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I really want to take a moment and tell you I’m so excited to discuss some fantastic gentlemen and his trajectory and really what is available out there today. I’m sitting across from someone who knows a thing or two about evolving, someone who’s changed direction, leveled up, taken risks, and rebuilt his role in the world more than once, not because he had to, but because growth demanded it. Our guest today is Dr. Will Barsoom, a healthcare industry leader who’s worn a lot of hats, stepped into
bigger arenas, and kept choosing reinvention over comfort.

So if you’ve ever felt that pull, that nudge, telling you it’s time to grow, shift, or rewrite what, what your next chapter looks like, you’re in the right room. So let’s get into it. Will, thank you so much for being here.

I really appreciate it. It’s an absolute pleasure and I love that introduction. That was awesome.

I wish my parents were around to hear. Well, we could probably spend an entire episode just kind of listing your never ending list of accolades and accomplishments, and your parents would for sure be proud of that. No, doub, because there’s numerous.

And calling them impressive is an understatement for certain. But to get us started, I just wanted to give listeners a brief snapshot of your career to date. And you can kind of correct me on anything if I did my.

Did my digging good enough here? Sound good, sir? All right, so you started your path at Case Western in Ohio and went on to earn your medical degree at the Ohio State University. Go Bucks. And then you completed your orthopedic surgery residency and trained in adult reconstructive surgery in Boston, Correct? Yep.

And then from there you were two decades with the Cleveland Clinic, becoming one of the top hip and knee reconstructive surgeons in the country. And it didn’t even stop there. You then stepped into leadership, eventually becoming the CEO and president of the Cleveland Clinic Floor Florida, where you helped grow the system from a single hospital into a multi hospital, multi billion dollar regional network.

Correct. Yeah. Pretty good.

And then you shifted again, joining Hopco as President and Chief Transformation Officer, which I. That’s a pretty cool title. I like that one. Where you’ve been reshaping how muscle skeletal care is delivered, measured and valued across the country.

And on top of that, now you serve on boards, including finance and education, and host your own podcast, I found out, called Transforming Healthcare. Yeah. Reinvention is not new to you.

It’s kind of like your rhythm at this point, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, I mean, the father of three daughters, two of which have taken paths that couldn’t be more different than mine’s.

Yeah. And what are their paths, if you don’t mind? So my, my youngest daughter is at home with us. She’s 13, she’s an 8th grader and is a world class equestrian.

She’s a grapefruit or hunter jumper. She’s spectacular. Um, my middle daughter is a second year student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

Oh, nice. She, she’s crushing it there. Straight A’s.

I mean, just doing a great job and found her passion. Uh, and then my oldest daughter is our movie star, so she lives in LA and she literally makes movies. Um, so she, you can see her on television.

You can see her on the big screen here coming up. So again, I mean, these are two girl. The older one, I’m still hoping to shape the youngest one a little bit, whether Edison or healthcare.

But the two older ones, I mean, picked, I don’t probably two of the two fields that are more competitive than healthcare and they’re both crushing it, so I couldn’t be more proud. Oh my God. I don’t doubt that for a second.

I mean, they have a lot big shoes to fill, so. So they got to make their mark somewhere for sure. That’s really awesome.

And I mean, equestrian by herself at that young of age. I mean, those are massive animals. They, they scare the crap.

Yeah. And her horse I mean, it’s a big horse, and that horse jumps. I mean, she jumps high.

I mean, every time she goes on. And I say a little prayer for her, but. And she.

It’s incredible watching this little girl on this huge horse kind of just command the arena. Yeah, it’s. It is.

It’s really cool. That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing them.

Sure. You know, before all the leadership and the boards and innovation, because I didn’t even mention it again, we could go on forever on all the. I know you have patents out there.

You’ve written so many. You’ve spoke on so many various topics. But before all of that, you know, who was the early version of Will, before all the titles? You know, I grew up, I’m an immigrant.

I moved here from, From Egypt when I was a little kid. My parents were immigrants. And, you know, growing up with.

In a home, you know, where your. Your parents left their families and their friends behind to kind of start from, from scratch, you feel like you owe something to the world. You know, you feel like they gave up, they sacrificed to live a better life and to give us a better life.

So you always kind of grow up with a little bit of a chip on your shoulder that you want to do more, you want to make an impact. You know, my parents, you know, clearly left me with that impression. My father is an anesthesiologist.

