Free Daily Podcast Summary
Slice of Healthcare: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Slice of Media, Inc.
The go-to site for digital health executive/provider interviews, technology updates, and industry news. Listed to in 65+ countries. Sponsored by Sage Growth Partners and Quantum Health.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 3 days ago34 min
#538 - Why did two clinical AI founders bet on the paperwork instead? | Shaju Puthussery (CEO, LightSpun) & Deepak Ramaswamy (CTO)
Shaju Puthussery and Deepak Ramaswamy are the CEO and CTO of LightSpun, which is rebuilding the back-end engine of insurance processing as agentic AI infrastructure, starting in dental and moving into vision and ancillary benefits. Both came from Overjet, where Deepak was a co-founder and Shaju the first employee, and this conversation is largely about why they walked away from that thesis. Reading X-rays was the visible AI problem. Underneath it was a plumbing problem: claims that never reach clinical review because the documents were wrong, the provider record did not match, or the file never loaded cleanly.Two things in this episode surprised us. The first is that their most valuable asset was an accident. Shaju assumed credentialing was table stakes until a payer CEO told him it was blocking dentist onboarding, and one weekend later Deepak had an approach. That became the rail for roughly 87% of practicing dentists in the US and the provider data spine that feeds adjudication. The second is Shaju's answer to whether anyone profits from claim friction, which is not the cynical answer most people give.We discuss:Why Deepak argues the AI question is not either-or, and why world-class clinical review is worthless if the claim cannot get to itThe moment their business model was confidently wrong: they built for benefits configuration, customers came back asking about credentialing, duplicate records, and file loads, and a startup that planned to do one thing had to bet on tenWhy credentialing was never a Trojan horse for the provider data layer, how the same 200,000-dentist dataset gets monetized twice, and what obligation comes with being the thing the system quietly depends onThe honest ceiling on model performance: 85 to 90% out of the box, and why the climb to 98 or 99% production-ready is where the humans actually liveThe exact decision they will not automate, with the line drawn between deterministic denials (two cleanings a year, a $2,000 annual max) and anything touching a clinical outcomeWhy regulation, not technology, sets the pace, and how they take a faster primary source verification method to their internal NCQA leader with screenshots, timestamps, and source authenticity to prove it still holds upShaju's contrarian read on the $17 to $21 billion admin waste question: no one is winning from the friction, both sides are automating, and the real goal is shifting dollars from admin to careBringing fintech into adjudication with a benefits flex card that carries a Visa or Mastercard rail, blocks non-covered procedures at the chair, and opened doors to a vendor network of roughly 150 health plansThe discipline of not chasing every model release, what Hugging Face taught them early about picking bets, and why the architecture is built to swap foundation models out entirelyDeepak's pushback on the beachhead narrative: dental is several years behind medical, which means the solutions may not transfer cleanly, and they designed for vision and ancillary from day one rather than treating dental as a waypointWhy compliance came before the AI story, with SOC 2 Type 2, HITRUST, and NCQA in place first so they could get in the room with large payers at allThe legacy Deepak actually wants: recognized as the company that automated the boring and the safe, and left the critical decisions with people—Brought to you by: Sage Growth Partners — Value-focused strategy and marketing for growth-driven healthcare organizations.—Where to find Jared:• X: https://x.com/jaredstaylor• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredstaylor/
- 1 weeks ago19 min
#537 - Is the smart home finally becoming healthcare infrastructure? | Mike McSherry (CEO, Xealth)
Mike McSherry is the CEO of Xealth, the digital health orchestration company now operating inside Samsung Electronics. Xealth gives clinicians a way to prescribe and recommend far more than medication—including digital health apps, connected devices, remote-monitoring programs, transportation, meal delivery, and other services that increasingly shape a patient’s care journey.The Samsung acquisition puts Xealth inside a company with a healthcare footprint far larger than most Americans realize. Samsung operates major hospitals, manufactures biologic medicines and medical equipment, develops healthcare robotics, and already has televisions, appliances, phones, watches, and other connected devices inside millions of American homes. Mike’s bet is that this existing footprint can become the infrastructure for aging in place, chronic-care management, fall