← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
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- [00:00]
Erica Carbajal
Hi everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Beckers Healthcare podcast. I'm Erica Carbajal, an editor with the Becker's Hospital Review team, and I'm excited today to be joined by Dr. Kate Goodrich, Chief Medical Officer at Humana. Dr. Goodrich, welcome. Pleasure to have you today.
- [00:19]
Dr. Kate Goodrich
Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really glad to be here.
- [00:22]
Erica Carbajal
Yeah, happy to have you. Lots going on, lots to chat about. Before we get into it, do you mind sharing a little bit about your background, the scope of your work, know you have an interesting background, having come from cms, share a little bit about that.
- [00:37]
Dr. Kate Goodrich
Absolutely. So I started off as just a practicing doc. I am a hospitalist, internist by training and I practiced full time for about 13 years. And then I made a transition into the federal government because I was really interested in finding other ways to improve the quality of care, particularly for seniors and for people on public health insurance like Medicare and Medicaid. So I came to cms for another 10 years where that really was my area of focus was looking at how we can improve quality, how we can tie quality of payment, very focused on value based care and payment mechanisms for value based care. And then after my 10 years in the federal government, the vast majority of which was at cms, I came to Humana five years ago, started off standing up a new capability to focus on how we can drive down medical costs through improving quality, through improving outcomes for seniors, which is something I'm very passionate about. And then three years ago I became chief Medical officer where I've really continued with that focus, but looking at a variety of different ways to do that.
- [01:51]
Erica Carbajal
Yeah, really interesting background, Dr. Goodrich, and sounds like early days there in leading some of the value based care work back at cms.
- [02:00]
Dr. Kate Goodrich
Yes.
- [02:01]
Erica Carbajal
Well, to start us off, can you tell us about a key priority for you through the rest of the year? Hard to believe where halfway through the year already. But when you look back come early 2026, what's something you hope to make some meaningful improvements on?
- [02:18]
Dr. Kate Goodrich
Well, my scope really, my direct scope is really focused on clinician. And by that I primarily mean physician and nurse engagement and well being here at Humana, but also increasingly focusing on how as a major payer, we can really improve our working relationship with clinicians that we contract with, for example. So how can we work together with the clinician community to really address some of the friction points and sort of, I'll call them administrative frustrations that exist between providers and payers? Sometimes I think There's a lot of opportunity there and I think there's a lot of desire to really focus on that. That is also definitely very early days, but I've been more focused in the last, I'd say year, year and a half on driving improvements in the experience of our internal clinicians. We now have about 1200 physicians at Humana between our insurance side and our care delivery side that is called center well and then we have I think close to 7,000 nurses in the organization. So between those two clinician groups, I am very focused on how we can make Humana an employer of choice for those populations, both in how we think about recruiting clinicians into the organization. But we want to keep them here once they're here. We want to make the experience through a variety of different dimensions as good as possible. I'm really hoping to accelerate some of the work that we've begun to really ensure that Humana is an employer of choice for clinicians.
- [04:01]
Erica Carbajal
Yeah, and I think just your comments on well being certainly resonate across the healthcare industry as a whole, both on the provider side and the payer side. Over the past few years we've seen so many organizations really just become more intentional around this. You know, conversations have moved from one off wellness efforts and programs into something that's really more formalized enterprise wide strategy, if you will, when it comes to the well being of their workforce. So can you, can you talk a little bit about that? What are you seeing work on that side and what are the clinicians at Humana craving to find more fulfillment in their work?
