The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

Massively Better Healthcare

🏆 2026 Webby Award-winning podcast. Join us every Monday for conversations with the biggest names in healthcare. Hosted by health tech veterans Halle Tecco, Michael Esquivel, and Steve Kraus. Learn more and submit your ideas for the show at the Heart of Healthcare website.

  1. 4d ago ·  Video

    What Wall Street Gets Wrong About Healthcare | DaVita CEO Javier Rodriguez

    Healthcare is full of things that are easy to measure, from costs and outcomes to utilization and, increasingly, AI. But DaVita CEO Javier Rodriguez believes one of the most important parts of healthcare is also one of the hardest to put in a spreadsheet: the human relationship between a caregiver and a patient. This week, Halle sits down with Javier to talk about what he’s learned from three decades in healthcare. They discuss why preventing kidney failure remains so difficult and what it takes to run a public healthcare company while making investments that may take years to pay off. Javier also shares why he believes healthcare has made enormous clinical progress even as frustration with the system has grown.   We cover: Why Javier would be thrilled if DaVita’s dialysis business disappearedWhat’s actually stopping more patients from getting kidney transplantsWhy more dialysis care is moving from clinics into patients’ homesWhy Javier believes Wall Street undervalues the human side of healthcareThe leadership blind spot that nearly got him fired early in his career About our guest: Javier J. Rodriguez has served as Chief Executive Officer of DaVita Inc. since June 2019. Joining the company in 1998, Mr. Rodriguez has held senior leadership roles of increasing responsibility, with experience across operations, payor contracting, and finance, and has helped shape the company’s transformation in the delivery of kidney care. Prior to joining DaVita, Mr. Rodriguez worked in finance at Baxter Healthcare Corporation. He has served on the board of directors of Gilead Sciences, Inc. since June 2020. Mr. Rodriguez brings deep healthcare expertise, comprehensive knowledge of our business and regulatory landscape, and a proven track record of executive leadership. — 📍 Connect with us: Heart of Healthcare website LinkedIn YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    What Wall Street Gets Wrong About Healthcare | DaVita CEO Javier Rodriguez
  2. Sep 21 ·  Video

    Can AI Finish What The Quality Revolution Started? | Bunkerhill Health CCO Dr. Azita Hamedani

    For decades, healthcare's quality movement gave us checklists, forcing functions, and protocols to catch human error before it reached a patient. It worked, to a point. But as medical knowledge and patient complexity keep outpacing what any human system can track, a new question is emerging: can AI pick up where that movement left off? In this episode, in her first interview since stepping into the role, we talk with Dr. Azita Hamedani, the newly appointed Chief Clinical Officer at Bunkerhill Health, an AI company backed by Sequoia and Khosla Ventures. After nearly her entire career in academic medicine, Azita made the leap to a startup chasing a promise she's been thinking about since medical school. We cover: The medical school moment that first pulled her toward patient safety over bench scienceWhy she believes healthcare has hit the ceiling of what checklists and protocols alone can doThe three different types of health system leaders who all understand a different piece of the AI puzzle, and why that's a problemWhat actually happened behind the scenes on one real patient's chart, without a single human triggering itHer take on the Khosla and AMA debate over whether doctors should stay in the loopA personal story from her own cancer diagnosis, and the one question she asked her surgeon that no AI could ever answer About our guest: Azita G. Hamedani, MD, MPH, MBA, is the Chief Clinical Officer at Bunkerhill Health. She joined the company based on the belief that its long-horizon AI agent is the first technology capable of ensuring every patient receives optimal care. She spent 25 years in various leadership roles within large-scale academic health systems. Most recently, she served as President and CEO of UNC Faculty Physicians and Vice Dean for Clinical Affairs at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Dr. Hamedani also spent nearly two decades at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and UW Health, where she founded the Department of Emergency Medicine and chaired it for over a decade, while also leading system initiatives related to quality and innovation. She completed her emergency medicine training at Mass General Brigham, and completed a fellowship in hospital administration at Massachusetts General Hospital. She holds degrees from Yale University and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.   — 📍 Connect with us: Heart of Healthcare website LinkedIn YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    Can AI Finish What The Quality Revolution Started? | Bunkerhill Health CCO Dr. Azita Hamedani
  3. Sep 14

    Anthropic’s Bet on the Future of Healthcare | Healthcare and Life Sciences Lead, Sarah Russell

