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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
The Hidden Engine of Healthcare Economics: Supply Chain, AI, and the Future of Margin
00:43:48
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Health Care Podcast. We've got a very special discussion today with two fantastic leaders that I'm thrilled to get a chance to moderate. We're going to talk about the hidden engine of health care economics, supply chain, AI and the future of margin. So for this podcast and the discussion of supply chain, artificial intelligence and margins, we're speaking with Steve Liu, the founder and CEO of Clarium Health, and Dr. Steven Klasko, an executive in residence at General Catalyst and also formerly the CEO of some major, major healthcare systems like Jefferson Healthcare and I believe, University of Florida, and just a magnificent, magnificent leader. Both fantastically brilliant people. Steven, let me start off with yourself. Steven Liu, talk for a second. You've made this beautiful big bet. You had this incredibly successful career in essentially as a manager, a portfolio manager at Millennium, and you've left to start a healthcare supply chain company that you started during the pandemic. Some people, most might call you leaving this great thing that was going fantastic to start a company as insane or crazy, whatever you want to call it. Talk a little bit about what did you see that others didn't that led you to make this change. And I've watched you for the last several years. It's been incredible to watch you talk a bit about what you saw that drove you to make this change.
- [01:35]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And thanks so much, Scott, for having me on here. As you know, I covered healthcare for 15 plus years as a healthcare investor, both in venture capital and at hedge funds. So covered it for my entire career and really have seen the evolution and have seen how backwards the US Healthcare system is in certain areas and how advanced it is in other areas. And supply chain just always stood out to me as an area that puzzlingly was 20 to 30 years behind. Right. How hospitals manage their inventory and their supply chains, decades behind other industries in the world. And specifically in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, I just like everyone else, watched how hospitals around the world were struggling to secure basic PPE drugs equipment, really due to supplier constraints, lack of real time data and transparency, and lack of modern software tools. And we also saw hospitals just struggling financially to stay operational, really requiring tremendous efforts from their clinical finance and operational and supply chain teams. Right. The superheroes. And for me, that was just a wake up call that really needed to reevaluate where I wanted to focus the rest of my career and how I could help US hospitals really modernize, optimize and catch up to every other industry in the world. So that was really the impetus that led me from moving as a portfolio manager to a founder and CEO at Clarium.
- [03:07]
A
And let me ask you a follow up question to that. Many businesses are born sort of out of an evolutionary thought process of the founder and sort of looks at it, thinks about it, and then sort of at some point decides to really go after it and decide, I've got to build this, I want to build this. Was there a specific moment, not so much a market analysis or spreadsheets, but an actual moment where you said, I'm compelled to do this. I'm really excited to do this and it's got to be built. Was there a moment in time that pressed you forward?
- [03:38]
B
Yeah, I think it was active conversations that I had really 2020 and leading up to it with CEOs, with CFOs, CIOs and CMOs at these health systems. I developed a really good network over my 15 plus years covering healthcare. And I spoke to them specifically about areas of concern and where they needed to invest in things that were overlooked. And after Covid happened, it became a top three priority where they were all realizing that they needed to massively invest in their supply chains and clinical operations, finance operations. They needed to find ways to digitize and automate all the things that they were doing. And they were already, as you know, for forever struggling with razor thin margins. And they saw the writing on the wall. They saw that over the next decade they would see 1000 plus basis points of additional margin pressure, which meant that if things continued as is, with no investment, the vast majority of US hospitals would be in the red. Right. And that would be devastating for Americans in general. And so I think having that conversation with them and realizing that their thinking on this was actually changing, they were shifting from viewing supply chain finance and operations as this back office function, as this cost lever, really into a strategic asset that needed to be tremendously invested in. And seeing them really embrace that post Covid was really the impetus that made me realize, okay, there's significant need for these advancements and these services, but there's also significant tailwinds in that you have these executives that are all for investing in change and dramatically advancing how things have been.