- [04:38]
Dr. Kate Goodrich
Well, I'm going to start with your second question because that sort of gets at really taking the time to understand the problems that we're trying to solve. So understanding what exactly it is that clinicians want in their work environments that they're not finding. And then I can tell you a little bit about what we're doing to address some of that. So we've done a lot of work to really understand what our clinical workforce is missing in their day to day. We look of course, like every company does at our turnover rate across the different job families that we have. And so certainly looking at clinicians, we wanted to figure out how do we really get our turnover rate down, really ensure that clinicians are happy at Humana and are able to really practice at the top of their license, whatever their job might actually be, whether it's an administrative job or it is a clinical frontline delivering care job. And so we found a few things. So number one, clinicians are often Frustrated with the technology they have to use every day. You've heard a lot about how electronic health records are contributing meaningfully to clinician burnout. That has certainly been true here. Other technology systems and platforms that our clinicians use, again, whether they're administrative or care delivery, are often frustrating. So much so that it is sometimes a reason people leave. And so we knew we needed to focus on that. Number two is that clinicians sometimes felt like they really weren't being seen and heard that they could actually contribute more to the organization, but they weren't always invited into the right conversations around things that actually impact their day to day work, or how we could improve certain functions within our organization. But they also really weren't sure how to contribute in the right ways. So I put that under the bucket of growth and development. Clinicians are constant learners, right? Went to school for a lot of years, but want to continue learning even when they are in full time, whether it's clinical practice or administrative work. So they want to find ways to continue to learn more, to learn more about our business, and to be able to contribute and maybe even have some agency over the decisions that get made that impact them. So that is another area that we heard a lot about and we wanted to focus on. So some of the things that we've done, for example, on the technology side, we've really started to transition our culture internally to ensure that we have clinicians really in the right conversations around how we prioritize our technology and tools that we want to have to support our clinicians or that they actually directly use. So they're involved in those prioritization conversations and they're involved in the implementation. One of the things we definitely heard, just to give you a concrete example, is we want to actually learn a little bit more about how we can use artificial intelligence to help us in our daily work. We piloted recently something called ambient AI, which more and more clinicians are starting to use. We piloted in a very small area. This is a technology where you can actually record a patient doctor visit and then I'm going to simplify greatly, but it spits out a note on the other end, which really reduces the documentation burden for clinicians. We did that in part because we heard that people, even in our own care delivery organization, we're spending too much time on documentation. That's one example. Then we've also put together a number of physician leadership programs for different levels of physicians, for frontline physicians, then for physician frontline leaders. Done a similar thing with our nurses as well, where we can actually help them to understand the business of healthcare, the business of Medicare Advantage, and really learn from so many leaders that are in our organization and even sometimes bringing in external speakers as well. And they get, you know, it's about a six month program. And we have seen that people who have gone through that program have stayed at Humana. More of them have stayed at Humana. Actually many of them have gotten promoted or gotten other opportunities because they are more business savvy because of these programs that we've developed. So those are just a couple of the ways that we have really approached supporting the needs of our clinicians as we have heard directly from them.
- [09:15]
Erica Carbajal
Yeah. Dr. Goodrich, thank you for sharing those examples. Really helpful to hear in practice what that work looks like. And certainly CAT is out of the bag, for lack of a better term, with ambient AI. Lots of leaders are optimistic about what we will continue to see in terms of the impact on what that will have on the physician workforce. It's like folks are already saying, we know it's helping with burnout, we've already established that. But there's also so much more in terms of just the work efficiency and the quality of patient care that's being delivered that we'll continue to see in the coming years. Dr. Goodrich, any areas where you tend to see alignment or maybe misalignment between payer and provider efforts around clinician and well being?
