Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary

Matthew Zachary Worldwide
  • 4.9 (158)
  • Health & Fitness
  • Updated Weekly

The longest-running independent healthcare podcast, Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary has supplied 19 years of unfiltered truth about American healthcare. The first online health podcast when it launched in 2007, it predates the medium itself. A 30-year brain cancer survivor, Matthew built the young adult cancer movement from scratch. Now he channels patient rage into political power, featuring on the air battle-scarred survivors, exhausted caregivers, and the rare insider brave enough to name what's killing us. Real stories from real people who refuse to accept that healthcare has to hurt this much. This is the show that started the conversation America is still not ready to finish.

  1. The Patient Wears Prada: Farla Efros

    3d ago

    The Patient Wears Prada: Farla Efros

    Farla Efros is a senior retail executive and former CEO who built and sold companies before facing her own breast cancer diagnosis. She brings that same operational mindset into a healthcare system that expects patients to manage complexity while they are at their most vulnerable. She was on a client call in Spain when the diagnosis came through. A clear mammogram had missed it. An MRI caught it. Within hours, she was ordering binders, building a plan, and structuring her treatment like a turnaround strategy. Every appointment became a meeting. Every doctor faced an agenda with dozens of questions. She paid out of pocket for PET scans that were denied and hired a third party firm to validate her treatment path when her own doctors resisted outside input.   The conversation tracks what happens when a high-functioning executive enters a system built on delay, denial, and fragmentation. Efros describes negotiating for tests, managing physician relationships, and assembling an “executive board” of advisors across conventional and alternative care. She calls the experience “the worst client I ever had,” exposing how administrative burden shifts onto patients and families. The tension sits between what worked for her and what is inaccessible to most. Her approach requires confidence, time, and fluency in navigating power. The system rewards that behavior while quietly failing patients who cannot replicate it. Insurance coverage still left her paying out of pocket. Doctors pushed standard protocols over precision medicine. Survivorship offered little support once treatment ended. This episode examines how cancer care operates as a series of incentives rather than a coordinated system, and why patients are forced to become operators just to get through it. RELATED LINKS Farla Efros Farla Efros on LinkedIn F*ck Cancer F*ck Cancer on Amazon Accenture CTOAM PULL QUOTES “I treated cancer like the worst client I ever had.” “They wouldn’t approve the test, so I paid for it myself.” “Every appointment was a negotiation.” FEEDBACK Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    43 min
  2. Coding the Invisible: Emily Mendenhall

    Jun 23

    Coding the Invisible: Emily Mendenhall

    In 2020, Emily Mendenhall drove from Washington, DC to Okoboji, Iowa, a town of 800 that swells to 200,000 every summer, and walked into a pandemic that looked nothing like the one dominating national headlines. Inside gas stations and bars, masks marked you as an outsider. In one stop, a man told her family they would not be served if they kept theirs on. Her 6 year old daughter cried, confused.   Mendenhall, a medical anthropologist at Georgetown University, did what she always does. She started asking questions. Over months, she interviewed neighbors, former classmates, and local officials, including her own brother in law who helped lead the local COVID response. The result became Unmasked, a case study in how community identity, economics, and politics shaped public health decisions in real time.   That work led directly into her latest book, Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVID, where she tracks a much older problem. Patients with chronic illness, especially women, often fail to meet medicine’s demand for proof. Without a clear diagnosis, they lose access to care, insurance coverage, and legitimacy. Mendenhall argues that long COVID did not create this failure. It exposed it. This conversation centers on how healthcare systems reward certainty and punish complexity. Long COVID clinics send patients to 17 specialists without resolution. Insurance structures require diagnoses that many conditions cannot provide. Medical training still struggles to integrate trauma, mental health, and chronic disease into a coherent model of care. Mendenhall brings lived experience into the conversation. After COVID, she dealt with months of fatigue and escalating anxiety that altered her baseline health. She does not claim the label of long COVID, but she understands how quickly the system becomes harder to navigate once symptoms stop fitting clean categories.   The stakes are not theoretical. In the United States, access to healthcare, disability benefits, and treatment still depends on whether a condition can be measured, coded, and reimbursed. For millions living with invisible illness, the burden of proof becomes the illness itself. RELATED LINKS Emily Mendenhall Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVID Science Politics Georgetown University FEEDBACK Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    42 min
  3. Jace Beats Cancer