    Sarah Russell picked up a phrase at her new job at Anthropic: a "non-regrettable primitive." It's how she describes the kind of infrastructure she thinks Anthropic should be building in healthcare, and it says a lot about how one of the most closely watched companies in health AI is positioning itself.  In this episode, Steve talks with Sarah Russell, MD healthcare and life sciences lead at Anthropic. This conversation comes as Anthropic heads toward what's shaping up to be one of the most anticipated IPOs in years. We cover: What Anthropic is doing in healthcareWhy HIPAA is struggling to keep up with AI agents Where she thinks AI will change care first (it’s not where you'd expect!)The two very different bars regulators are weighing AI against, and why the choice matters more than most people realizeThe one piece of advice from her father that still shapes how she builds teams, and what she tells doctors nervous about a career in medicine now About our guest: Sarah currently works on healthcare and life sciences projects at Anthropic. She is particularly passionate about research that explores how to make Claude safer and less confidently wrong. Prior to Anthropic, she was at Google X, an innovation hub at Alphabet, where she learned to lead teams of smart engineers building ML- and LLM-based products. Seeing the earliest version of Google’s Med-PaLM summarize a patient chart made her excited about healthcare technology all over again. Prior to Google, she was a CMIO in the VA system and a start-up founder. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, Sarah did her internal medicine residency at MGH and completed an MBA at Wharton. She still practices part-time in Urgent Care at Stanford, where she is an Assistant Professor. ⸺ 📍 Connect with us: Heart of Healthcare website LinkedIn YouTube If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave us a review! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    Anthropic’s Bet on the Future of Healthcare | Healthcare and Life Sciences Lead, Sarah Russell
  4. Sep 7

    Why American Workers Pay So Much for Healthcare | Health Rosetta CEO Dave Chase

    Healthcare costs are taking an ever-larger bite out of American workers’ compensation. This Labor Day, we’re revisiting a conversation with Health Rosetta CEO Dave Chase about why healthcare has become so expensive and what employers can do about it. Dave argues that healthcare itself isn’t the problem: clinicians receive only a fraction of every dollar spent, while price gouging, administrative bloat, and middlemen consume much of the rest. He explains how community-owned health plans are rebuilding employer healthcare around primary care, transparency, and better incentives—and how the savings can flow back to workers and their communities. We cover: Why rising healthcare costs ultimately come out of workers’ payHow community-owned health plans cut out costly middlemenWhy better primary care can lower costs while improving outcomesHow employers can rebuild health benefits from the ground upWhy Dave believes open-source healthcare could challenge entrenched incumbents  ⸺ 📍 Connect with us: Heart of Healthcare website LinkedIn YouTube ⸺ About our guest: Dave Chase is the founder of Health Rosetta and creator of the community-owned health plan (COHP) model, a movement that has helped thousands of employers covering more than 5 million Americans build health plans that deliver better care at 20 to 50% lower cost. In 2024 he launched Nautilus Health Institute, seeded with $4 million in Health Rosetta intellectual property, to publish open-source standards and contracting templates that reset market norms for employers, clinicians, and communities. Dave’s work has reached over 1 million people through bestselling books, including “CEO’s Guide to Restoring the American Dream” and his newest, “Relocalizing Health: Taking Back Healthcare. Rebuilding Communities,” along with TED talks and TV and film appearances. He received the World Health Care Congress’ Lifetime Achievement Award for Health Benefits Innovation. Before Health Rosetta, Dave led Microsoft’s $30 billion healthcare ecosystem and co-founded Avado, later acquired by WebMD/Medscape. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    Why American Workers Pay So Much for Healthcare | Health Rosetta CEO Dave Chase
  5. Aug 24

    From Early Struggles to Billion+ Exit | SmarterDx Founders Michael Gao & Joshua Geleris

    We don't talk enough about how hard it actually is to build a healthcare startup. Behind SmarterDx's story, now one of the biggest health AI exits to date, were 18 months without a single customer, a pivot that seemed to make no product sense, and two co-founders who went back to working as hospitalists just to get by. In this episode, Steve gets the real story from Dr. Michael Gao and Dr. Joshua Geleris about the challenges they faced and what ultimately unlocked real growth and led to their billion+ acquisition by New Mountain Capital. We cover: Why their first product idea failed and what customer objections actually taught them to build insteadThe counterintuitive workflow that made contingency pricing possibleHow AI translation of clinical notes into billing codes now outperforms the average human, and what that means for coders and nursesWhy "moat" is the wrong metaphor and what a flywheel looks like insteadWhat they'd do differently in the acquisition process About our guests: Michael Gao, MD, the CEO and co-founder of SmarterDx. Prior to founding SmarterDx, Dr. Gao was the Medical Director for Transformation at NewYork-Presbyterian, where he led applied AI development, implementation, and strategy for the health system. Dr. Gao holds faculty positions at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Gao completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian.. He received his M.D. from the University of Michigan and a B.S from the University of California Los Angeles. Josh Geleris, MD, is the Head of Product and co-founder of SmarterDx. Prior to SmarterDx, he was Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University, where he was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense for clinical informatics and data science, and led implementation of Epic for providers. Dr. Geleris completed his MD at the Technion-Israeli Institute of Technology and his Internal Medicine internship and residency at NewYork-Presbyterian.  ⸺ 📍 Connect with us: Heart of Healthcare website LinkedIn YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    From Early Struggles to Billion+ Exit | SmarterDx Founders Michael Gao & Joshua Geleris
  6. Aug 17