He retired many, many years ago, but, you know, practiced anesthesia in Cleveland. I would sometimes go with him to the operating room and I’d watch surgery over the. The curtain.

I loved it. It was amazing. I mean, those days were the best, you know, the best days I remember growing up, they were just fantastic.

My mom had her hands full with a extremely ADHD son, and my younger sister, who was much better behaved than I was. I had a teacher in elementary school that told my mother, literally, at a parent teacher conference, I want you to know that your son will one day go to jail. I kid you not.

And my poor mother, super respectful, kind, loving woman, came home and cried or just doubled down. She’s like, I’m going to straighten this kid out. And succeeded in doing so.

So, you know, as you know, I grew up in Cleveland and went to US University School, which was, you know, a great school. I mean, three rules. We live by three words at university.

Loyalty, responsibility, and consideration. And I can tell you, if I’d had sons, I probably never would have left Cleveland because they would all have attended university school. That’s how much that school impacted me.

Yeah, I mean, it Was. It was great. And while I was there, I played a bunch of sports.

Then I went to Case Western Reserve, my alma mater, for undergrad. And Case was an incredible school. I mean, it was, you know, the right size for me.

I was able to, you know, kind of grow there. I was. Became president of my fraternity, then president of the Interfraternity Congress.

I was a class officer. So it was kind of real opportunities for me to grow into leadership roles. And I loved it.

You know, I loved it. And they were elected roles, right? I mean, you’re not appointed by somebody, you were. I was elected by my fraternity.

I was then elected by the Interfraternity Congress to be the president and elected by my class to be a class officer. Case had an immense effect on me. You know, it was a school that I felt was the right size for me.

I knew a lot of the kids in my class. I didn’t feel like I was lost in an ocean of faces. I felt like I could make a real impact and.

And I loved it. I ended up then going on to Ohio State for medical school. But my third and fourth years, I was able to do my clinical rotations at the Cleveland Clinic.

And that was a relationship that Ohio State had with. With Cleveland Clinic at that time. And it was a great relationship.

I mean, and I had an incred. Incredible, incredible experience there. I got to see, you know, what I felt was healthcare practiced just at the highest level.

Great caregivers, great doctors, great nurses, great everything. And it made me feel really, really proud of what health there could be in the United States. So, as you can imagine, when I finished medical school, I was excited to be back at Cleveland Clinic, where I spent five years as a res, and then went off to Boston for a year to do hip and knee replacement, and then back to the Cleveland Clinic health system after that.

So that was me before the titles, I guess, blue ribbon across the board on just your trajectory even before, you know, getting really imprinted into your career. Right. I mean, those are great schools, a great path, I mean, even from elementary, you know, before you even made it into the college space.

So obviously your ambition was driven by parents, you know, immigrant parents, and that’s kind of what fueled the fire. And then once you got into college, I know you said that those were elected positions, but did you always see yourself as a leader at that point? I mean, was that something on your radar that you strive to be? Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. I don’t know that I would say that I always saw myself as A leader.

I think just because of how I was raised again, having my immigrant parents kind of always tried to instill in me to be the best person that I could be. I was always very close at my church. You know, I had any cry.

I still do still have an amazing relationship with my priest that I grew up with, Father Mikhail. In fact, my oldest daughter is named after him. My oldest daughter is Michaela, and she’s named for Father.

You know, I think because I had such a clear vision of right and wrong, a lot of people would just come to me for advice or we talk. I’d have, you know, great conversations with folks. And I think most people felt that they could trust me, so I was not shy about voicing my opinions.

And I think people respected the fact that they saw me as, I think, a decent person that always was willing to make time for them and a good friend. So I just ended up, you know, in these positions. That has worked out well for me.

Awesome. Was. Or what was the moment, you know, when you started thinking, you know, stepping out of surgery? I mean, people.

Plenty of people, are great surgeons and stay in that for the rest of their life. But obviously, that kind of rolled into other things for you, you know, is. It’s interesting being at a place like Cleveland Clinic.

You get to see how great healthcare can be, right? I mean, you know, every one of my partners was an incredible doctor. Every nurse that I got to work with cared deeply about their patients. In fact, you know, obviously, Dean, I mean, that’s where I met your sister Carmen.

And I remember as. As an intern and as a young resident and working with Carmen on the floor as we would take care of patients together. You know, you see the commitment and the dedication that every provider has at a place like Cleveland Clinic for their patients.