detection, medication support, and earlier intervention—without making patients feel constantly watched or turning the home into a hospital.That opportunity is becoming more immediate through the CMS ACCESS Model, a ten-year effort to bring technology-enabled, outcomes-based care to Medicare patients with chronic conditions. The model could allow companies offering services such as weight management, diabetes support, mental healthcare, wearable monitoring, and AI coaching to participate more directly in Medicare care delivery. Xealth can serve as the connective layer between health systems, clinicians, patients, and these new programs, while Samsung’s devices and consumer reach could support both monitoring and distribution.Mike’s larger argument is that healthcare is approaching a data reset. Consumer technology companies and AI platforms are beginning to combine medical records, laboratory results, wearable signals, and patient-reported information into a more complete picture than many hospitals currently possess. Health systems and EHR companies that cannot absorb wearable data may lose relevance—but simply dumping more information on clinicians will make the problem worse. The real breakthrough will come from AI systems that filter continuous data, identify what actually matters, and surface only the moments that require human attention.We discuss:Why Samsung may have a better chance in home-based healthcare than Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and other major companies that struggled to turn consumer reach into sustained healthcare adoptionHow Samsung’s hospitals, medical equipment, biologics manufacturing, robotics, wearables, smartphones, televisions, and connected appliances could become infrastructure for aging in place and chronic-care managementWhy big technology companies repeatedly bounce off healthcare—and why the industry rewards trust, patience, integration, and long-term investment rather than quick wins and software-like marginsWhat the ten-year CMS ACCESS Model could change for Medicare patients with chronic conditions—and why companies such as Noom, WHOOP, Headspace, Lark, and Welldoc could begin operating more like technology-enabled care providersHow Xealth could connect clinicians and health systems with covered digital-health programs, while Samsung’s devices and consumer reach support patient monitoring, engagement, and distributionWhy EHRs that cannot absorb wearable data risk falling behind AI platforms and consumer-health companies that already combine medical records, laboratory results, and continuous biometric informationHow AI could prevent physicians from drowning in streams of heart rate, temperature, oxygen, sleep, stress, and activity data by identifying the signals that actually require human interventionWhere wearables and connected care go next—from patches, earbuds, glasses, and implantables to household devices and robots that help patients remain independent without making their homes feel like hospitals—Brought to you by: Sage Growth Partners — Value-focused strategy and marketing for growth-driven healthcare organizations. — Where to find Jared: • X: https://x.com/jaredstaylor • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredstaylor/
- 3 weeks ago18 min
#536 - Is 340B really going away — or finally becoming infrastructure? | Kim Tzoumakas (CEO, VytlOne)
Kim Tzoumakas is the CEO of VytlOne, the nation's only independent, fully integrated total pharmacy solutions partner — the century-old company formerly known as Maxor, which she rebranded and merged with ProxsysRx in a fast-moving transformation after taking the helm in January 2025. VytlOne partners with mission-driven hospitals and health systems, combining pharmacy operations, 340B management, specialty pharmacy, pharmacy benefit management, and patient affordability solutions to help nonprofit providers unlock revenue and reinvest in their communities — work that generated $1.4 billion for its pharmacy partners in a single year. Its newest bet is VytlAIQ, an end-to-end intelligence platform built ground-up (not grafted onto a legacy system) that connects clinical, pharmacy, payer, and financial data into one real-time platform, surfacing next-best actions and checking every 340B claim for eligibility and documentation so problems get caught before they cost providers money. Kim came to pharmacy the long way around — two decades as a healthcare attorney embedded in hospitals and health systems, then CEO of RAYUS Radiology and 21st Century Oncology. Her core conviction is that 340B isn't a loophole to be abused or a relic on its way out; it's critical infrastructure that lets nonprofit health systems reinvest in patient care, and the real failure is that the tools serving it stayed reactive, fragmented, and manual. VytlOne's bet is that AI belongs in pharmacy not to replace clinical judgment or wipe out teams, but as an intelligent partner that tears down the administrative barriers — prior auth, denied claims, missing documentation — standing between a patient and their medication. The