- [05:36]
A
Take a second, Dr. Klasko, talk a bit about this. Is it supply chain? Is it total cost of care? How do you look at this? And Steve, we'll come back to you on some of this as well. You mentioned back office versus supply chain and where does it fit? But Dr. Klasko, you said publicly that Clarium is Not really a supply chain company. It's a margin architecture company. Can you tell us what you mean by that and why that distinction matters? Why is that important that you're not just supply chain, you're actually trying to improve margins?
- [06:07]
C
Yes. Scott, you and I have had quite a few discussions about, you know, when, when I left Jefferson and went over General Catalyst, you know, I basically said, I want to be part of the companies that can be transformative. And, you know, so many times I talk to CEOs and I say, you know, we, we don't want to put the Lego pieces together. We want things that are really going to affect our total cost of care. So supply chain. If we just say we're supply chain and you just leave it at that, then it really puts the function in the basement. I think margin architecture puts it in the boardroom. There's not one CEO or board chair I talk to or that you talk to and says we don't have to fundamentally transform our cost structure. In some respects, it's the second largest driver of total cost of care. The first is labor, and labor brings all sorts of issues to it. Hospitals, as you talk about all time, including last week at Becker's, the good ones, are running a 1 to 2% margins. You can't cost your cut cost your way out of that math. So you have to really architect margin into every transaction. At Jefferson, we went from a billion and a half to a $9 billion company. Supply chain wasn't a cost center we managed. It was an asset class we engineered. And by the way, that really mattered when the pandemic hit, which is a whole nother piece of this is as we start to think about the geopolitical issues, managing your supply chain using AI, giving yourself alternatives. So if you're still calling it supply chain, your CFO doesn't think it's strategic and neither do you. So we're trying to get this further up the CEO model.
- [07:46]
A
Well, thank you. I'll come back to that question in a second. Because at some point, sort of supply chain was thought of as like the back office and deliveries and logistics and warehouses and just getting stuff to the right bedside of the right Dr. Steve Lu, you've talked about, when you talk to L System CEO, you think of supply chain more as a strategic lever than a back office function. Is that correct? And how does that change how you think about things? When you think of this as strategy and margin architecture versus simply just trying to fix supply chain as this distinct area, how do you think about that?
- [08:25]
B
Yeah, Definitely. And I think it's changed tremendously, Scott, even in the last five years, where again, it was previously seen as this back office function. And now we're seeing more and more CEOs and CFOs are embracing their supply chains as this hidden strategic asset. And Black Book Research just did a recent survey of health system leaders and found that over 90% say that supply chain is one of their top three non labor levers that they want to focus on improving financial performance over the next 24 months. A really interesting statistic and it echoes what we've heard from our health system partners. I think as Dr. Klasko alluded to earlier, the typical health system is at 1 to 2% margin. There was a McKinsey report put out a few months ago that hospitals will face up to 1300 basis points of additional margin pressure over the next five years. And really when we show them that data, they realize that how they've been operating in terms of relying on their third parties and fragmented data and really manual labor cannot continue. And they need to really take a step back and figure out how do we dramatically transform how we manage our supply chain, our clinical operations, our finance. And really when you start to show them that data in terms of what Clarium can help identify, in terms of we've analyzed your supply chain, we've identified up to 200 basis points of overall margin and expansion that we can help the health system achieve. That's really what opens their eyes and realize that, hey, we need to make this a strategic focus immediately.
- [10:05]
C
Scott, can I just add something to that real quick, please? So you know, we talk about so many AI related issues that will have an effect on healthcare or health system in the future. And you know, I use this analogy because I talked to one CEO about a different issue and they said, Steve, that sounds really interesting, But I'm losing $200 million this year and I need an interventional cardiologist, not my dermatologist telling me they can move up my liposuction. That's for the future. But I needed something that can affect significantly access, quality or total cost of care within the next 18 months. And this is a company that literally, this is a model that can do that in a way that doesn't necessarily affect your caregivers, et cetera. It's all back office things, but having a huge effect on total cost of care.