And it gives you a real appreciation for how lucky we are to have a place like that in our backyard up in northeast Ohio and here in southeast Florida. But as good as it is, as great as it is, when you’re in the trenches, you always see opportunities to make things better. And I think that was probably what drew me into some administrative work.

And it actually came kind of by happenstance. I had an incredibly busy practice. Very blessed from that perspective, thousands of patients put their trust in me to help make them better.

But our chief of staff at that time, in fact, he was actually the chief of surgery, ultimately became the chief of staff. A wonderful, wonderful guy named Joe Hahn. Dr. Hahn approached me, and he said, listen, I think that you would do really well participating in Our, in our division of surgery leadership program, you’ll learn about strategy, you’ll learn about finance.

Because I didn’t have an MBA and I just had my MD he said, but I think you ought to learn these things. So I said, great, yeah, if you want me to do that, I’ll do that. So you’re my boss, you know, you’re my boss’s boss.

So you say, this is what you’re doing. I’m in. I loved it.

I mean, I loved thinking strategically. I loved learning finances. I loved understanding how operational decisions would affect the bottom line of a healthcare system.

I loved learning about value based care. And then ultimately, through the American Orthopedic association, the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, and the aoa, the American Orthopedic association, there was a leadership course that was put on at Kellogg at North. And I took that leadership course and kind of dove even further into healthcare leadership and healthcare strategy.

And it just became more and more interesting to me. And that kind of was the beginning of where I am now. What was the hardest part of shifting from surgeon to leader? That’s a good question.

I think probably the hardest thing I would say was getting people to believe that I wasn’t making an active choice to leave clinical practice. In fact, I’d never left clinical practice. I still haven’t left clinical practice.

I still operate today. You know, I remember sitting down with Dr. Hahn after I had kind of, you know, finish some of those leadership courses and whatnot. And he said to me, you know, what do you.

What do you want to do, Will? You want to be a academic department chair? You want to be a healthcare administrator? You want to be a. You want to publish a bunch of papers? You want to be a great teacher? Or do you want to be an incredibly busy clinician? And my response was, yes, monitor all of those things. He’s like, well, that’s.

That’s, you know, pretty hard to do. I think you probably should focus on something. I mean, I said, Listen, Dr. Hahn, respectfully, you did all of those things.

I want to do them too. I mean, I think it’s doable. I don’t want to.

I don’t want to actively choose to walk away from something, to do something else. I want to be able to do it all. And, and again, I mean, at places like the Cleveland Clinic, you have that opportunity.

I mean, it’s a incredibly unique environment where leadership, innovation, team, you know, that’s all. All of those things are celebrated. And.

And I can’t say that I see that around the country in health care, But I certainly saw it at the Cleveland Clinic. From my own experience with the clinic, you know, family members and my own as well, I do feel that the clinic takes more risks than some healthcare institutions will as far as clinical care goes for individuals, because they know they have the quality of caretakers there that can manage it. And really, when some other places might say, oh, there’s nothing else that can be done, we’re
sorry, this is what.

What it is, what it is. I do believe that the clinic does try to go outside the box and really assess it from all angles before they, you know, throw in the towel, which you can’t really say for a whole lot of places, which is amazing, I’m going to say. I think.

I think that that’s. I would probably put it a little differently. Right.

So over my career, during my residency, I learned how to do carpal tunnels, I learned how to do ACL reconstructions, I learned how to do shoulder surgery. But my career was really focused on hip and knee replacement. And when that’s all you do all day, every day, over and over and over, you develop a skill set where you’re willing to take on cases that other people won’t do.

And it’s, it’s. It’s not so much take, quote, taking a risk. I think it is that you’ve developed a skill set.

Now, I would also tell you that I don’t think you’d want me doing your carpal tunnel or your ACL replacement today, but certainly doing the most complex hip or knee replacement people would want me to do. So I think because we’ve. We had become so specialized and, and because we had a team around us that was so good.

I mean, the nurses, the anesthesiologists, the techs in the operating room, the respiratory therapists, the ICU team, you could take on cases that other places would say, not for me. I would look at it a little differently from, you know, not so much taking risk. I think it was providing high quality, complex care for patients that couldn’t get it elsewhere.