    Jun 16

    Jace Beats Cancer

    At 25, Jace Yawnick was building a career in health and wellness sales, chasing growth, status, and the usual young adult fantasy of getting somewhere fast. Then his body stopped cooperating. Fatigue turned into chemotherapy. The diagnosis was primary mediastinal B cell non Hodgkin lymphoma, and the rest of his life split into before and after.    Now in remission, he talks about cancer the way people actually live it, not the way nonprofits package it. He gets into survivorship, mental health, young adult isolation, and the deadening absurdity of prior authorization. One of the sharpest parts of the conversation lands on a simple American insult disguised as policy: treatment innovation means very little when insurance can still deny the scan, the drug, or the next step. Jace has seen that firsthand, including during routine monitoring after active treatment.    This episode tracks what happens when a young cancer patient becomes a public voice and refuses to play mascot. It covers oncology, insurance, remission, advocacy, and the long mental hangover that follows survival. It also names the part too many institutions dodge: the system works great right up until it doesn’t, and when it fails, patients get handed the bill, the panic, and a camera if they want anyone to care.    RELATED LINKS Jace Beats Cancer Jace Yawnick on LinkedIm Conquer Cancer Article CURE Today Article Pyure Brands FEEDBACK Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    55 min
  4. Standard Deviation S2 E4: The Invisible Load

    Jun 11 ·  Bonus

    Standard Deviation S2 E4: The Invisible Load

    At 20 years old, newly arrived from Puerto Rico and trying to build a future in science, Benjamin Suarez Jimenez found himself sitting in front of two senior faculty members accused of plagiarism. He knew the material. He had done the work. His mistake came from failing to cite class notes during an exam because nobody had told him that was expected. In a matter of minutes, he watched what felt like his entire career flash before him. On this episode of Standard Deviation, host Oliver Bogler examines the hidden architecture of academic science through the experiences of Dr. Benjamin Suarez Jimenez, Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester and a neuroscientist studying PTSD, anxiety, trauma, and spatial cognition through virtual reality and video game environments. Benjamin traces his path from Puerto Rico to the mainland United States, through the NIH, Columbia University, and eventually to leading his own laboratory. Along the way, he encountered a series of barriers that had little to do with scientific ability and everything to do with access to unwritten rules. From academic gatekeeping to grant writing expectations, he learned that success in biomedical research often depends on knowledge that never appears in a textbook. Oliver explores how those invisible obstacles shape careers, influence research funding, and determine who gains access to opportunity. The conversation also examines the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Program at the Life Science Editors Foundation, which pairs scientists from underrepresented backgrounds with experienced scientific editors. Through that mentorship, Benjamin transformed a critical grant proposal into a successful pilot award that helped launch an NIH R01 application. The discussion extends beyond one scientist’s experience. Benjamin describes helping a former mentee navigate dissertation roadblocks that threatened her graduation, illustrating how institutional bureaucracy can delay careers and discourage talented researchers. Together, they explore the hidden administrative burden, cultural barriers, and bias that many scientists carry alongside their research, and what happens when someone who receives support turns around and opens the door for others. RELATED LINKS Life Science Editors Foundation Benjamin Suarez Jimenez Lab Dr. Benjamin Suarez Jimenez Benjamin Suarez Jimenez FEEDBACK Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    10 min
  5. Taco Thursday Meets Broken Healthcare: Dr. Sarah Matt

    Jun 9

    Taco Thursday Meets Broken Healthcare: Dr. Sarah Matt

    Dr. Sarah Matt trained as a burn surgeon, working in a field where patients arrive with catastrophic injuries and survival depends on speed, skill, and resources. She left the bedside after confronting a limit that medicine does not like to admit. One physician can only see so many people in a day. The system surrounding those patients decides the rest. She moved into health technology, held leadership roles in startups, and built global infrastructure at Oracle to scale care across populations. Then she watched billions of dollars in digital health and AI initiatives stall out when they hit real clinical environments. This episode follows that pivot from surgeon to strategist and back into direct patient care in rural New York, where she now treats uninsured patients, migrant workers, and communities pushed to the margins. The conversation centers on a persistent failure across healthcare systems. Products get built for regulators, executives, and investors instead of the people who use them. The result shows up in failed adoption, broken workflows, prior authorization delays, and rising physician burnout. The discussion cuts through health policy language and lands on lived consequence. The system rewards speed over usability, scale over trust, and compliance over care. Patients absorb the fallout. Physicians carry the liability. The incentives remain intact. RELATED LINKS Dr. Sarah Matt The Borderless Healthcare Revolution The Clinical Realist Jessica Federer Sovato FEEDBACK Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    42 min
  6. The Chernobyl Kid in a White Coat: Dr. Yan Leyfman