- [11:07]
A
Let me ask you a question on that and I'm going to come back to both of you with a question in a moment. But first let me ask you this question because it follows up right on what you said. Dr. Krester, you talk a lot about what's working and not working in artificial intelligence and healthcare. Where is clarium in that landscape? And why do you think operational AI like this might deliver return on investment to hospitals was quicker than clinical AI? Why does this work and why is it so important?
- [11:36]
C
Yeah, I think it's a great question. Something that I stayed up night thinking about because I'm very excited about clinical AI. But it has the FDA malpractice exposure, change management, seven year physician adoption cycle. Gosh, if I'm replacing nurses, what does that mean? Operational AI has a CFO, a P& L and a board that's saying make it better. In Clarim's case, a contract they can sign on Friday. I love clinical AI. I'm 72 years old. I hope when I'm in the assisted living facility I'm doing everything with AI AI. But I think that that what people are going to look back on, what are the real game changers operationally from 2026 to 2030 that moves the income statement and clarium is really built for that wave.
- [12:35]
A
And Steve, let me ask you this question and then I'm going to ask each of us because you know, 30 seconds each, then I talk more about Clarium and AI and what it means today versus analysts and spreadsheets before I do that. In all these discussions out there, supply chain is the second biggest expense in health systems. Yet it seems like everybody talks about labor for sure. Particularly the last few years during COVID when contract labor blew up, those costs blew up. People also talk a ton about revenue cycle and it's very important because it's 5 to 10% of all costs seem to go through revenue cycle. But why is it that supply chain is a function isn't talked about as much as revenue cycle and labor? Steve Lu, do you want to start on that? Just give us 30 seconds. And Dr. Klask, I'd love you to weigh in too. And I'm going to come back to Steve Wu on a few questions.
- [13:23]
B
Yeah, it's a great question, Scott. I think it's fundamentally just the lack of visibility. As you know, supply chain is not the sexiest area of investment. That really jumps off the page when you're talking with venture funds, when you're talking with health system executives. It's not an AI scribe, it's not a call center automation bot, it's not a clinical diagnosis agent. But really we think AI for supply chain is the next frontier for investment, it's the most low hanging fruit. There's little to no phi. You can immediately move the income statement as Dr. Klasko said. And we think that just bringing visibility and market education to this and we've done that as clarium, we think that'll really get the ball rolling and get the momentum really towards C suite. Seeing supply chain as a really logical next area for AI to be deployed. So that's what we've seen in the market at least.
- [14:21]
A
Steve Klaskow, let me ask you to follow up on that. Why does this get less attention than contract labor and labor and revenue cycle where this is so important obviously.
- [14:31]
C
Yeah, well look, and I think some of it starts with us, right? I mean as you know Scott, my second biggest talent other than delivering babies is know is basically telling stories. And I think if, if we call ourselves a supply chain company and then go to a CEO and say hi, we're a supply chain company, we can't be disappointed that they're going to send us to the AVP of supply chain. But we're not a supply chain company. And I think that, that what we've been able to prove over, over the, the years and, and the places that work with us which are huge diverse group of, of health systems is that we can have a huge effect on total cost of care. And that gets you further up. And the second piece of that is I think some of it is recognizing that the legacy pieces of healthcare are gonna have to change. Things aren't gonna magically change. And GPO membership has sort of been the discount club that I don't have to worry about that because I'm part of a GPO and I think that you're gon see some, some changes in that. So what I've been working with Steve a lot is taking the Subaru approach, right. If you remember, you know, Subaru didn't talk about their cars but because they were the safest cars objectively they were saying, you know, do you love your kids get a Subaru. And I think for aquarium it's look, stop talking about having a meaningful effect on total cost of care. Yes, look at labor. But that's going to be really, really difficult. You know, really, really start to look at supply chain.
