Zubin Damania is many things. He’s a Stanford-trained physician.
He’s an internist and hospitalist who launched one of the nation’s most talked-about primary care ventures with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. He’s a talented musician who stars in elaborately produced healthcare music-parody videos. He’s the most ardent promulgator and self-described “voice” of Health 3.0. He’s the host of the nightly online show “The Incident Report,” which is watched regularly by 1.7 million people.
He lovingly refers to this army of patients, doctors, nurses and therapists as the “Z-Pac.” They loving refer back to him as ZDoggMD.
Whether you call him Zubin, Dr. Damania or ZDogg, there’s no denying he is a brilliant healthcare innovator and a remarkable entertainer, making him the ideal first guest of a new podcast series dedicated to fixing the broken healthcare system.
“Fixing Healthcare” is a show with a mission to solve the healthcare system’s biggest problems, many of which stem from, and have grown within, American hospitals. Today, medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the United States, killing more than 250,000 Americas each year. Hospital readmissions are, by some estimates, a $25 billion problem that’s largely avoidable. Of the world’s 11 most industrialized nations, the United States ranks dead last in life expectancy, childhood mortality and nearly every other measure of clinical quality. Meanwhile, hospitals now account for 30% of the nation’s $3.3 trillion in healthcare expenditures, which is 50% more than any other nation spends on its healthcare.
To solve these problems, American medicine needs a hero, a leader with radical ideas and bold plans for the future—someone who’s not afraid to turn healthcare on its head.
We’ve made it our mission to find that leader. Each month, we, the hosts, will play the role of “hiring managers,” conducting a tag-team interview as candidates vie for the highly coveted (and totally fictitious) position, “Leader of American Healthcare.”
Our first applicant, Dr. Zubin Damania, proved himself a worthy candidate. His task was to present a road map for fixing American healthcare’s biggest problems with these metrics as his guide:
• Increase life expectancy in the U.S. from last among the 11 wealthiest nations to at least the middle of the pack.
• Increase the quality of patient outcomes by 20% (as publicly reported by organizations like the NCQA).
• Decrease the cost of healthcare by 20% (according to federally reported data)
• Improve patient service and convenience by 20% (according to patient satisfaction reports)
• Improve professional satisfaction for clinicians by 20% (according to physician surveys)
As you can see, we aren’t interested in small, incremental fixes. Rather, we know any solution capable of making a difference will require total “disruption of the healthcare system as we know it.” For a sense of Dr. Damania’s most noteworthy insights, click here. But for a deeper understanding of the three-tier coverage approach he’s advocating, and how he’d address the oversupply of hospitals and specialists, we invite you to listen to the whole program.
Next month, “Fixing Healthcare” welcomes Dr. Halee Fischer-Wright, president and CEO of Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). She’s the author of the recent national bestseller “Back to Balance: The Art, Science, and Business of Medicine” and one of Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Women In Healthcare. She’s vying for the same job as ZDoggMD and her plan to fix American healthcare will undergo the same level of scrutiny. Tune in then as we closely examine her application for “Leader of American Health Care.”
Dr. Robert Pearl is the former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group (1999-2017), the nation’s largest medical group, and former president of The Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group (2009-2017). He serves as a clinical professor of plastic surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine and is on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He wrote the 2017 Washington Post bestseller “Mistreated: Why We think We’re Getting Good Healthcare—And Why We’re Usually Wrong” and is a healthcare contributor to Forbes.
Jeremy Corr is the host of the popular New Books in Medicine podcast where he interviews the authors of new books in healthcare. On this show, he has interviewed some of the top thought leaders and innovators in medicine. By day, Jeremy works for MediRevv, a healthcare revenue cycle firm that helps provider organizations grow revenue and create positive patient experiences.
“Fixing Healthcare” is a part of the New Books Network (NBN) and a co-production of Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr. Subscribe to the show via iTunes or on your favorite podcasting platform. Join the conversation or refer a candidate for a future episode by following the show on Twitter @fixinghcpodcast and on our Fixing Healthcare LinkedIn page.