    Training Doctors for the Next 40 Years | Stanford Medical School Dean Dr. Lloyd Minor

    It's back-to-school szn, and while some kids are stressing over earlier wake-ups, this year's incoming medical students have a bigger question to answer: how do you train for a career that could still have you practicing medicine in the 2070s, when the tools of medicine are changing so rapidly? For our back-to-school episode, we sat down with Stanford University School of Medicine Dean Dr. Lloyd Minor to talk about how AI is already reshaping what future doctors learn and how they're taught, as well as what's still not working in American healthcare. We cover: What medical students are actually being taught about AI, and where Stanford still draws the lineWhy Stanford's tumor boards no longer start with humansThe surprising way Dr. Minor thinks AI could level the playing field in healthcare accessWhy the same AI tools helping patients feel more informed are also making them more anxiousThe counterintuitive reason new medical technology gets more expensive before it gets cheaperWhat's still standing in the way of a vision for precision medicine that's been decades in the making About our guest: Lloyd B. Minor, MD, is a scientist, surgeon, and academic leader. He is the Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine and Vice President for Medical Affairs at Stanford University. Dr. Minor also is a professor of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery and a professor of Bioengineering and of Neurobiology, by courtesy, at Stanford University. As dean, Dr. Minor has had an integral role in setting strategy for the clinical enterprise of Stanford Medicine, an academic medical center that includes the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Health Care, and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. With his leadership, Stanford Medicine leads the biomedical revolution in Precision Health. His book, “Discovering Precision Health,” describes this shift to more preventive, personalized health care and highlights how biomedical advances are dramatically improving our ability to treat and cure complex diseases. In 2021, Dr. Minor articulated and began realizing a bold vision to transform the future of life sciences at Stanford University and beyond – a multi-decade journey enabled by Precision Health. In August 2023, Dr. Minor was appointed Vice President for Medical Affairs to lead all matters related to health and medicine at Stanford University. Before Stanford, Dr. Minor was provost and senior vice president for academic affairs of Johns Hopkins University. Prior to this appointment in 2009, Dr. Minor served as the Andelot Professor and director (chair) of the Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and otolaryngologist-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital. With more than 160 published articles and chapters, Dr. Minor is an expert in balance and inner ear disorders perhaps best known for discovering superior canal dehiscence syndrome, a debilitating disorder characterized by sound- or pressure-induced dizziness. He subsequently developed a surgical procedure that corrects the problem and alleviates symptoms. In 2012, Dr. Minor was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. — 📍 Connect with us: Heart of Healthcare website LinkedIn YouTube  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    Training Doctors for the Next 40 Years | Stanford Medical School Dean Dr. Lloyd Minor
  7. Aug 10

    Can Oura Become the Doctor in Your Pocket? | Oura CEO Tom Hale

    We're on summer break and replaying one of our favorite episodes. This episode originally aired on September 22, 2025. A wearable can collect endless data, but it only matters if people trust it enough to change their behavior. In this replay, Oura CEO Tom Hale joins Steve and Michael to explain how the company combines clinical-grade accuracy with a consumer-friendly product. They discuss why the ring’s form factor makes overnight tracking so powerful, how Oura turns physiological signals into useful guidance, and why the company is being pulled faster than expected into traditional healthcare. We cover: Why sleep data can reveal changes in the body before symptoms appearHow Oura designed a health product that supports users without judging or nagging themWhy accuracy is the foundation for trust, predictions, and behavior changeHow Oura navigates the boundary between wellness products and regulated medical devicesThe company’s expansion into Medicare Advantage, women’s health, metabolic health, and clinical care— About our guest: Tom Hale is the Chief Executive Officer at ŌURA and a member of its board. As the CEO he sets the company’s business strategy and vision to make health a daily practice for members all over the world. He has over 30 years of experience across the technology and consumer product industry. Before joining ŌURA, Hale was president of Momentive where he drove B2B strategy and led product growth. During his time there he was instrumental in taking the company public in 2018, leading the team in key acquisitions, and driving the evolution and rebranding of the company into a multiple SAAS business. Previously, he held leadership roles at HomeAway and Linden Lab as the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer, respectively, and held executive roles at Macromedia and Adobe. Hale has a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University and sits on the boards of Cars.com, RocketReach, and NoiseAware. — If you're enjoying the show, we would so appreciate it if you left us a review! — 📍 Connect with us: Heart of Healthcare website LinkedIn Instagram YouTube TikTok  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    Can Oura Become the Doctor in Your Pocket? | Oura CEO Tom Hale
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About

🏆 2026 Webby Award-winning podcast. Join us every Monday for conversations with the biggest names in healthcare. Hosted by health tech veterans Halle Tecco, Michael Esquivel, and Steve Kraus. Learn more and submit your ideas for the show at the Heart of Healthcare website.

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