- [16:10]
A
And Steve, let me ask you this question. There is so much discussion about AI powered AI everything. There's also a tremendous amount of information overload. Yet you've done a great job of actually getting through to leadership, to CEO, CFOs. You're in some of the best systems in the country. Now talk about two things. What specifically does clear them? I do that a spreadsheet and analyst don't do or can't do and then talk about how do you cut through the noise because there's so many different solutions trying to sell into health systems. And you folks obviously have done this tremendous job of actually getting into health systems and really showing them benefits. How do you cut through that noise? And what does Chrome AI do that a spreadsheet and analyst can't do?
- [16:56]
B
You definitely need clean data. And a lot of these health systems want to do the fun, exciting, sexy thing and deploy AI on top of their existing data that sits in their erp, their ehr, their contracts database. And if you don't have fundamentally clean data, you're going to compound in already tough problem. And so for us, we've really focused over the last six years on one how do we unify all this fragmented and siloed data that the health system has? Right? They have over 10 different systems of record data sitting in their EHR, their ERP, their warehouse management system, multiple inventory systems, contracts database. They have data that lives in third parties with their GPO with their distributors. Each department in the hospital uses a different system of record and they don't talk to one another. So step one, right? What Clarium does is we focus on deploying AI to identify all this disparate data, unify together. But importantly, step two, you need to actually clean, normalize, enrich this data. Because if you're just deploying an AI agent on top of your existing ERP or ehr, everyone will tell you how messy, how fragmented, how bad the underlying data is. It's going to give you poor insights. And so you have to clean that data. And then really step three, where we help is we help deliver actionable insights, our dollar cost savings. And where we're going next is step four, it's actually deploying AI agents on top of all of that to help automate away all the non clinical administrative work, all the manual tedious tasks that hospital workers are doing and really freeing up their time to focus on higher priority strategic initiatives. So you really need to take this crawl, walk, run approach and you also need a vendor that's been partnered with health systems over the last six years and built this from the ground up with their direct input. So that's where we've really focused.
- [19:01]
A
Let me ask you a question because Steve, you happen to be one of the most thoughtful people that I know. How did sort of how Important is it that once you're actually working with a system, how quickly do they have to see benefit in ROI or improvement or how this works because you feel really loyal customers, how does that work? How quickly does it have to work for people with a new solution today to be willing to keep on doubling down on that solution in today's environment,
- [19:31]
B
Scott, it has to be immediate. You have to lead with hard roi, cost savings, time to value. That is the number one concern of every health system CEO and CFO in the country. We already mentioned the razor thin margins, yet another thousand basis points of margin pressure over the next five years. And if that happens and we don't fundamentally do something transformative here, majority of hospitals will be in the red. And think about how scary that is for the average American.
- [20:00]
A
No, I think that's exactly right. We're already there where 40% are in the red and 60% are barely above break even. And some are doing better, of course, but a fascinating situation. And take a second, Dr. Klasko. You've talked a lot about today's world as living in the kind of after Covid era. And what I've heard you say, not pre pandemic, not mid crisis, but the sort of strange in between where the urgency is still needed, but it's faded, but the problems haven't. There's still big, big problems. Why is a company that's so good at margin architecture that really helped become one of the health system's biggest, biggest areas of expense like Clearium, so important in the kind of after Covid era?
- [20:45]
C
Yeah, because if you think about it, BC before COVID we were complacent. During COVID we were heroic. But there was infinite federal money, infinite urgency. After Covid is the worst of both. In some respects the urgency died. But as you've pointed out, the structural fragility of health systems really hasn't. Health systems are running on before COVID Muscle memory in a KAC reality, if you will. I want to look at it. The labor crisis didn't end, the supply crisis didn't end, the margin crisis didn't end. We just stopped looking at them as a crisis. So, you know, the, I think the, the KAC world requires more than incremental new tools. And I think, you know, that's, that's what you're spending more time at the Becker's Health entities talking about. That's what we talk about all the time among CEOs. You can't run a 2026 health system on a 2019 procurement infrastructure. And Pretend it'll hold. So I guess the answer to me is in my national talks I have this one sort of image of a nonprofit board. Instead of risking anything new, let's continue our slow decline to obsolescence. And I think that complacency of BC is just not tower tolerable. And I think that the fact is that the entities that have used clarium have started to understand that this is more than a supply chain company. It's solving a major problem that's affecting our bottom line through total cost of care, allowing us to reinvest in the things that are important and potentially even reinvest in some of the things that the labor AI will affect, like reskilling. So it's a non incremental change that really require hires a CFO CEO to pay attention.