Right. Take mastery to another level and breeding innovation into it being that institution. That risk probably wasn’t the right word because no one wants to hear risk when it comes to their healthcare, but for lack of a better term and my lack of expertise in the healthcare field, that I do think that, like you said, they’re just a master in their niches so well that they are able to put together these teams from these different facets of healthcare to really Put an extraordinary opportunity for
folks to find what is needed to keep them going that other places won’t do.

You know, you obviously took a huge leap going into the administrative side that had to have. And they gave you the, you got the education, they backed you on getting you those, those tools that you needed to get you where you would be successful. But was there a moment, you know, that you kind of had to learn to make those billion dollar decisions without doubting yourself? I mean, was there, you know, some time that it was a strain for you? Yeah.

You know, one of the nice things at the clinic that I learned was we were very good at partnering clinicians with incredible administrative support teams. And, you know, when I, when I took over surgical operations at the clinic, I had an incredible partner named Lindsay Muns. And Lindsay was brilliant.

She had her MBA from Stanford, undergrad from, from University of Michigan. You know, probably, she probably didn’t get into Ohio State. That’s why she had to go to Michigan.

But, but I mean, she was brilliant. You know, I mean, she was really, really smart. And I learned a ton from her.

And then when I came to Florida, Ozzy Delgado was my partner. Ozzie was our chief operating officer. He was a pharmacist who’d gotten his mba.

And I learned a ton from Ozzy. And so, so again, kind of being, I think the combination of being in the trenches, learning the financial side of healthcare, obviously, understanding the clinical side, and then putting that all in an operations package so that your operations could drive your outcomes and could drive your performance, I think that was key. I think it’s worked out well for me.

There’s a great book called Execution, and it talks about strategy, people and operations, and I’m a big believer in that. Right. I mean, you have to have a clear strategy of, you know, here’s where you are today, this is where you want to go.

How are you going to get there then? You have to have people in place that can help make that happen. And then you execute through your operations. Right.

Complex things require process. Hard things require grit. Right.

You just got to kind of push through something hard. But when something is complex, and let me tell you, healthcare is super, super complex, you need process. And that process should be lean and mean and transparent and easy to understand.

And I would tell you today in the United States, healthcare is not those things. It is not lean and mean, it is not transparent and it is not easy to understand. And it’s frustrating because we have the tools to be all of those things, but we’re just not executing on it.

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All without lifting a finger, let Name and Creative turn your content into a two way dialogue that connects with your audience. Visit naming creative.com today and amplify your voice. Thank you for bringing that up because it’s definitely something that as not a provider, but the, you know, patient going in feels that more than anybody else out there.

And I would say the good majority of the population are those patients and not the providers. So they feel that strain. And it’s good to know that there are people like yourselves that are really doing what they can to make that change for the better, to give that.

Because I know going in and getting 30 seconds with your actual doctor is frustrating and then trying to understand what the guidance is and the best next steps and all of that, also frustrating. So it’s good to hear from administrative folks that there is still strides that they know are needed and there is work being done to hopefully get us there sooner rather than later and make that happen. Yeah, Obviously, running a $1.

8 billion system, it’s not just responsibility, it’s endless pressure. I’m sure. And pressure teaches you things about money and value that regular life doesn’t.

So my next question really would be, you know, how did leading at that scale change your personal relationship with money? You know, I, I don’t know that it’s changed it a lot, to be honest with you. I’ve, you know, my, I’ve always kind of been a squirrel. I like, I like putting money away.

You know, when, when you, today, when you go into healthcare, it’s rare that you go into healthcare to, quote, get rich. Right? I mean, it’s funny. I gave, I had the honor of giving the white coat ceremony speech for Case Restaurant Reserve School of Medicine about a year and a half ago.

And as I stood up at the podium and there’s, you know, all these incredible students in front of me, all getting ready to get their white coats because they’re, they’re starting medical school, I told them, listen, I, my guess is all of you are here sitting in these chairs because you want to help people and not necessarily because you’ve chosen this to get rich. Because I can tell you there are way easier ways to make money than the four years of medical school that you’re about to embark on. The
X number of years of residency, the fellowship, the constant licensing, the constant certifications, and Recertifications.

Listen, I mean, I have lots of friends that went into banking, that went into private equity. Brilliant people. Make a, make, make, made, make a lot more money, a lot more money than I would make in a hundred lifetimes.