- [10:03]
Dr. Kate Goodrich
Yeah, I would say there are definitely some areas that are very similar in what we hear from our clinicians who work on the, on the insurance side and the clinicians on the care delivery side. So, for example, what I mentioned before about wanting more opportunities for growth and development and understanding the business, we heard that across the board, that was not unique to one side or the other. And so that's why in my office we are attending to clinicians really on both sides of the house, if you will. And those programs that I mentioned around physician development really were geared towards the entire population of physicians that we have, I would say, rather than say maybe use the word misalignment, what I might say is that there are some differences in what is important to a physician who is seeing patients every day and a physician who is, for example, a medical reviewer doing utilization management or something like that. So certainly on the frontline care delivery side, one of the things physicians want is more time to be able to spend more time with their patients and managing their population of patients. And they really need, and we think that technologies like the one I mentioned is one way to address that other ways to address that is to ensure that those physicians are getting the resources that they need around them within the clinic setting to be able to support the care of patients so that you can take some of the things off the plate of the physician that somebody else, another type of professional, might be better suited to doing. And so that's something we've worked hard on. I should really give the credit to our center, well, colleagues who really have led that effort around ensuring that our physicians have the resources they need, both from a technology perspective, but I would say other healthcare professional perspective as well. On the insurance side, one of the things we've heard is that physicians want a little bit more time to be able to contribute to other efforts going on inside Humana. You have a number of clinicians who are very, very skilled from a clinical perspective, but they also really understand a lot about how the insurance business works and they feel like they can contribute more to other aspects of Humana beyond just their day to day job. And so we have been working to identify opportunities for those physicians to participate, almost think of it as like an elective or to have opportunities to sit on a committee where they can contribute their extensive knowledge around how things work inside Humana to another problem we're trying to solve. So that's just an example of where the needs may be a little bit different. I wouldn't say they're misaligned more that there are some things that are clearly the same, but there are some things that are different. And we in my office need to really understand that about our different clinician populations so that we can target the programs or the opportunities that we are developing in the right ways.
- [13:16]
Erica Carbajal
Yeah, certainly. And it sounds like there's definitely value in tailoring those physician development leadership programs as you mentioned, like whether someone is practicing at the bedside, whether they're in administration and the stage that they're at in their career. That personalization, I'm sure, goes a long way. Dr. Goodrich, AI we've talked about it a little bit already. It's changing workflows pretty quickly. Implementation can still be a stressor to a challenge we still often hear about. Can you talk a little bit about what you're hearing from clinicians at Humana about technology's role in their day to day experience? I know you mentioned at the beginning like really having them be have a seat at the table when you're having those discussions about priorities and then also in the implementation stage. But any other things that you're hearing or insights about technology's Role, including ambient AI, but also beyond in their day to day workflows.
- [14:12]
Dr. Kate Goodrich
Yeah, the ambient AI is probably the best example we have right now, but we are absolutely looking at, and probably will be piloting soon, some additional technologies that are intended to reduce some of that administrative burden that our clinicians feel. I do want to just let you know though, that as it relates to using ambient AI in our primary care clinics, we actually have conducted a survey of clinicians who are in these clinics throughout the country who had at least 60 days of access to an ambient documentation tool. Because we had a hypothesis that using this tool on a regular basis could reduce burnout. Right. Not only reduce documentation time, but actually might even contribute to lessening burnout. One of the things I do at Humana is I lead our research teams called Humana Healthcare Research. We partnered with our primary care partners to conduct this survey. The findings do provide preliminary evidence that ambient documentation tools not only reduce documentation time, we heard from clinicians that they actually reduce what's called the cognitive load. So the, the feeling of having so much complexity that you have to deal with during your time seeing patients because of everything that you have to deal with, and, and then further, you know, both clinical and administrative, but also seems to be lessening their feelings of burnout after starting to use the tool. We actually have recently presented this preliminary information at the 2025 Academy Health Meeting that was just this week. So we're very proud of that. But I think we have a lot more work to do to understand the impact of these technologies on physicians. We are also looking at technologies that would be able to. An AI technology, for example, that would be able to summarize a patient's medical history and any clinical interactions, like hospitalizations or picking up drugs at a pharmacy or visits to specialists, that could be summarized very easily by an AI tool. So that when a physician walks into the office or to the exam room to see a patient, they don't have to search through a million different portals to find that information, or rely on the patient or their caregiver to have all of that information accurately at their fingertips, but it's actually summarized for them right when they walk in the room. There's a lot of what I'll call hunting and pecking that we do as physicians trying to gather information about our patients. So if there was a way to be able to have that nicely and concisely summarized before you see the patient, that would be a huge advantage, not only in ensuring you have accurate information, but certainly in terms of the time that's saved going and hunting and pecking for that information. So that's an early development and that is an example of a potential technology that we are exploring because of what we've heard from our clinicians around problems to be solved that would make their lives a lot better. So that is something that I would just put it this way. We are kind of building the muscle internally inside Humana to have our clinicians be in the right meetings, have a seat at the table, to be able to identify the problems that need to be solved that technology might be an answer for, so that we can prioritize the right things at the right time.
