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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Value-Based Care, Consumerism, and Leading Leaders with Dan Tasset
00:16:17
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Healthcare podcast. It's a privilege and a pleasure today to get to visit with Dan Tassett. I've known Dan for a long time. He's one of the leading sort of entrepreneurs, thinkers in the healthcare industry. Early on in the surgery center industry, but then was able to move adjacent to physician owned hospitals, to imaging, to all kinds of other areas. Really a gifted person. Dan, it's a pleasure to have you with us today. We'll talk about what you're doing today, trends, what you're most focused on, and a lot more. Can I ask you to take a moment and introduce yourself and tell the audience a little bit about your background and what you do?
- [00:39]
B
Well, first, Scott, thank you for having me on your podcast. I've been extremely impressed. I've called you a media mogul here many times, so I'll start with just a big thank you, but yeah. My name is Dan Tassett. I'm the chairman of a company called New Health. It's been in business now like 30 years. Our parent company is Nutera Capital. It's really a privately held family office. Most of our investments are in healthcare and the investments that we make in healthcare are generally those investments where we believe we can lower the cost, improve quality, thereby maybe saving our US Healthcare system that we all hope to save.
- [01:22]
A
Thank you. Take a second on sort of. Let me ask you first, you've really come back. You built an incredible company to begin with. I remember watching New Terra, the different iterations of New Health. Incredible talent, incredible success. You've come back at this with sort of what I look at is sort of a vengeance to get back in the game more fully. It feels like. Talk about what's exciting you, what you're focused on, what's driven you to sort of like, you know, I feel like I'm talking to the godfather who's come out of retirement, has come back at it. And I know you never retired, but, but you're sort of back at it fully. What's driving that and what are you excited about?
- [01:59]
B
Well, it's an interesting perception on your part. Scott and I did really, you know, we have played the fee for service world and had been very successful at the ASC and surgical hospital industry, as you know. And we spent a lot of time partnering with physicians and then we did like many of the ASC management companies have done. We started to partner with health systems as well. So we played that vertical integration leverage, if you will, that the health system sometimes are able to, to do by that vertical integration, sometimes they get a net effect of a, of a monopoly. So it was a great run in the business for us. But I saw a different vision and maybe it's just because, you know, I got bored doing that same old fee for service thing and, and growing in 30 some states with almost 39 states, I saw a vision, I think where healthcare is going, or at least I think it wants to go and needs to go. And that is this word that everybody throws around called value based care. And we came up with a early definition of value based care. And really it's a formula and the formula numerator in it is clinical quality outcomes, whatever you want to call it, plus patient satisfaction divided by a cost. Whenever we deliver care and any investment we make, and in this case I'll talk about the surgery center industry, we always want to increase the numerator and decrease the denominator, decrease the cost. I've been on this goal in this journey to really truly define and do value based care, not just something we talk about and we use as some term or rhetoric, but really, truly make a difference. And I think in surgery, and particularly surgery centers can be the example for the rest of health care. And so I've been been really invigorated by what I see as directionally where health care wants to go and needs to go. And Scott, look, I think the trend that I see right now is the narrative is changing and it's changing the federal government level, it's changing at the employer level. And we all know that costs in health care have outpaced inflation since year 2000, last 25 years, you know, healthcare costs and particularly hospital costs have outpaced inflation by three times. And so when you look at that, you say, well, how on earth can we sustain that as a system, as a health care system? You know, I get really excited about the trend that I see happening right now. And that trend is more, more focused on consumerism, patient empowerment. You hear the government talking about increasing HSA and HRA allowances, increasing co pays and deductibles. I think employers are doing the same thing. The successful employers, self funded employers, of which we're one, we have thousands of employees and we haven't had a premium increase in our company in over five years. We have high deductible, high co pay plans. We generously fund them with HSA HRA accounts and then we turn our employees into real consumers of health care, real shoppers looking for the best deal. And I think that's a national trend Right now, better price transparency, not some of this current transparency laws that are out there, but true price tag. So the, for the employee, the patient, the consumer can actually shop. I think the second big trend that we see is that's all going to force more provider competition. And I think the employer, the federal government, they want more provider competition, not to reverse the trend that's actually happened which is competition has been systematically just removed, has been removed from our healthcare deliveries, particularly in the hospital space. And then I think the third trend is obviously technology, everything from data analytics to AI, you know, improving efficiency, clinical support, you know, navigation, workflow, all of that. So you know, we're really, really excited about direction where healthcare is going. It feels like there is brand new era of ambulatory surgical services and ambulatory health care in general. And it's like it's got tremendous tailwinds right now. And I feel really good about where we're positioned against some of the competition and you know, what we're able to do and hopefully we'll be able to contribute to true transformation in our healthcare system.
- [07:07]
A
Where do you see the government in all of this? Because they've tried to move towards Medicare Advantage. It's been sort of received by some, well received by others very poorly. What do you see the government's ability to help change the sort of direction of health care? Any thoughts there?