But did they ever get to hold somebody’s hand as they took their last breath? You know, did they ever get to walk out and, you know, tell a husband, hey, your wife’s going to be okay? You know, that’s, that’s a pretty incredible feeling and it’s an amazing. It’s an amazing honor. So, you know, the, the, the thing I would say, though, is, you know, when you, when you draw on running a business versus running your own personal finances is one thing you have to think about is opportunity cost, right?
And, and by the way, it goes beyond finance, right? It goes to work, life balance, too.

If I say yes to this, then I’m saying no to that. And, and probably the place that I saw that most obviously and applied it in my own life from a personal perspective, is cost of capital, right? Looking at, we would, every year we would say, okay, these are all the capital needs of our organization. We need a new MRI scanner.

We need a new CAT scanner. This building needs a new roof. The urologists want another robot.

The orthopedic surgeons want a 3D scanner. Okay, great. We make a list.

Everything gets their discounts associated with them. You get an roi. You know, how much do you expect to bring in when you do this? And then you say, okay, well, we’re going to fund A, B, C and D.

Maybe next year we’ll fund E and F. But we’re not going to fund them this year because the opportunity cost of funding E and F would mean we couldn’t do A. Right. So makes a lot of sense to me to apply that in your own home as well.

Do I wish I was driving a Ferrari? Yeah, I wish I was driving a Ferrari. Am I driving a Ferrari? Nope. I’m driving a pickup truck.

That’s just, you know, that’s a decision that I’ve made. I. Because the opportunity cost of driving a Ferrari is just too high to me for certain. That’s kind of how I think about it.

Insurance alone on, like. That’s exactly right. You had all those disposable fees associated with it, too.

Right, right. Capital cost and then the maintenance. What’s one money belief you had 20 years ago that you don’t have now? Listen, I think that people always, if you’re a motivated person, you’re always thinking about that next stage in life, right? What am I going to accomplish next? Right.

Man, I want to make X amount of money and then I’m going to have everything that I need. It’s just not true. I mean, it really isn’t true.

The founder of Red Bull was just a brilliant guy. Absolutely brilliant guy. Was listening to a podcast that talked about his life, his career and how he, how he, you know, built Red Bull.

Talks about, Listen, I mean getting to the summit is the fun part. I mean you’re, you’re not on the summit for that long. So you’ve got to enjoy the ride, you know, you’ve got to enjoy the trek to the summit.

And I think that’s kind of what I’ve learned right. There is no end to this race there. Um, so you gotta love the journey.

You gotta take it step by. I’m one of these guys. I wake up every day at 3 or 3:30 in the morning.

I don’t set an alarm. I just wake up. And you know what the first thing that pops into my head is when I wake up, where’s my gospel? Believe it or not, it’s.

I literally wake up, I’m like, awesome, I’m awake. Let’s go. You know, I love that.

I love being up. I love the challenges of the day. I love, you know, I even, I love, I love the problems that I’m going to encounter in the day and the things I get to solve.

It just, it’s motivating to me. I enjoy it. So, you know, I’m very lucky in that, from that perspective that I think that’s kind of what I’ve Learned.

Right? Is 20 years ago I might have thought, gee, if only I had this much money in the bank, I, I’d stop working. I’d be all set right now. I realize I’m never going to stop working.

I love working. I mean, I love, I love coming to work every day. I love, I love what I do.

I love, I love what I do clinically. I love what I do administratively. I love what I do from a business perspective.

I don’t ever. I really, I never want to stop. That’s fantastic.

I, I heard you say in your podcast that it’s something that you like to. A question that you like to pose to all medical doctors if they would suggest for their own family or new doctors or people thinking about healthcare to actually move into healthcare. I actually have a friend who is a, in health care.

She’s a doctor and she’s a jack of all trades. I mean this this woman can do anything that she puts her mind to for sure. And the cost that she has incurred, just like you were telling those budding doctors, has been exorbitant to the point that, you know, she’s refied her her student loans to the max, and she’s still way above a house payment every single month on those student loans.

So when you talk about the money spent versus the value gained, it sounds like, and it’s really awesome to hear that you advise the budding doctors on this, that it’s really not about the checkbook. It’s about how you get up in the morning and how much that you value life and what you bring to the table to all of your. Your patients, which is.

Is really cool. I wanted to really commend you on that, that’s awesome path to share to everybody. And it means a lot.

