning Relentless Health Value Podcast, Stacey uses her voice and thought leadership to provide insights for healthcare industry decision makers trying to do the right thing. Each show features expert guests who break down the industry’s twists and tricks to help improve outcomes and lower costs. Relentless Health Value is a top 100 podcast on iTunes in the medicine category and reaches tens of thousands of engaged listeners from across the care continuum.

When not hosting the podcast, Stacey is co-president of Aventria Health Group, a consultancy and specialized marketing agency. Aventria does one thing: helps pharmacy, pharma, digital health, health system and professional society clients improve patient outcomes by creating and leveraging collaborations with other health care organizations.

In 2019, Stacey co-founded QC-Health, a cause-driven benefit corporation seeking to leverage the experience of its founders in pursuit of healthcare’s quadruple aim. Currently, QC-Health offers tools that make it easier for teams to deliver guideline-driven care or connect patients to relevant help and resources. QC-Health also has resources to help provider organizations direct-contract with employers, and successfully package and commercialize proven approaches to better patient care and outcomes.

Stacey studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Stockholm. For more than 20 years, Stacey has innovated healthcare solutions that are win-wins for stakeholders, and, most of all, the patient.

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In this episode, Rom chats with Steve Tierney, Senior Medical Director of Quality Improvement at Southcentral Foundation’s Nuka System of Care. Here they discuss the unique and award-winning approach that Nuka takes when it comes to addressing the primary care of Alaskan Natives. Steve does a deep dive into the unique challenges faced by providing care for a population in such a spread-out region. He also does a deep dive into the ways the system has innovated and transformed rural healthcare, how they dealt with COVID-19, his pride in Nuka, and more.

Steve Tierney is Senior Medical Director of Quality Improvement for Southcentral Foundation’s Malcolm Baldrige Award-winning Nuka System of Care.  Steve joined SCF in 1995 as a primary care physician. He became one of the key physicians who helped lead the transformation to a relationship-based customer-owned health care system. He also played a key role in developing the robust data mart that helps SCF’s integrated care teams interpret complex data for internal comparisons and external comparisons against HEDIS benchmarks, where the organization scored in the 90th percentile for many of its services.  Steve is trained as a family physician and an acupuncturist. He received his medical degree from the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland. He still maintains an active family medicine practice in SCF’s Anchorage Native Primary Care Center. Steve presents nationally and internationally on transforming primary care, data integration, clinical quality program design, and complementary medicine integration efforts.

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Dr. Bill Wulf is the first physician Chief Executive Officer of COPC, assuming this position in 2013.  Prior to this role, he served as the Corporate Medical Director of COPC for seven years. Bringing over 30 years of leadership in Primary Care delivery he was a leader among the founding physicians that helped establish COPC, Inc. in 1996. COPC, as an independent physician owned organization, has grown to over 430 physicians in 80 locations in central Ohio.

Dr. Wulf is a member of the COPC board of directors and serves on the board of agilon health. He is also on the board of directors and is the chair-elect of America’s Physician Group (APG).

As a board certified internist, he received his Doctor of Medicine from the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo. Dr. Wulf previously operated a private practice in Columbus.

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This episode features Lester J. Morales, Founder & CEO of Next Impact. Here, Lester discusses his career journey and what inspired him to start Next Impact. He also discusses his frustration with the status quo, the kind of savings his clients are seeing, and more.

Lester J. Morales is a true consultant in the human capital and employee benefits arena and currently serves as CEO of Next Impact, LLC. Focused on innovation and changing the “status quo,” Next Impact is a full-service employee benefits and human resource marketing and consulting company, committed to helping other companies grow and add value to their clients.  Before he founded Next Impact, he cofounded Incela, a benefits administration company focused on helping advisors support their clients with ACA compliance.

Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Lester served nearly three years as Executive Vice-President and Chief Growth Officer for Willis’ Human Capital Practice, one of the largest insurance brokerages in the world.  In this role, Lester led over 200 producers/consultants in 40 + offices as part of a $350,000,000 practice- Willis’ single largest practice in North America.   During a previous eight-year stint at Willis, Lester was consistently among the top five consultants nationally. Between those assignments, Lester served as National Vice President of Sales for Healthstat, a leading provider of worksite clinics and disease management services.

Lester received a BS in Risk Management and Insurance from Florida State University. He is a highly sought-after speaker at industry conferences, on the subjects of on-site clinics, private exchanges, self-funding, wellness, pharmacy carve-outs, compliance, captives, and other cost-mitigation strategies.

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In this episode Ron chats with Dr. Bill Bestermann. Here, they discuss what Bill considers to be the best practices to provide healthcare. Bill believes if best practices are used and there is a heavier focus more on preventative care it would drastically drive down costs. Bill states that success is going to require a combination of new science, new systems, and a new payment model to involve all the stakeholders. He also discusses intermittent fasting, Metformin, and more.