    Jun 2

    The Chernobyl Kid in a White Coat: Dr. Yan Leyfman

    In the late 1980s, a child exposed to fallout from the Chernobyl disaster lay in a hospital bed while doctors told his family there were no clear answers and no reliable path forward. Decades later, that same child, Yan Leyfman, walks into exam rooms as a hematology oncology fellow, expected to deliver clarity inside a system that still runs on delay, uncertainty, and institutional self preservation. This episode traces the throughline from early life shaped by radiation exposure and hospice level uncertainty to a career inside academic medicine, translational research, and oncology media. Yan built his identity around survival and usefulness, moving from patient to physician while carrying the memory of what it feels like to sit on the other side of the table. He helped launch MedNews Week during the COVID crisis to push back on misinformation and expand access to medical knowledge, stepping into a public role while still in training. The conversation stays grounded in the friction between personal narrative and system reality. Clinical training demands efficiency, hierarchy, and emotional distance. Cancer care demands time, clarity, and human connection. Those forces collide in real patient encounters where prior authorization delays, insurance barriers, and fragmented care pathways shape outcomes as much as any treatment protocol. Yan speaks openly about mentorship, belonging, and the drive to make meaning out of survival. The discussion pushes further into what the healthcare system actually rewards, what it quietly strips away, and how quickly empathy can erode under institutional pressure. The episode also examines the role of medical media, where education, industry influence, and narrative control often blur together. This is a conversation about identity under construction, about what happens when someone who remembers powerlessness steps into a role that carries authority, and about whether that memory can survive long enough to change anything. RELATED LINKS Yan Leyfman on LinkedIn Yan Leyfman on Instagram Surviving Chernobyl FEEDBACK Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    42 min
  7. MZ LIVE at Merkin Concert Hall: 30 Years After Cancer

    May 29 ·  Bonus

    MZ LIVE at Merkin Concert Hall: 30 Years After Cancer

    Matthew Zachary is a brain cancer survivor, healthcare advocate, founder of Stupid Cancer and We the Patients, and host of Out of Patients. In April 2026, he returned to the stage at Merkin Hall near Lincoln Center for his first solo public piano concert in almost 22 years while launching his debut book, We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America’s Healthcare Nightmare. What unfolded became far larger than a concert. Over 2 hours, survivors, clinicians, advocates, nonprofit founders, journalists, pharmaceutical sponsors, and healthcare insiders gathered in one room to reflect on 30 years of survivorship, institutional failure, accidental advocacy, and the emotional afterlife of cancer. The evening moved through original piano performances, live chapter readings, and deeply personal conversations about infertility, disability, financial toxicity, insurance denials, grief, burnout, and what happens when patients spend decades navigating systems designed around transactions instead of continuity. Guests including Wendell Potter, Maimah Karmo, Craig Lustig, Shelly Fuld Nasso, Tamika Felder, and others reflected on how the modern cancer advocacy movement emerged largely because patients built parallel systems where healthcare infrastructure failed to meet human needs. The conversation explored how prior authorization, reimbursement incentives, administrative fragmentation, and institutional distrust continue shaping the patient experience across oncology and survivorship. The performance also marked a deeply personal milestone. After brain cancer compromised his left hand at age 21, Zachary spent 6 months rehabilitating both hands to return to public performance for the first time in over 2 decades. The result became part concert, part civic gathering, and part historical record of a generation of survivors who refused to disappear quietly. RELATED LINKS MZLIVE Official Website MZLIVE YouTube Video FEEDBACK Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    1h 47m
  8. Fatal to Relentless: Kathy Giusti

    May 26

    Fatal to Relentless: Kathy Giusti

    In December 1996, a 37 year old pharmaceutical executive sat in a Borders bookstore reading medical textbooks on the floor, trying to understand a disease she had never heard of. Multiple myeloma carried a three year prognosis. Her daughter was 18 months old. Her father had just died of cancer. Within weeks, she pushed her doctors to say the quiet part clearly. This would likely end her life before her child entered kindergarten. Kathy Giusti refused to accept passive survival. She built a plan while the system offered fragments. She interviewed oncologists and fertility specialists at the same time. She pursued IVF to have a second child while preparing for treatment. She stayed employed to keep insurance coverage. Every decision carried financial, medical, and emotional risk. That same urgency exposed a deeper failure. Cancer research moved slowly. Academic centers guarded data. Clinical trials lacked coordination. Patients entered a system that demanded compliance without providing clarity. Giusti responded by building the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, not as a support group, but as an operating engine to accelerate drug development, fund research, and force collaboration across institutions. This episode tracks the tension between individual agency and systemic failure. Giusti describes how patients navigate diagnosis, insurance barriers, and fragmented care in real time. She explains how data, genomics, and clinical trials reshape cancer treatment while still leaving patients responsible for decisions they are not trained to make. She addresses disparities in access, the limits of early detection, and the reality that progress in oncology often depends on speed, funding, and alignment of incentives. The conversation moves between lived experience and structural critique. It names the cost of delay, the burden placed on patients to act as their own advocate, and the tradeoffs required to push a system forward that still protects itself first. ⸻ RELATED LINKS Kathy Giusti Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation Fatal to Fearless American Society of Hematology ⸻ FEEDBACK Like this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    49 min
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4.9
out of 5
158 Ratings

About

The longest-running independent healthcare podcast, Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary has supplied 19 years of unfiltered truth about American healthcare. The first online health podcast when it launched in 2007, it predates the medium itself. A 30-year brain cancer survivor, Matthew built the young adult cancer movement from scratch. Now he channels patient rage into political power, featuring on the air battle-scarred survivors, exhausted caregivers, and the rare insider brave enough to name what's killing us. Real stories from real people who refuse to accept that healthcare has to hurt this much. This is the show that started the conversation America is still not ready to finish.

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