Transcript
Chip Kahn: Healthcare is about caring about the people who deliver it and the patients who depend on it. But to make that caring happen, to sustain it, and to meet the expectations of every patient who walks through the door, there is a business that has to work. This podcast is about that business. Welcome to KFF’s Business of Health. I’m Chip Kahn. Americans who work in health care are driven by professionalism and mission. But professionalism and mission don’t run on good intentions alone. How care is financed, how it is delivered, how technology is deployed, how incentives are aligned. These are, ah, the forces that determine whether patients get the quality, the safety and, and the outcomes they deserve. Health policy sets the rules of the road, but it is the business of health care. The decisions made every day by leaders who run systems, manage payment and allocate resources, that determines whether those rules translate into better care or not. In my view, that reality is often insufficiently understood by those who make policy and those who inform and advise the policy process. I see a gap between what the policy world knows about legislation and regulation and what it needs to know about a $5 trillion industry and how that industry operates. The intent of this podcast is to contribute to the closing of that gap, bringing those who provide the care and those who run systems, manage insurance, build technology, design, payment and allocate capital into direct conversation about the forces shaping American health care. Not theory, not commentary. The real world of healthcare delivery and financing. The first series of this new podcast will begin with a subject that all of us need to understand. Artificial intelligence. Over the next several months, in an in depth series, we will examine what AI is doing right now to, to health care, to clinical practice, to hospital operations, to clinical performance, to the patient experience and to how the industry is financed and structured. Our guests are those deploying this technology, managing its consequences and designing policy around it. From health systems leaders and clinician scientists to payer executives, technology leaders and regulators, we will cover the waterfront with those developing and contending with AI adoption in American healthcare.
Inaugural guest, Drew Altman, KFF president and CEO
But for our very first episode, before we turn to the AI series, our inaugural guest will be Drew Altman, the president and CEO of KFF, who has led KFF for more than 30 years, creating the nation’s leading independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism. Drew is also the person who, who made this podcast possible. Drew Altman, welcome to KFF’s Business of Health.
Drew Altman: Chip. Glad to be here, Drew.
Chip Kahn: It’s great to have you. And you are, the glue that makes all this work. So it’s a great way to Start this podcast with you as our guest. before we get into the business of health, why we’re doing it,
Chip Kahn: what our purpose is, let’s talk about
Chip Kahn: a broader context because it is KFF’s business of health. We’re part of KFF. So can you give us an idea of what you meant to do and what your purpose is in this organization, which is not a foundation anymore, it’s really something else.
Drew Altman: No, we’re not a foundation. And Chip, before I answer your question, which I will answer, I want to welcome you, to our podcast. thrilled to have you. This will add tremendous, tremendously to our ability to talk about these cutting edge issues and what’s going on in the private sector and in the marketplace and to reach new audiences. So it’s really important and welcome to you.
Chip Kahn: Well, glad to be here.
Drew Altman: KFF is an organization that we started a new organization, and I started it, quite some time ago. It’s almost embarrassing to talk about, but the basic idea was pretty simple. It was to build an organization which, through different kinds of information, heavy duty policy analysis and research, polling and survey research, and our journalism, KFF Health News, now the largest health newsroom, in the country, could be hopefully, trusted, independent source of information on these big controversial health care issues and a voice for people too, who sometimes don’t have a voice in, in our big healthcare debates. A little bit of
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Drew Altman: a counterweight, to the money in politics that dominates healthcare over a long period of time. That kind of basic idea has worked out for us. And that’s it. It’s really, pretty simple. We don’t take positions, we don’t advance our own proposals. Trying to be as objective as we possibly can be through all of the research and the polling and the journalism isn’t neutral because nothing’s neutral in the shooting war now and the highly polarized environment we operate in. It’s been more than enough to make us different in the space in which we operate. And that recipe, that formula has worked out well for us over now more than three decades.
Chip Kahn: But evidence is important and reality’s important. And I think that’s one of the things you’re trying to achieve here, is through the new service and through the research to get that information one up to policymakers and the rest of the media and other opinion leaders, as well as giving an opportunity for the public to really better understand what the facts are.
Drew Altman: You could certainly argue that facts and institutions, that provide them and experts are on the ropes and don’t matter as much as they once did, but it’s a value for us. We believe we’re lost without them, that they really do matter. And one of the things I’ve discovered in recent years is while they may matter a little bit less, in some areas, maybe political campaigns, they really still do matter in many, for example, legislative debates where, what it costs, who’s affected, who wins and who loses. Just look at CBO scores really do matter. And we’ve seen our data, our facts about, for example, what, not extending ACA tax credits might or might not mean, really have a fundamental impact on discussion, and debate. And so we’re able to play a role. We have no delusions of grandeur, and we understand that we, by ourselves are not going to transform the healthcare debate in the US but we think we can play. We have played a role which is badly needed, honorable, and important, and that’s good enough for us.
Chip Kahn: Well, and what excites me about being here is that you are a trusted outlet, because I hear people on both sides of the aisle, you know, discussing the information they get from kff, whether it’s from the research or just.
Drew Altman: And we also get flack from both sides of the aisle, which is kind of my barometer. If I’m only getting flak from one side of the aisle, I get a little worried about what, we’re doing. And actually, it might surprise you which side we get the most flak from. Probably not what people would expect, but let’s just leave it at that.
