Episode #187. How Zombie Applications Quietly Drain Millions From Healthcare Budgets, with Jason Rose, CEO of Clearsense

Summary

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Risk Never Sleeps Podcast: Episode #187

Title: How Zombie Applications Quietly Drain Millions From Healthcare Budgets
Host: Ed Gaudet
Guest: Jason Rose, CEO of Clearsense
Date: January 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into an often-overlooked healthcare IT risk: the proliferation and persistence of “zombie applications”—obsolete software that lingers in hospital systems, draining millions from healthcare budgets. Ed Gaudet speaks with Jason Rose, CEO of Clearsense, about how application rationalization can massively reduce costs, minimize cyber risk, and unlock valuable data for both operational efficiency and advanced analytics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing Jason Rose and Clearsense

[01:18 – 03:46]

• Jason Rose introduces himself and Clearsense’s core mission: enabling data-driven transformation in healthcare by tackling technical bloat and legacy software.
• Highlights two main use cases:
  • Application Rationalization: Identifying and decommissioning redundant applications after system upgrades, M&A, or cloud migration.
    • “We help organizations look in their app stack and do an application rationalization process... then we revitalize that data so that it has other use cases.” (Jason Rose, [02:11])
    • Revived data gets patient-matched and loaded into longitudinal records, giving clinicians a fuller picture.
  • Active Data Feeds/Clinical Data Warehouse: Integrating not just legacy but real-time data feeds for broader analytics, AI, and research initiatives.

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2. The True Cost and Scope of Zombie Applications

[03:46 – 06:36]

• Cost pressures in healthcare are at “COVID-levels” but with less public support and no extraordinary government funding.
  • “The pressure right now in a hospital is as big or bigger than it was in COVID. And the difference is that the public is not behind them like they were with COVID. And there's no freebies by the government to keep going.” (Jason Rose, [04:22])
• Zombie apps quietly bloat budgets, inflate cyber risk, and drag down operational margins.
• Healthcare systems, especially after M&A, end up with thousands—sometimes tens of thousands—of applications, many redundant.

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3. How Clearsense Works and Demonstrated ROI

[06:45 – 11:11]

• Clearsense functions as middleware, not a simple data lake or warehouse solution (e.g., unlike Snowflake).
• Hard cost savings: Shutting down licenses, reducing infrastructure, freeing up IT staff, and diminishing cyber exposure.
• Case Study:
  • Trinity Health (93 hospitals, $30B+ in revenue): Cleared 800 apps (from 7,400), saving $68M in hard costs, aiming for $100M soon. (Jason Rose, [08:28])
  • “These are hard costs—these are software licenses and maintenance, mainly.” (Jason Rose, [08:46])
• Cost savings math: For every $1M in OpEx removed, a nonprofit health system with a 4% margin would need $25M in replacement revenue.
  • “A million, two million, five million, a $100M cost takeout…on the size of the system is billions in revenue that you would have to get otherwise.” (Jason Rose, [12:26])

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4. Why Application Rationalization Is Overlooked

[10:07 – 11:58]

• Most health system CIOs aren’t prioritizing application decommissioning, despite cost optimization ranking highest on their agendas (59% in a recent Gartner survey).
  • “No one, unless we’ve spoken to them, is thinking about application decommissioning or rationalization.” (Jason Rose, [11:34])
• Memorable metaphor: Organizations are dragging a wagon with square wheels (legacy archiving) while radial tires (innovative solutions) sit unused.
  • “The solution to the problem is right underneath their nose.” (Jason Rose, [10:10])

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5. Career Path & Risk-Taking

[13:15 – 20:45]

• Jason’s backstory:
  • Started with a psychology degree, worked in inpatient psychiatric care before moving to healthcare IT via GWU, then into EHR selection at Cerner in the 90s.
  • Transitioned from IT into product and business roles after a pivotal job switch: “That was my pivot point in my career as I went from IT management to building product, P&L management, sales, marketing.” (Jason Rose, [19:36])
• Biggest risks: Leaping to new markets/roles and being part of significant IPO and privatization events at Inovalon.
  • “Going public is... not as exciting... you become a slave to the quarter.” (Ed Gaudet, [22:40])

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6. Personal Passions & Hobbies

[16:08 – 17:33]

• Loves boxing (without sparring), golf, hiking, and being outdoors.
• Based in Brentwood, near Nashville—“the Silicon Valley of healthcare.” Nashville hosts 900 healthcare companies and generates $97B in annual healthcare revenue.

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7. Marketing the Zombie App Concept

[26:42 – 28:54]