test of success: a patient who simply feels their care move faster and never once thinks about the software behind it.We discuss:Why the first thing Kim checks in any business isn't the P&L — it's the boards, the ownership model, and financial stability that determine whether a CEO can actually win — and what twenty years as a healthcare attorney inside hospitals taught her to seeThe real story on 340B: why the "it's going away" prediction has been wrong for thirty years, why the program is now evolving faster and getting more complex, and the one scenario where hospitals genuinely are in the wrong — double-dipping on rebatesHow you build a product when the rules might change next quarter — launching VytlAIQ right as the courts threw out the 340B rebate model, and why VytlOne built it from the ground up with pharmacists at the table instead of stitching together what already existedWhy most health-system dashboards get built and then ignored — and what makes a platform a pharmacist and a CFO will actually act on: one centralized, real-time source feeding the EHR that tracks every claim all the way through to payment receivedWhat you can't afford to break when you rebrand and merge a hundred-year-old company fast — protecting the culture and the people who gave decades to the organization while still turning the cornerThe uncomfortable truth for a CFO who's been burned by vendors — why pharmacy teams reflexively say "we already do that," where the skepticism about third parties really comes from, and how to turn a ten-million-dollar opportunity into a win-win instead of a threatWhere the line sits between what AI should decide versus only suggest in pharmacy — why it should never make a clinical or licensed decision — and the legal risks Kim sees as tech players rush into healthcare without understanding the guardrails, patient risks, or regulatory historyWhat Kim learned mentoring veterans through the Pat Tillman Foundation about fear of failure and hard choices — and the five-years-out test for VytlAIQ: a patient in specialty or chronic care who simply feels faster access to their medication and never connects it back to the software—Brought to you by: Sage Growth Partners — Value-focused strategy and marketing for growth-driven healthcare organizations. — Where to find Jared: • X: https://x.com/jaredstaylor • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredstaylor/
- Jun 24, 202631 min
#535 - Why is chronic disease still winning? | Mark Clermont (CEO, Cecelia Health) & Wendi Mader (CCO)
Mark Clermont is the CEO of Cecelia Health, and Wendi Mader is the company's Chief Commercial Officer. Cecelia is a virtual multi-specialty medical practice, licensed in all 50 states, that helps employers, payers, health systems, and life sciences companies manage chronic and cardiometabolic disease and bring down the cost of care. It's not a point solution. It's a medical practice that prescribes and manages medication (including GLP-1s, from prescribing through titration and side-effect management), runs intensive nutrition therapy, and handles behavior and lifestyle care, all through a team of RNs, RDs, certified diabetes educators, and physicians. The model is built to extend primary care, not replace it, and to coordinate across specialists instead of adding one more disconnected program.Mark and Wendi's argument is simple: chronic disease isn't winning because we lack apps or tools. It's winning because care is fragmented and nobody's tying it together. GLP-1s are making that worse before they make it better. They're the first drug class with indications spanning diabetes, obesity, sleep apnea, fatty liver, and soon addiction, which means a single patient can suddenly need four specialists who don't talk to each other. Cecelia's bet is that a multi-specialty practice can be the layer that connects all of it.We get into:Why chronic disease keeps winning even though there are more apps, tools, and wellness programs than ever, and what point solutions got wrongWhat actually happens to a patient with diabetes and high blood pressure inside Cecelia's model versus the system todayWhy GLP-1s are the first drug class to cross medical specialties, and why that's making fragmentation worse right nowThe patient on a high-dose GLP-1 and an SSRI who almost ended up in the ER, and what the direct-to-consumer prescriber missedHow the US can rank dead last among developed nations and still be the system Mark wouldn't trade for anywhere elseWhere the industry is over-indexing on AI in chronic care, and where Wendi thinks tech actually belongsThe specialty shortage, healthcare deserts, and rural-health funding, and how virtual coordinated care reaches patients brick-and-mortar can'tWhat's different for patients five years from now if Cecelia gets this right—Brought to you by: Sage Growth Partners — Value-focused strategy and marketing for growth-driven healthcare organizations. — Where to find Jared: • X: https://x.com/jaredstaylor • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredstaylor/
- Jun 17, 202619 min