- [22:46]
A
Thank you. And then, then Steve Wu, let me ask you this. Are customers buying or doubling down and partnering with Clarium because of a strategic vision? Because they're in a financial crisis, need to cut costs now and is there a difference? And why do you find the use case so attractive? Why are so people? I mean you've had great movement, great growth, great traction. Is it the strategic vision, is it the financial crisis or is it both? And is there a difference?
- [23:18]
B
I think it's both. Scott. I think you need to have that C suite. Who buys into the five year strategic vision and why? They need to really overhaul their supply chain, their finance, their clinical operations. So you need that forward thinking view but in order to justify it. Right. Why invest now in clarium? It's that we can deliver immediate hard roi. We can deliver millions in cost savings. And back to your point earlier, right. On why it hasn't been a focus, I think health systems have really focused, rightly so, on how do we drive an increase to revenue. Right. Which is why Rev cycle Automation prior auth automation has received tremendous investment in the last several years. We think that a lot of that juice has been squeezed and we think that they need to reframe their thinking into how do we now cut dramatic costs out of our health system and help really dramatically expand margins. If you think about health system operating at razor thin low single digit margin, adding a million revenue compared to cutting a million in cost is multifold the impact. Right. If you think about it, and it's always surprised me that not many people think about that perspective in terms of a dollar added versus a dollar cut and the dramatic impact that can have on the organization.
- [24:45]
A
Right. So literally a dollar impact on supply chain is essentially worth a Hundred hours in revenue if you're working at a 1% margin. I mean, very simplistically so.
- [24:58]
B
Exactly.
- [24:58]
A
Million dollars. It's not exactly linear, but it's pretty close. In a large system, cutting a million dollars in cost means literally about the same equivalence economically as 100 million in revenues. And that's a big, big deal. Dr. Klasko, you've been vocal about trying to make sure that artificial intelligence, it doesn't just make the wealthy healthier, the wealthy wealthier, but it also helps systems where there's a health equity need and how we connect it to health equity. Talk a bit about how you link those two. Making margins better margin architecture and improving not just the wealthy systems and wealthy consumers, but also the safety net systems and the safety net consumers.
- [25:46]
C
Yeah, thanks. It seems like an invisible link because it's sort of designed to be so. If you think about it, a safety net hospital in Mississippi pays probably 15 or 20% more for the same hip implant than an academic medical center 200 miles away. It's the same screw, different price, different power, depending on the gpo. And at the end of the day, the reason that that seems indirect and doesn't necessarily seem related to equity is because that premium gets paid by Medicaid, by uncompensated care budgets, by the nurse not hired on the night shift, by the community health worker who never gets funded, and we just blame it on the, quote, system. So if you think about it, every dollar wasted on not being for exactly the reasons you said. You know, if you think about rural hospitals or safety net hospitals, of which I ran several, every dollar wasted on, on supply chain in a rural hospital or a safety net hospital is a dollar that doesn't reach a patient who needs insulin for us to do other transformative things. So I think one of the things that I've really pushed is that health equity isn't only a clinical conversation. It's partly, in some respects, a procurement conversation. Nobody has it because generally the supply chain people aren't in the how do we improve health gaps and health equity meeting. But it's the same dollars, the dollars that we can save that don't get seen. And I love the analogy you used. You're right. It's like increasing your revenue by $100 million. If you wave a magic wand and increase your revenue by $100 million, you would have a lot more money to do things for the things that your mission is. At Jefferson, our mission was we improve lives. It's really hard to improve lives when Your margin is minus 1% or plus 1/2 percent.