And it’s really enlightening to hear other doctors talk about whether they would tell people yeah or no. It’s surprising that it’s 50, 50. I would do it again 100 times over.

Now, I will say this, though, when it comes to, to medical education, right, there’s obviously the higher calling of wanting to do it for all the right reasons. There’s also the practical side of it, right? And I would say there’s two things there. First of all, in the United States, we need to evolve our healthcare training.

We train 20,000 doctors a year. We graduate 20,000 doctors a year in the United States. It’s not enough.

It just isn’t enough. You know, by the time you actually start practicing, most of us are in our 30s. That’s too old.

There’s no reason that we could not change our medical education program so that people started working years earlier. And then you would, in essence, increase your pool of clinicians, right? That’s number one. We could also train more people.

We already have a physician shortage in the United States, and we are really not training many more docs each year. So we’re falling behind. And we have a clear demand of students that want to be doctors.

This whole idea of kind of judging them on how they do on their MCATs and stuff is honestly silly. Some of the best surgeons I’ve ever met are not necessarily great test takers, but man, are they awesome surgeons. But the last comment I would make is if, you know, regardless of what you choose to do, whether you want to be a doctor, whether, if you’re going into healthcare, if you want to be a social worker, if you want to be a nurse, if you want to Be a respiratory therapist if you want to be,
you know, the chief of neurosurgery.

Whatever you want to do, be practical about it, too. Right? Are you really going to be a better neurosurgeon because you went to, you know, Harvard undergrad versus if you went to Ohio State? I got news for you. You probably won’t be.

In fact, I can tell you, during my time at Cleveland Clinic, some of the many of the best residents that we ever trained went to Wright State for medical school. You know, it’s a state school, relatively small, southwest Ohio and Daytona. Right.

But, Matt, I tell you, those graduates from that medical school were rock stars, absolute rock stars, and they didn’t spend $100,000 a year on tuition. So, you know, think practically as well. And if you have a real calling to be a pediatrician or a family practitioner where your salary’s not going to be the same as a cardiac surgeon or a neurosurgeon, think about that as you’re choosing your medical education so that you don’t graduate with a half a million dollars of debt.

So practical side of it, I think is important to keep in mind. Do you feel that the shortage is driven by the cost of education, or do you feel that the shortage is driven by the hoops that they have to go through? Like you said, the, the amount of time, the, the, everything that really goes into getting that part. I, I think the shortage is a couple things.

I think, first of all, we don’t have enough slots in the US for medical schools, and that’s why we bring over a lot of foreign medical grads. And, and, and I would tell you, many of them are amongst the best doctors I’ve ever seen in my life. Incredible doctors.

So I don’t believe that just because you trained in the United States, you are a superior doctor to somebody that trained overseas. Some of the overseas doctors are, like I said, the best I’ve ever seen. So that goes, that, that’s kind of a given.

But we do limit, artificially limit the number of slots we have in the United States. And we have a lot more students that want to be doctors than students that get into medical medical school. So that’s, that’s an easy solution, right? Create more spots.

That, that’s number one. The second thing is, you know, most of us again, went into medicine because we want to help patients. We want to improve life.

We want, we want to improve the quality of life. We want to save lives. We don’t want to spend half of our day charting and dealing with insurance calls and pre authorization and peer to peers.

Because the insurance doctor is wondering why you’re doing this surgery for this patient. That administrative burden in healthcare is it’s honestly getting out of control. I would tell you I shouldn’t even say that it’s getting out of control.

It has been out of control for way too long. There’s only so many hours in the day. We talked about opportunity, cost.

If I’m willing to work 12 or 14 hour days. Okay, and you’re going to tell me I have to spend four to five of them doing administrative work, well, that means I only have seven to eight hours to see patients. Wouldn’t you rather let me just see patients the entire time? Wouldn’t that be better? So you’re increasing the capacity of patients that we can serve in the United States today.

If you want to make an appointment as a new patient with a primary care provider, the average weight is over 30, 30 days. Yeah, absolutely. That’s probably short, changing it.

I know, I tried. They were like, oh, six months. I was like six months.

I still don’t, I’ve been here in Florida now for almost seven years. I truthfully don’t have a primary care because of that. It, I just, I’m like, I can’t find one.

It didn’t take so long to do that. And then something changes and the insurance changes and that provider is no longer available or whatever it is. You know, it’s, it’s crazy on it, but it doesn’t work.