#534 - Can Cotiviti build the infrastructure layer healthcare's never had? | Ric Sinclair (CEO, Cotiviti)
Ric Sinclair is the CEO of Cotiviti, an enterprise healthcare software and data company that serves hundreds of health plans — including the top 25 in the country — across payment integrity, interoperability, risk adjustment, value-based care, and member engagement, touching coverage for over 300 million patients and members. Cotiviti pairs algorithms and AI with thousands of clinical nurses, MDs, and content experts in a human-in-the-loop model, working across the full administrative ecosystem that moves between payers, providers, patients, and pharma. Ric's core conviction is that healthcare's central problem isn't a data problem or a technology problem — it's a coordination problem, and what the system has never had is a true infrastructure layer to tie it together. Cotiviti isn't trying to pick a side between payers and providers; the bet is that a neutral party sitting in the middle can drive fair, transparent outcomes and pull down the trillion-plus dollars of administrative waste in U.S. healthcare.We discuss:Why healthcare's core problem isn't a data problem or a technology problem — it's a coordination problem, and what it actually takes to build the first infrastructure layer the system has ever hadThe real difference between owning a decade of data assets (and the Edifecs integration) and becoming the infrastructure the industry runs on — and where Cotiviti is in that build todayHow "human in the loop" works at scale — pairing AI with thousands of nurses, MDs, and content experts so every claim is reviewed fairly and problems get predicted before they happenWhy Ric's answer to AI isn't "cut the 10-person team to 2" — it's "take all 10 and do what 50 could," and what that augment-don't-replace math means for client ROIHow you build trust and accountability into an AI workflow rather than bolting it on — and who's accountable when models start shaping decisions about claims and careHow to sit in the neutral middle between payers and providers who don't trust each other — and what it takes to build something both sides actually believe is fairWhat Ric learned as a working drummer in Nashville before healthcare found him — leading without the spotlight, making others better, and why simplicity is a discipline that transfers straight into businessWhat a truly differentiated healthcare platform looks like five years out — and the test Ric uses for what "winning" means: a family of five at the dinner table who never have to think about the administrative machinery behind their care—Brought to you by: Sage Growth Partners — Value-focused strategy and marketing for growth-driven healthcare organizations. — Where to find Jared: • X: https://x.com/jaredstaylor • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredstaylor/
- May 21, 202615 min
#533 - Why technology alone can't fix value-based care | Tim Elliott (CEO, Navvis)
Tim Elliott is the CEO of Navvis, a value-based enablement company that works with health systems, health plans, physician groups, and employers to drive performance under value-based agreements. Navvis takes a cross-continuum view of care — supporting patients before, during, and after the physician visit — and operates across the full spectrum of payment models, from full-risk MA and MSSP ACOs to bundled payments, TEAMS, and CJR. Tim's core conviction is that physicians are the linchpin of any sustainable change in value-based care, and that the "last mile" of transformation is change management — not technology. Navvis doesn't show up with a blank piece of paper or a mandatory platform; they bring a point of view on what world-class looks like and engage physicians in the refinement and rollout.We discuss:What AI consistently misses in value-based care — and why "human in the loop" needs to be on steroids in healthcare, not just a check on the modelHow to recognize when a health system is rolling tools out faster than clinicians can absorb them — and why bottom-up physician demand is reshaping the AI rollout playbookThe real difference between a care model physicians co-designed and one that was handed to them — and how Navvis approaches refinement vs. a blank-paper exerciseWhat surprises health systems most when they move into real downside risk for the first time — the misalignment between contract incentives and operational behaviorWhy "two standards of care" is the wrong frame for value-based vs. fee-for-service patients — and what the EMR needs to recognize at the point of encounterThe alignment problem at the executive and physician level that quietly kills downside-risk contracts before the year is outThe lesson Tim hopes the industry finally learns 20 years from now — why the 3-5% of patients driving 60-80% of cost are the unfinished work of this eraWho Navvis is built for, and why their model is to optimize existing technology rather than force a 12-to-18-month rip-and-replace— Brought to you by: Sage Growth Partners — Value-focused strategy and marketing for growth-driven healthcare organizations. — Where to find Jared: • X: https://x.com/jaredstaylor • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredstaylor/