- [27:39]
A
Thank you. And Steve, similar question. A safety net hospital, a rural system, is often paying, Even with the GPOS, all these different things, 15 to 20% more for the same implant because they don't have purchasing intelligence, the same staff, the same team, the same depth. There's just only so many people to go around budget wise at rural health system. At a safety net hospital, who pays for that inefficiency? Who pays when the system is forced to pay higher costs because they don't have that purchasing intelligence and that depth in purchasing? Is it the hospital that pays? Is the patient pays? Is it both? How do you sort of look at that inefficiency?
- [28:20]
B
Yeah, it's everyone, all of the above. The patient, the doctor, the nurse, the hospital and the US Taxpayer all lose in that situation. As you mentioned, Scott, the hospital ends up paying more for supplies and drugs. Those costs seed into margins and force hospitals, especially rural and safety net hospitals, to cut back on staff investments and critical patient care. And that gets amplified tenfold with the recent Medicaid cuts. So everyone loses in that case, and why this is such an important issue.
- [28:50]
A
Thank you. If you could really take a lot of supply chain waste out of the US Health system, how much are we talking about? Just even conservatively, a small estimate of what could be taken out. And quite frankly, Steve, what are you seeing at some of your customers for taking some of the money and waste out of the supply chain?
- [29:08]
B
Yeah, there was a navigant study back in 2018 that referenced 25.4 billion in annual waste on hospital supply chain spent, which was up 10% year over year from 2017. If you factor that in to the present day, factoring in inflation, price increases, increased patient acuity, that updated number for 2026 is somewhere between 40 and 45 billion dollars per year in unnecessary spend on chain and operations. Think about that. That's close to the total net income of the entire US hospital sector in recent years. Hospitals could potentially double their current margins if they decide to invest and go after optimizing their supply chain and their clinical operations. And that money would then directly go back to their communities, back to patient care, and really benefit everyone overall.
- [30:01]
A
Thank you. That's literally remarkable. And how hard is it? I mean, it's almost impossible for systems to fix without this type of solution. It's just too hard. I mean, if you think about spreadsheets and on the phone and even ordering electronically and do all these kind of things without a real supply chain tool to navigate this for you at the highest level. Really hard to make these changes, isn't it, Steve?
- [30:25]
B
Absolutely. And what's really sad is that the supply chain teams, the clinical operation teams, they are the unsung heroes, right? They need to make this work with a lack of resources, lack of technology, lack of investments, and they're doing it. But they're going above and beyond, right? During snowstorms, hurricanes, they're literally bringing overnight bags and staying at the hospital for a week to make sure that these supplies, these shortages, they don't ultimately impact patient care. And they've been doing that. They've been going above and beyond for decades. And really what we want to do is take that burden off of them and really help leverage AI to help automate, optimize, enhance all the manual and tedious work that they're doing to focus, really, for them to get back to what they studied, right. And what they wanted to ultimately do, which is ultimately serve patients and improve patient care.
- [31:19]
A
Thank you. And Dr. Klaskow, let me ask you this kind of personal question. Since you left Jefferson as CEO after an incredible run that moved that organization right at $2 billion organization to about an 18 billion organization, tremendous, tremendous effort to integrate and grow a great system, both academic medicine as well as Safety Net, you step back from there, aligned yourself with General Catalyst and some others. You've really made the effort to focus on just truly transformational efforts and companies. The things I see you involved in, you don't sort of ditter. You're, you're very, very focused in the companies that you work with. You sit on a handful of boards, you advise a number of startups. Why does Clarion become that exciting to you that you choose to allocate your time and energy? And I see you put your energy to work, and it's really an amazing thing. It's literally I. I come away each time I have a chance to really work with you with a remarkable sense of this mix of depth and personal skills and analytical perspective. Talk a bit. Why Clarium makes that cut.