It’s a bad program. We fix it. You know, those are things that we have to fix.

So what phase of reinvention for yourself are you stepping into now? So, so I, I’m, you know, working here at Hopco. I love it. We’re really working on, on redefining and reinventing how we deliver musculoskeletal care in a value based way.

Working with practices, working with insurance companies, working with patients, working with healthcare systems. And I love it. I mean, I feel like we’re making a real difference.

I think we’re providing higher quality care for lower costs and I think we have to do that in the United States. We spend today about $17,000 per American on healthcare. That is way too much.

We have got to get the cost down. And you know, Dina, I wish I could tell you that we have the best outcomes in the world. We don’t.

We lag behind many other countries when it comes to things like infant mortality, when it comes, you know, to lifespan. Right. I mean, we can do better I mean, there’s no reason that we can’t do better.

And we can and we should do better. So I feel like we’re making that difference. You know, the, the other area that I’ve been, I guess reinventing myself a little bit is, is it’s the first time I’ve ever joined a publicly traded company.

Board. So I just joined a board, read through my first S1 filing. I mean, this stuff is probably second nature to you, but as I’m kind of learning more and more about, you know, what goes into being an independent board member for a publicly traded company, it’s, it’s exciting.

I mean, I, I love it, I’m enjoying it, I’m learning. I feel like I’m bringing knowledge, you know, to the, to the board and getting to work with some really brilliant people and having a wonderful time. So, you know, as far as family goes, my girls are getting older, growing up.

You know, one has a real career now, one is, you know, halfway through her college education, just landed her first internship in the fashion world. So, you know, watching your kids get older, it’s exciting. I mean, it’s fun.

It’s definitely a very different stage in life and closing in on 60 here pretty soon. So it’s fun. Well, I want to kind of back up for a quick second.

Can you explain the thought of value based healthcare? Like, what does that really mean? Yeah. So in the United States, if I were to ask you why do you choose that primary care provider versus a different primary care provider, you’d probably say, well, you know, reputation or this doctor’s right around the corner from my house or in network, you know, it’s not really based on any real clinical quality data and it’s not really based on cost because you probably, other than knowing what your out of
pocket deductible is, you probably don’t really have a great sense of how much that care is going to cost society by what your insurance pays. Right? And when you think about it, there’s really nothing else that we do where we spend enormous amounts of money with no knowledge on the quality.

Just doesn’t make sense. If I were to tell you you can drive a Mercedes or you can drive a 1998 Ford Escort and they’re both going to cost you the same, would you choose the new Mercedes or the 1998 Ford Escort? I mean, it’s a new Briago, you’re going to choose Mercedes, right? That’s you making a choice based on value. If they both cost the same and you know the quality of the brand new Mercedes is way better than the 98 Ford Escort.

You’ve made a choice because value is defined as quality over cost. So the challenge that we have in the United States is most. There’s an insane amount of opacity around cost, right? What your true cost is and maybe even not just your true cost, what is the true cost to society when you have this procedure done or that procedure done? I mean, who writes that check and how big is that check? And then the quality of the care, if you have me do your hip replacement or doctor, you know, c do your hip
replacement, do you really know which one of us is better at doing hip replacements or has a lower, you know, complication rate or has a lower readmission rate or a lower return to ED rate? This information is pretty opaque.

So the whole idea of value based care is instead of being paid based on volume, how many hip replacements I do instead pay me based on the quality, quality of the hip replacements that I do. And in fact, if my quality is better and my cost is lower, I should end up having the privilege of taking care of more patients. And the surgeon that perhaps charges way more or has lower quality should probably be taken care of fewer patients.

That’s really the idea of value based care is ensuring that as a society we are making the most of our healthcare dollar, which today we don’t. That’s pretty amazing. I know it’s all about reviews for businesses, right? How well they do.

And I know for myself when searching for PCPs or really any physician on what it may be, I am still looking at those and there really are few opportunities like you, you call it opaqueness, essentially that you can’t really find that unless you’re really looking at the practices reviews. And if they’re not specifying the doctor or what it was it, you really don’t know. It’s it.

It is a little bit of a guessing game. So again, it’s, it’s very great to hear that there are institutions out there that are working for change in that and it would make a huge, huge benefit for patients to have those opportunities. And I did see in another thing that I read that you’re working on some things in regards to the cost actually being more transparent for patients as well, which absolutely needs to be known.