William H. Bestermann Jr., MD is a board-certified internist who practiced preventive cardiology for 20 years. He has been heavily involved with health care reform and quality improvement during that same period. He wrote the first article on a systematic approach to the metabolic syndrome. He led an advanced cardiometabolic medical home that managed high risk diabetic and hypertensive patients for a Fortune 100 company in Tennessee. He was a Senior Clinical Advisor for the Quality Blue Primary Care program at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana. That initiative saved $27 pmpm net at the 1 year mark while reducing hospitalizations, length of stay, and specialty referrals. He is currently the President and Chief Medical Officer at Epigenex Health Inc.

Dr. Bestermann’s core expertise is around a comprehensive solution for chronic cardiometabolic condition management that improves health and saves money. Most quality improvement and healthcare reform efforts do not achieve those goals because they are only partial solutions. Success requires a combination of new science, new systems, and new payment models combined with multiple stakeholder involvement.

Bill speaks on clinical quality improvement, lowering healthcare costs, healthy life extension, and important new developments in the molecular medical management of chronic disease. He has written articles for multiple medical journals and blogs.

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This episode features Dr. Frank Okosun JR, Medical Director and Attending Physician at Brazos Primary Care Associates. Here, he discusses his frustrations with how difficult is for foreign doctors to work in the US, especially while there is a shortage of primary care docs. He also talks about his Nigerian background, being a jack of all trades as a primary care provider, and his thoughts on physician burnout. Frank shares his philosophy around primary care and how to make it better for both patients and providers.

Dr Frank E Okosun Jr completed his Internal Medicine Internship and Residency at Meharry Medical College Nashville Tennessee where he was also the Vice President of the House Staff Association. During his Internship he was selected by program faculty as the first year Resident of the year. After graduation from residency Dr. Okosun provided care and was Chief of Medical Staff at Sweeny Community Hospital.

Dr Okosun is licensed to practice in the states of Texas and Georgia and he is Board Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine.

His hospital affiliations include CHI St Luke’s Health Brazosport, Lake Jackson, Texas.

Dr Okosun’s professional affiliations include American College of Physicians American Medical Association Texas Medical Association and Brazoria County Medical Society.

Dr Okosun has particular interests in Hypertension and Diabetes screening and management preventive health maintenance and Occupational Health assessments. He also volunteers at the Live Oak Clinic Lake Jackson TX providing care to the underserved population of Southern Brazoria County.

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In this episode Ron chats with John Collier, Founder, President & Chief Executive Officer of Proactive MD. Here, they discuss Proactive MD’s mission to innovate in the space of and elevate the standard of primary care while driving down healthcare costs for patients and employers. John talks about the importance of understanding the whole patients, learning anything that could be impacting their health, and developing true relationships with them. He shares the importance of engaging the patient population to truly become their medical home. He also touches on the organization’s growth, it’s goals for the future, and more.

John provides the overall vision and direction for Proactive MD, continuously finding new ways to serve their patients and employers through strategic planning, executive management, innovation, and strategic partnerships.

John’s professional experience leading direct to employer contracting for one of the largest hospital systems in the country gives him a deep understanding of the unique ecosystem of health systems, payors, and employers. John brings 15 years of in-depth knowledge of healthcare management and strategy to Proactive MD with his background in healthcare administration, payor contracting, provider network development and employer cost containment plan design. Before joining Proactive MD, John was the CEO of another South Carolina-based direct primary care provider. John is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and a member of The Young Presidents Organization (YPO). He earned his MBA and MHA at Grand Canyon University.

A self-proclaimed “healthcare nerd,” John enjoys researching the industry and learning new ways to improve the system for the people who need it most. John lived in Mexico for a time and is fluent in Spanish. He is a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan and loves Arizona Wildcat basketball. But most of all, he loves to spend time with his wife and three children.

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In this episode Ron chats with Gigi Foster about her new Book “The Great Covid Panic: What Happened, Why, and What To Do Next”. She does a deep dive to all restrictions and freedoms that were taken away in the name of sciences and how a new society emerged ruled by the medical elite. She discusses how it all started, whether the results of the restrictions were worth it and made a difference, her thoughts on the future, and more.

Gigi Foster is a Professor with the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, having joined UNSW in 2009 after six years at the University of South Australia.  Formally educated at Yale University (BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics) and the University of Maryland (PhD in Economics), she works in diverse fields including education, social influence, corruption, lab experiments, time use, behavioural economics, and Australian policy.  Her research contributions regularly inform public debates and appear in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets (e.g., Quantitative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Human Relations).  Her teaching, featuring strategic innovation and integration with research, was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.  Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, Professor Foster has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community as one of Australia’s leading economics communicators.  Her regular media appearances include co-hosting The Economists, a national economics talk-radio program and podcast series now in its fifth season, with Peter Martin AM on ABC Radio National.

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