- [32:27]
C
Look, I so believe in the power and importance of nonprofit health systems and what they mean to communities. And I've watched, you know, it's like watching a good friend with her. I've watched the sort of. I remember, literally I was just at a meeting with a bunch of hospital executives and I'm having so much fun. And I was at the lunch table and I'm going, I'm really optimistic about the future and this is great. And like, they kicked me out of the lunch Table because I wasn't depressed. So I think, I think a lot of the companies that I work with are those long term, sort of transformational clinical AI companies. You know, whether it's paradigm and clinical research or AI doc or Hippocratic AI. But in 2031, somebody's going to write a definitive book on the decade we're in right now. My guess is that the chapter on healthcare won't just be about ChatGPT writing notes or robots doing surgery. Those will be the footnotes because those have a longer gestation period. The big part of the chapter will be the CFOs who stopped accepting that this is just how healthcare works, that we have to have a middle person between the medical device company and the health system. The supply chain officers who finally get a seat at the strategy table. The boards that realize their second largest expense was their biggest strategic asset hiding in plain sight. You know, I'm chair of the board of a $7 billion medical device company. You know, you know, we don't exist without the health systems and having more direct align with them. Every transformational era in healthcare has sort of had this sort of quiet center of gravity. As much as we like to complain about EMRs, it was EMRs in the 2010s, you know, maybe value based care in the late teens, I believe the 2000s, at least for nonprofit health systems working with insurers will belong to margin architectures. And the systems that figure that out aren't going to just survive the kac, the kind of after Covid era. They're going to define what comes after it. And then all the really, really, really, really cool things like democratizing clinical trials and conversational AI, et cetera, will be able to be led by health systems that now have better margins.
- [34:54]
A
Thank you. Let me take you back to that. Just to put a footnote on that or an exclamation point on it. It's 2031. What's the headline for what systems are thriving? What's the headline? How do you see this?
- [35:06]
C
Yeah, so I think the headline is that we've Amazoned the heck out of. And not Amazon as it exists today, but the concept of Amazon, when it started and had Jeff Bezos decide that they weren't just going to be a bookstore, was. There's no reason to have 12 middlemen or women between what, whatever you want and need and the people that are supplying it. You could argue this in the pharma side around things like PBMs, et cetera. You're going to need Transformational change in these areas. What Clarium does with their AI, with their proven architecture is that we can cut out some of those middle layers. The beautiful thing about that is that it will be great for health systems systems, it'll be great for medical device companies, it will force current middle layers to be more creative and work with us. And at the end of the day that'll be great for patients because we have to more than incrementally change this and just stop frankly complaining as health system leaders that the system is rigged against us.
- [36:23]
A
Thank you. And Steve will, let me ask you two similar questions. First, when you look at health systems right now, and I know you try very carefully not to be critical, but is there anything they should stop doing immediately that they do that they shouldn't do? That just not effective or so incrementally effective that it's not worth doing. And then second, if you look at 2031, same question as Dr. Klaskow, what's the headline?
- [36:48]
B
Yeah, I think health system leaders are doing a tremendous job and continue to, I would say my only advice would be really to stop viewing supply chain as a back office function. Bring your chief supply chain officer into the C suite, into the boardroom, give them a seat at the table, learn about how your supply chain is actually run on a day to day basis. What are the fundamental problems, where are they under invested in and how you can further support them really to unlock right, a transformational change. That would be my advice in terms of the 2031 headlines. For me the dream state would be hospitals have tripled their operating margins over the last five years due to their investments in AI and automation into their supply chains. With Clarium at the helm, They've achieved over $100 million annually in cost savings. Hospitals now have a single source of truth, that unified data layer, bringing in data from all their disparate systems and from all of their suppliers. Every hospital in the US now has a single supply chain command center to proactively monitor their inventory, avoid shortages and disruptions. And most importantly, they've deployed AI agents to automate away all the painful back office functions. Supply chain finance and operations, that to me would be the dream headline and where we're striving towards.
- [38:12]
A
Thank you very, very much.