So thank you for all the work that you do on that. It does mean a lot. And doing the good, the good fighting the good fight for all of us out there who are using the services rather than on the provider side, you know, Last few questions and we’ll be wrapping this up.

I wanted to have the discussion with you because very few I’ve mentioned this to you before. In my experience, even healthcare providers don’t have a financial mindset because they’re so much in the books, there’s so much in the hospitals, they don’t really get the opportunities to learn what you have learned. So a question would really be what is one thing you would want? Not just healthcare providers, but people who are searching for more of a financial literacy or a means to growth for their
financial portfolios.

What would be something that you would encourage them to look at? Not necessarily investment based, but mindset based as well. Just anything to kind of think outside the box. Yeah.

So a couple of things. I would say if your car started making a funny noise, would you pop open the hood and try to fix it yourself or would you take it to a mechanic? Right. I mean, if your heart started beating too fast, would you just try to, you know, eat more bananas and think that that’s going to solve the problem or would you go and see a cardiologist? Yeah.

So I think healthcare literature, I’m sorry, I think financial literacy is the same. I think you should work with a professional. And there are professionals that are happy to work with folks at all levels of life.

Right. I mean, regardless of how much money you have and how much money you’re saving. And there are, there are indexed funds that you can invest in that have, you know, almost no costs associated with them.

It’s very hard. Even with the smartest financial advisor, it’s pretty hard to beat the s and P500, the Dow Jones, the NASDAQ. Listen, if you don’t know what to do, put a third into each one of those.

Find an index fund in each one of those three and put a third, a third, a third in it and watch your money grow. I mean, that’s easy. If you want to start doing more advanced things, then you really need expert help.

Right. I mean, you know, private equity funds I think are terrific. Real estate can be terrific.

But again, you know, understanding what the fees are associated with those types of things definitely requires more advanced investing and in most cases requires that you have, you know, that you are what is called an accredited investor. So it gets a little bit more challenging. But, but without a doubt, there are professionals out there that are legally bound to work for your best interest and they will help you.

I mean, they’ll help you. You know, most people will say, well, I don’t want to give up 0.8% or 1% of what I’m investing.

Okay, but if that person helps you make 12% instead of your 3%, don’t you think it would make sense? And you know, Mo, sadly, most of the folks that I know, at least when they’re younger, that are investing on their own, just pick dogs. I mean, they just lose money on every investment. So don’t pick a dog.

Right? Get some help. Invest early. Invest for the long term.

Use the Warren Buffett philosophy. Good long term investments. Leave your money alone, it will grow.

That’s a good one. Lastly, what’s the hardest truth about reinvention that most people don’t want to accept? Wow, that’s a tough question. The hardest truth about reinvention.

I think to some degree you have to be able to be decisive and not second guess. And I think when I think about leadership, I remember Toby Cosgrove, who was my old boss at Cleveland Clinic, would talk about the two things that would separate leaders from others. He’d say, a, they can kind of see around corners.

They know what’s coming next and they can prepare for it. And they’re very decisive. And I think when it comes to reinvention, you have got to be decisive, right? I mean, no matter what it is, right? If it’s reinventing your career, if it’s reinventing your lifestyle because you’ve decided to have a child, right? I mean, man, guess what? You don’t get to go back on that decision.

There’s no, you know, you’re done. I remember after my first daughter was born, I’m like, my God, what is this? This is craziness, you know, the greatest joy of my life. But oh my God, the amount of work associated with, with having a child was just something I never, ever, ever could have imagined.

So I think you’ve, when you make a decision to go from point A to point B, don’t second guess it, go to point B, make the best of it. If it doesn’t work, find a point C. But it’s probably not going to be that easy to go back to point A, right? You’re opening Pandora’s box, more or less, right? You can’t always close that well. Your journey is definitely proof that reinvention isn’t just possible.

It’s necessary, you know, for growth in an individual and, and to really keep evolving. And every time you’ve stepped into a new version, it’s obvious that success has, has followed right along. So you did it with intention and courage.

And I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to be here with me and really appreciate you always leading with integrity and being a voice for a better tomorrow for everybody, whether it’s the people that you work with or the people on the other side that really need the most help. Right. And I really just, I value your time and you as a person.

So thank you very, very much. It means a lot and to everyone listening, you know. Thank you for joining us on Invest in you, and we hope to see you next time.

Thanks for tuning in, Sa.