- [07:24]
B
I do, I have a lot of thoughts. Number one, I, you know, I've spent a lot of time on the hill in Washington D.C. a lot of time talking to U.S. senators and large groups of senators. A couple months ago I was in Washington D.C. and had lunch with about, there was almost 40 U.S. senators and I was the only speaker talking about what change would look like and what it should look like. And I came back to the basic fundamentals, the basic foundation of empowering the patient with true price tags and along with you know, the competition amongst so removing some of the politically removing some of the competitive barriers that are out there right now. We all know what those are. I mean there's been, there's been volumes written on and some of it has been published in you know, Becker's own Hospital Review. You know, what are some of those things that are, that are, that are non competitive. The certificate of need laws in still a great number of states is just truly anti competitive. And so I think the government now the big question, whether or not, Scott, whether or not they have the stomach for it or the political will for it. But I know there's a lot of dialogue going on and reducing benefits to states from the federal government. Any state that has certificate in need law. A lot of talk right now at the federal government level, as you know about physician non competes. Some of the states have done away with them. There's still a lot of states that still do physicians owning hospitals. I mean those basic non competitive laws that are in place today, there's an awful lot of dialogue. I also see CMS starting to with some of the programs that they are coming out with today. It really is, is talking more value based care. I still think they've got it wrong. I think they need to put the physicians more at the center of value based care. Lowering cost, improving quality. And I think they need to not just do shared savings, but they do need to do downside risks. That's. We're starting to see that come out a little bit. Not as much as I'd like to see it. But Scott, I think, look, I think the main thing is this. It's that old saying, it's not so much where we are today, but the direction we're headed. And I think we are clearly headed even at the federal government level, we're clearly headed into true downside risk contracts, what we used to call value based care.
- [10:05]
A
That's fantastic to hear your thoughts on it. Dan, you've had this tremendous career as a leader, as an entrepreneur and a healthcare guru. What advice do you give to emerging leaders?
- [10:16]
B
Well, that's a favorite subject of mine. And, and I got to tell you, emerging leader. I think the number one advice I could give them is lead yourself first. I'll repeat that many. You may not have heard that term before, but lead yourself first. You can't lead other people unless you're leading yourself. So if you're, if you're out, you know, watching three hours of television every night and looking at mindless social media for hours on end, you're not leading yourself. You're not being the best version of you. And you know you have to, when you lead yourself, you have to say who do I want to become? So I would encourage all of those emerging evolving leaders. Ask yourself the question, who do you want to be? Who do you want to become? What kind of husband, what kind of parent, what kind of, what kind of boss, what kind of employee? What kind of leader do you want to be? And I think the second, the second thing I would put in that is goals are nice, but they don't drive change. Habits drive change. So put into place if you want to become something different than you are today, Define what that is, and then put the habits in place to do that and put the systems in place to do that. Whatever, you know, it takes. If you, if you are a person that, you know doesn't like to exercise, put a system in place where you get up in the morning and you have your shoes laying by your bed, and before you wake up, you got your shoes and you're out the door jogging. So I think the third thing I might say is I love anticipatory leaders. The people in our organization that anticipate problems or anticipate change. So look ahead, try to be. Try to look ahead and anticipate. And I think the last thing is, is probably the most important. If you're an emerging leader, think of yourself as a leader who leads leaders, not a leader who leads followers, but a leader who leads followers leaders. And you develop those leaders under use rather than followers by delegating authority, not delegating tasks. So kind of the general rule I have that if I think somebody under me can get it 60% right, I'll delegate it, and then I can check on them and feel confident that, you know, they may not as good do it as well as I think I could have done. But the way they learn and the way you develop leaders is you have to delegate authority to do so. So that'd be my advice for the evolving leaders.
- [13:07]
A
Can you do me a favor? I think that was just great. Starting with the manager self. Could you just summarize those five again very quickly? Four to five again very quickly. For people that are listening, first would
- [13:18]
B
be lead yourself first. Number one, you can't lead other people unless you lead yourself. Who do you want to be? And then put those processes in place, put the habits in place to become the person you want to be. You know, the old idea of setting a goal or New Year's resolutions, it doesn't work. You know, put the process and habits in place. Lead yourself first. Number two, be an anticipatory leader. Anticipate problems, anticipate what direction things are going, Be out in front of it. And the, the, the last one was be a leader. Think of yourself as a leader who leads leaders or develops leaders, not a leader who leads followers. And you do that by delegating authority, not delegating tasks. And again, my rule is get 60% of it right, Let them take it and do it, and they'll get better at it down the road. And you just develop the leader, and then you yourself are no longer the bottleneck. Then you can continue to get more creative or do whatever you do. Scott, I gotta believe you're as good at this as anybody on the planet based on the empire that you've developed. So you have to know how to delegate authority in your business or you wouldn't be where you are.
- [14:46]
A
Well, no, you've done a wonderful job of it. And I'm a hu. Huge fan of really a lot of what you said is the evolution of a founder, the evolution of leader is really at the end of the day, it's thrive, thrive great people side by side with you. And you can't be in a spot where the bottleneck is you, You've got to grow to a spot. We've developed multiple leaders and you're no longer the bottleneck to growth of whatever you're trying to accomplish. And I think what you said about there's an old concept, Peter Drucker concept of Harvard Business School concept of manage yourself. You know, you can't manage others without mention yourself. Couldn't agree with that more. I love the concept in habits versus goals. I love the concept on, you know, we're trying to delegate whole things, not just tasks to people, whole areas to people, and build them to where they can get there. Because if you're, if you're, if you're delegating tasks, at the end of the day there's only so far you can go. You're, you're not really an agenta company that's self actualizing. You're, you're, you're really top down and still from that person and it's very limiting, so.
- [15:48]
B
That's absolutely right. Yeah, it's limiting. That's, that's a good word for it.
- [15:52]
A
Yeah. No, I love it. Dan Tasset again, founder, I think CEO still of New Health. You've been doing this for a long time. You've been incredibly successful. You've been really an inspiration to me with a lot of what you've done and how you do it. I love it. Again, Dan, thank you so much for joining us today on the Beckers Healthcare podcast. It's always a pleasure to visit with you and I'm always inspired.
- [16:13]
B
Thank you, Scott. Thank you.