Chip Kahn: Well, what’s important is that you’re getting a lot of information out there. And that’s one of the things that attracted me to our initial discussions, was that I’ve been concerned for a long time. In all the work I’ve done over whether I worked on Capitol Hill or for the insurance industry or ultimately for hospitals, I’ve been concerned about policymakers, opinion leaders, media, particularly inside the Beltway, having a real grasp of what’s happening on the ground, to the care that Americans receive, to all those trying to provide the care. And that’s what led me to, our discussions about having this podcast developed
Chip Kahn: around the business of health. How do you see it fitting in
Chip Kahn: to the broader context of the organization you just described?
Centering People and Patients
Drew Altman: Well, a couple of things. First, building on that point, in everything that we do, all of the work that we do, we center people and patients. That’s just fundamental for us. What does it mean for real people and for patients? I’m particularly concerned right now for Example about what’s happening at the chronically ill. Who are the folks who are having the hardest time paying their health care bills? I mean, by far, I think of it as we throw around the word crisis too much. But if there is a crisis in health care costs for people in the country, it’s really people who use the healthcare system a lot, who experience, that crisis. We are in everything we do, all about, what does it mean for people, and for people who become patients because they use the health care system. This podcast is especially important because. Well, for a couple of reasons. One is to over generalize. people in the private sector don’t understand policy very well, and people in the policy world don’t understand the marketplace and the private sector very well. So we work hard at trying to build those bridges. This podcast is part of that. But more importantly, the changes that are occurring in the private sector, take AI as an example, or private equity, or just all of the changes occurring in payment, and delivery are occurring incredibly rapidly. So many of them are impossible to capture in a definitive study or analysis or to
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Drew Altman: survey the public about some of the nuances of private. We do survey them, but some of the nuances of, say, private equity or what’s happening with value hospital payment, people don’t know what that is. And so it is through a podcast like this and through you, that we’re able to bring in people who have their finger on the pulse of the changes that are happening just as they’re happening. The best experts in the country who are also on the front lines to try and help everyone understand what does this mean? What really, actually is happening. Otherwise they have to wait two, three, four years to get data, or may, maybe we will never get data about what’s actually, happening so that we can write the perfect policy brief. Well, we don’t have the perfect policy brief on what’s happening in the marketplace. So this really adds tremendously to our ability to be nimble and move fast, understand what’s happening. We have an analogous initiative on the policy side, which Larry Levitt moderates called Wonk Shop, where we try and do something similar. But we really wanted to be able to focus on the rapidly moving changes
Drew Altman: occurring in the marketplace
Chip Kahn: and that care really depends on. For the title. We call it business, but it really is the infrastructure that all Americans depend on for their health care, where they receive their health care, where the research is done that produces the medical miracles that’ll hopefully allow them to live longer and live healthier. all Those things are dependent on this infrastructure. And the infrastructure is facing a lot of challenges.
AI Series Preview
And that’s why I’m glad, you and Larry came up with the idea that I should start off with AI in healthcare in terms of a, podcast series. Because AI could be the greatest disruptor of that infrastructure, could enhance the infrastructure tremendously. But it challenges that infrastructure, you know,
Chip Kahn: that we’ve almost ever faced.
Chip Kahn: We’re up against it now. Hopefully over the next 20 or so episodes, our audience is going to see the impact of this being really unprecedented.
Drew Altman: This is a little bit, of an indelicate way to make the point, but I really agree with that and believe that a thousand years ago we were living in Philadelphia, my wife was running a children’s hospital and I was working in policy and we got annoyed with one another and she said to me, I do health care and you do bs. And there was some truth to that. And I just have a deep respect for, I, don’t even use the word provider for health professionals and healthcare institutions. But what it really comes down to is understanding what’s actually happening on the front lines and in institutions and to patients and to people. And really that is what I Hope will be KFF’s emphasis as AI unfolds. Because I attend all, you know, the conferences too, and speak at many of them. And there’s tremendous focus. We need to focus on it, on what it means for business opportunities and what it means for research and what it means for diagnosis. And I don’t hear a lot of discussion about what it means for people and for patients who our surveys show are distrustful of it, or may even increasingly be using AI as their doctor because they can’t get care otherwise or afford it or don’t then follow up with a doctor when they get some information from AI about what they think might be a medical problem. So these are just things we need to sort out. And I think starting with AI and with an elaborate 18 part series on AI, is just exactly the right place to start.
Chip Kahn: Yeah, we’re going to try to cover the waterfront. I mean there are a lot of good podcasts on AI. I don’t think anybody’s done it as thoroughly as we plan. And I hope after this it’ll provide anyone who is listening as we come out every week or binging at some point in the future. They’ll leave it really having a good understanding of the challenges.
Drew Altman: Yeah. And we’ll continue also to do our surveys of how people are and are not using AI in healthcare. We’ll also continue through another part of the organization to look at AI’s role in misinformation both spreading misinformation but also as a way to monitor it and hopefully put it all together amounting eventually to our own significant effort on AI. We are trying to figure out what is our role in AI and also how do we use it in our own work which is a, a different subject.
Chip Kahn: Well Drew, I want to thank you again for this opportunity. we’re going to start in a week with launching our first series on AI and healthcare with Erik Larson. I think we’re going to set a good foundation and then really do something that
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Chip Kahn: I hope our listening public will appreciate and will inform them in a way that almost no one else has and just thank you. Glad to be here and look forward to working with KFF into the future.
Drew Altman: Terrific. I hope everyone learns a lot and also has some fun. Thanks.