- [38:14]
C
And Scott, if I could just, you know, I like to, I like to channel Taylor Swift in my talks. And I would say that we're never ever getting back together with treating supply chain like a back office function, still paying premiums. That error is over. And to every CEO who's nervous about the disruption or who was going to hear from a GPO or from the vendor. I guess I'd use the Shake it off. The fact is the legacy supply chain is going to try to hold on, but we need to shake it off and use this technology to really fundamentally change how we look at our back office functions and our cost of care.
- [39:02]
A
Now one of the things Dr. Klasko, that you missed or didn't mention correctly is you had said that your greatest skill was as an ob gyni and obstetrician gynecologist. But those of us that know you know that it's also as a disc jockey, not just a doctor and not just an entrepreneur and leader and advisor. Correct that you're also a dj.
- [39:26]
C
I still DJ on Miami Yachts and DJ the HLTH Awards last year Las Vegas. So still do that a lot. That that probably is my best skill.
- [39:36]
A
God bless. And that's where the table and I
- [39:38]
C
would use and and since since since you brought that up, maybe a great song to play at the end of this podcast is the song by Sia Courage to Change. We need the courage to change what is a legacy system because supply chain is something we actually have the ability to change. We don't need cms, we don't need an external piece. We can change it with the resources that exist today.
- [40:05]
A
Thank you. Stephen Wu, any final comments that you want to share with the audience? You've really been at the heart and the forefront of this change of AI into supply chain with clarium. Any final words?
- [40:18]
B
I would just say, Scott, that I get the question often from health system executives and really from my former peers on what motivates me and why I decided to leave a clear career as an investor and found a company in the middle of the pandemic. And for me it was really focused on how can I positively impact the US Healthcare system. How can I, after having for almost two decades covered healthcare as an investor, go after some of the biggest challenges that I saw in my career and actually help hospitals lower the total cost of care? And that's really why I'm doing clarium. There really is not a financial incentive for me to go after to pursue doing this for me at the end of my career. If I look back on my life and what impact I had, it's not going to be in terms of the dollars that I made for my investors or what I made during my career as an investor myself. It's going to be did I and was I successful in helping lower the total cost of care for US Health care. Was I successful in helping US Health systems dramatically reinvent and transform this sector that has been really behind for decades? And did I have that positive impact? That's ultimately what's driving me. And so it's been a great journey over the last six years and I'm really excited to continue this over the next decade.
- [41:37]
A
Plus well, thank you very, very much. I know that it's fair to say from Dr. Klasko and I that one of the things that we each find so incredible about yourself is the clarity in which you approach things and the systematic nature then, and the passion and mission. It's actually a pleasure. It's really incredible and inspiring to watch Dr. Klasko.
- [41:58]
C
Scott I guess I get back to the first question you asked Steve of why he left a very successful career. And I think Steve put it very well. I think I'm old enough to remember when research was, hey, I have an idea, I'm going to do research. I don't know if it's going to help anybody. We moved that to translational research. Here's the problem. Prove that you're solving it if you want to get funding. I think what's great about Steve's approach and what's different than, frankly, some others that are saying, hey, here's this really cool technology and I'll figure out a problem to apply it to. Steve went in to Clarium and said, this is a huge problem that nobody's addressing in anything other than an incremental way. And we have all this technology, I want to solve the problem and then we'll create, find the technology to solve the problem. It's really the equivalent of what we've been able to do in the single patient side with things like immunotherapy and that kind of thing of how do we solve a problem? I often say we have Star wars technology for individual patients in a Fred Flintstone healthcare delivery system. Steve and his team are bringing that Star wars technology to our total cost of care and margin architecture.
- [43:20]
A
I want to thank both of you for joining us. Steve Liu, CEO, Founder of Clarium Dr. Steven Klasko, Executive in Residence, General Catalyst, two remarkable leaders. Thank you so much. What a pleasure visiting with both of you. I always learn something, but I'm excited to continue to watch the impact that Clarium's making in supply chain. Just remarkable. Thank you both very much.
- [43:43]
C
Thank you.
- [43:43]
B
Thanks so much, Scott.