- [17:53]
Erica Carbajal
Yeah, really interesting to hear just the example too, around summarizing that patient history and how all of these efforts really build on one another and how exciting it will be in the years ahead to see that the impact of all these things compounded will continue to have on the delivery of patient care, patient experience and beyond. Well, Dr. Goodrich, to close us out, looking ahead three to five years, what's maybe one shift you hope to see in how the healthcare industry really supports its workforce?
- [18:26]
Dr. Kate Goodrich
You know, we're at a place now where 75%, about 75% of physicians are employed. So we've really shifted from a world where, you know, people can have a small practice with just a few doctors that are independent, to one where physicians are often employed by a health system or another organization. And I don't say that because I think that's necessarily a bad thing. But one of the things that we do know that has happened in that shift is that physicians often feel like there's a little bit of a loss of control over their own destiny. And there's also clinical practice also feels and is in fact so much like a business, which I think for a lot of physicians isn't necessarily the reason they got into health care. And so one of the things that I would love to see, and I think this has been reflected in some of the things I've already talked about, is that we really intentionally identify ways for clinicians to really be in the driver's seat driving the change that needs to happen within our country to move more towards value based care, to ensure better quality of care, and to really ensure that physicians and other clinicians, like nurses and pharmacists, are helping to lead that charge. But that's not something physicians and other clinicians can just do on their own. Right. There needs to be the support from the other big players in the healthcare world, like payers, like Humana, like The other healthcare systems, federal government. And I think that a lot of people would agree that it makes sense for physicians to be driving a lot of that change because they're the ones who really understand how care delivery plays out face to face between doctor or nurse and patient. But I think there's a lot of work to be done to really realize that as a reality for our organ, for our, basically our health care system. But I think it can happen. I think there are examples of where that is happening. And so we. We just need to really focus on that. And that will not only, I think, get us to a better, you know, better quality and a better health care system, but it will also, I think, be able to shift a bit the paradigm where now we're seeing such high burnout people leaving medicine. We already have a healthcare health care worker shortage, certainly in nursing. That's been true for a long time and increasingly with physicians as well. And I think being able to have really more of a say in how the healthcare gets delivered will really be one thing that can help, I hope, reverse some of that trend.
- [21:20]
Erica Carbajal
Yeah, absolutely. And your remarks just remind me just of some of the things we've heard on the importance of advocacy in the healthcare space today. And physicians having clinicians, nurses, docs, pharmacists, all having such a unique perspective and deep understanding of the complex ways that healthcare is delivered and having their voices be elevated, something, you know, they're not necessarily trained in, but something that is incredibly valuable to be able to communicate clearly the way all these different things work.
- [21:54]
Dr. Kate Goodrich
Yep, I agree. And I think, you know, one of the other things I'll just share that I think is really important here is payment reform, and particularly for primary care. And I think it's primary care where we're seeing the burnout, some of the worst, and where we're seeing the shortages being the worst. And payment reform is critical there. And there is a big effort with a lot of, you know, organizations that are led by or where primary care clinicians are participating to really advocate for that. And I think that's gaining some ground.
- [22:23]
Erica Carbajal
Yeah, for sure. Well, Dr. Goodrich, thank you so much for being on today. So nice to chat with you.
- [22:30]
Dr. Kate Goodrich
Thank you, Erica. It's been wonderful talking to you and.
- [22:33]
Erica Carbajal
Thanks to all of our listeners. You can tune into additional episodes of the podcast by visiting the podcast page on our website@beckershospitalreview.com thanks, everyone.