- May 6, 202621 min
#532 - Why you can't hire your way out of healthcare's workforce crisis | Navin Gupta (CEO, Viventium) + Adam Lewis (Founder, Apploi)
Navin Gupta is the CEO of Viventium, a verticalized HCM platform purpose-built for the post-acute care market — serving home health, skilled nursing, and hospice providers. He's spent over a decade at the intersection of senior care and technology, with deep experience across EHR, revenue cycle management, and engagement platforms for senior living. Adam Lewis is the founder of Apploi and now GM of Talent and Workforce Management at Viventium following the February acquisition. He's been building HR tech since 2007 and grew Apploi into a leading recruiting, credentialing, onboarding, and scheduling platform for healthcare. Together, the combined company now serves 13,000+ provider organizations and is on a mission to fix workforce instability in the most demographically urgent corner of healthcare.We discuss:Why post-acute care is the most mission-critical — and most underserved — tech opportunity in healthcareThe four-part workforce crisis every operator is fighting: supply, utilization, retention, and complianceWhat the Apploi + Viventium acquisition unlocks that a five-year partnership couldn'tWhy hiring friction is a direct hit to revenue — and why staffing now sits with CEOs and COOs, not just HRThe case for purpose-built vertical platforms over retrofitted horizontal HCMThe Perks4Care acquisition, and why you cannot hire your way out of a retention problemWhere AI creates real leverage in caregiver hiring — and how to deploy it without losing the human touchThree audit questions every post-acute provider should ask their current vendor today—Brought to you by:Sage Growth Partners — Value-focused strategy and marketing for growth-driven healthcare organizations.—Where to find Jared:• X: https://x.com/jaredstaylor• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredstaylor/
- Apr 1, 202621 min
#531 - Carrie Hodge, Co-Founder and CEO at Dimer Health
Join us on the latest episode, hosted by Jared S. Taylor!Our Guest: Carrie Hodge, Co-Founder and CEO at Dimer Health.What you’ll get out of this episode:Carrie Hodge’s experience as both clinician and cancer patient exposed critical gaps in post-discharge care.Dimer Health validated its model through real patient care before scaling technology.The company is introducing a new care model centered on “transitionists” to support recovery at home.AI and clinicians work together to provide continuous, responsive patient support.A $13.5M raise reflects strong product-market fit, patient outcomes, and growing demand.To learn more about:Website https://www.dimerhealth.com/ Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/company/dimer-health/Our sponsors for this episode are:Sage Growth Partners https://www.sage-growth.com/Quantum Health https://www.quantum-health.com/Show and Host's Socials:Slice of HealthcareLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sliceofhealthcare/Jared S TaylorLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredstaylor/WHAT IS SLICE OF HEALTHCARE?The go-to site for digital health executive/provider interviews, technology updates, and industry news. Listed to in 65+ countries.
Customized Recaps
AI-powered recaps with compact key takeaways, quotes, and insights.
Straight to Your Inbox
Get key takeaways from Slice of Healthcare in a 5-minute read.
Save Hours Every Week
Stay current on your favorite podcasts without falling behind.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Podzilla's Slice of Healthcare daily summary?
It's a free AI-powered email that summarizes new episodes of Slice of Healthcare as soon as they're published. You get the key takeaways, notable quotes, and links & mentions — all in a quick read.
How does the Slice of Healthcare podcast summary work?
When a new episode drops, our AI transcribes and analyzes it, then generates a personalized summary tailored to your interests and profession. It's delivered to your inbox every morning.
Is this an official Slice of Healthcare product?
No. Podzilla is an independent service that summarizes publicly available podcast content. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by Slice of Media, Inc..
Can I get summaries of other podcasts too?
Absolutely! The free plan covers up to 3 podcasts. Upgrade to Pro for 15, or Premium for 50. Browse our full catalog at /podcasts.
How often does Slice of Healthcare release new episodes?
Slice of Healthcare publishes weekly. Our AI generates a summary within hours of each new episode.
What topics does Slice of Healthcare cover?
Slice of Healthcare covers topics including News, Business. Our AI identifies the specific themes in each episode and highlights what matters most to you.
Start getting Slice of Healthcare summaries tomorrow morning.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.