• Clearsense used physical zombie figurines in direct mail campaigns to symbolically “kill zombie apps” in client organizations.
  • “What is a zombie app? Well, they're working in your data center. They're not being used. They're siphoning your budget, and they're major cyber risk—and they're lethal.” (Jason Rose, [28:35])
• Gartner literature even prescribes an “Application Undertaker Team” for this purpose.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Clinicians and Data:
  “Let’s just face it: clinicians are hoarders. They don’t want to give up any data, ever.” (Jason Rose, [07:17])
• On Opportunity:
  “Take the bull by the horns, and then get out of your own way… Never let an opportunity go to waste.” (Jason Rose, [24:37])
• On Hidden Value:
  “The solution to the problem is right underneath their nose.” (Jason Rose, [10:10])
• On Cost vs. Revenue:
  “For every million dollars of cost takeout that you do for a 4% operating margin organization, is $25 million of replacement revenue.” (Jason Rose, [12:06])
• On Application Decommissioning:
  “Harvest the data, and then consolidate and expire, shut down, terminate—whatever you want to call it.” (Ed Gaudet, [06:36])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:18] Jason Rose introduces Clearsense and its dual use cases
• [03:46] Why cost pressure is more brutal post-pandemic
• [06:45] The technical bloat: application bloat in large health systems
• [08:28] Trinity Health case study: outcome and savings
• [10:07] Metaphor: The wagon with square wheels
• [12:06] The math of cost savings in nonprofit health
• [13:15] Jason’s career journey from psychology to healthcare tech
• [16:08] Jason’s hobbies and the Nashville healthcare ecosystem
• [18:10] Jason’s riskiest career moves
• [20:45] Going public and the realities of running a public vs. private company
• [26:49] The zombie figurine direct mail campaign
• [28:35] What actually makes a zombie app dangerous

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Tone & Style

The conversation is candid, energetic, and peppered with humor (especially when talking about clinicians “hoarding” data, zombie figurines, and music preferences). Both host and guest are deeply experienced, frequently referencing industry data, real-world anecdotes, and analogies that bring the technical subject to life.

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Summary Takeaways

• Zombie applications are everywhere in healthcare IT, silently draining resources while increasing cyber risk and compliance headaches.
• Application rationalization is a high-ROI, underutilized tactic for cost optimization, especially relevant amid accelerating cost pressure and shrinking margins.
• It’s not just tech—it’s patient safety: Redundant or unmonitored legacy apps represent not only budget waste, but also ongoing operational and cybersecurity risks.
• Bold, creative outreach (like zombie figurines) helps to draw leadership's attention to these invisible drains on success.
• Advice for the industry: Don’t overlook what's right under your nose—and take action.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome to Risk Never Sleeps, where we meet and get to know the people delivering patient care and protecting patient safety. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet. Welcome to the Risk Never Sleeps podcast and we shall learn about the people that are on the front lines delivering patient care and protecting patient safety. I'm Ed Gaudette, the host, and today I am pleased to be joined by CEO of Clear Sense, Jason Rose. You know, and I knew you're yelling, remember? I know, I was thinking, you know, it's funny, I initially was thinking of Jack Rose. There's a saloon in D.C. called the Jack Rose Saloon. I don't know if you.

[A]

I think I used to grow up in the D.C. area. I believe I've been there actually.

[B]

It has the largest selection of bourbons and scotches, I think, in the US it's like a library of liquor.

[A]

They have.

[B]

Yeah, they have like the library ladders. So if you need to go up and grab something, it's a really cool place. It's over in. Is it Adams Mark or Adams Morgan? Morgan. Adams Morgan area. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That section. Yeah.

[A]

Next to Madam's Oregon, which is a bar down the street.

[B]

That's right. That's right.

[A]

I didn't make that up, you know. Cool.

[B]

So let's start off with sharing a little bit about your current role in your organization with listeners.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Jason Rose, CEO of claresense. So my company is a data enablement platform company. And so which is a big category when you think about that, primarily focus on two use cases. The first use case is how can we identify cost reduction through application rationalization. And so we go to typically large health systems that are rolling out new enterprise applications, EPIC workday, what have you. Or they're very inquisitive. They're acquiring hospitals or health systems. They're moving from on prem data centers to the cloud. All these things create bloat, they create cost and cyber risk. Right. And so Gartner will say it's 30 or 40% or higher of the entire application stack is bloated and redundant and wasteful. And so we help organizations look in their app stack and do an application rationalization process. We take all that disparate data of thousands of the applications on the size of organization and we patient match it and then we provide it and we revitalize that data so that it has other use cases. So we put it into EPIC as a longitudinal medical record. Single sign on. So now him and clinicians see the full patient record, not just the Last couple years when they converted to epic or the ERPR operations financials, you have a different UI, they're shutting down Lawson, PeopleSoft, all these Kronos, et cetera. So it's just really about an operational margin execution of how you drive cost optimization, which is the biggest issue that exists in healthcare today. The second use case is that you guys step further and you turn on the active data feeds. Now you have a full clinical data warehouse of all the data, current data as of today, and then the last 20 years. And then you find different. Bring your own technology tools that layer on top of that, such as AI validation and clinical trials, things of that nature to drive more pharma research, tokenization, those types of things to revitalize data in that way. And that's probably more revenue related versus cost optimization for the health.

[B]

Do you sell to the chief digital officer or.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. It's a great question. So historically, you know, certainly the chief digital officer of a health system is going to be the primary executive sponsor, but there is so much pressure in the four walls of the hospital system that it's really a CFO and a COO CEO. Financial burn is, is so great. And the pressures within I, I had a extremely large health system tell me this a couple months ago. It's that people don't realize this if you don't work any health system. But the pressure right now in a hospital is as big or bigger than it was in Covid. And the difference is that the public is not behind them like they were with COVID And there's no freebies by the government to keep going. So the cost pressures on, on them are massive and they have got to figure out a different way of their operating model. And so we have an awesome technology which go more into. But the driver, the problem we're solving for is definitely reduce cost, reduce your operating margin. So nice.

[B]

You have a strong ROI message which again supports the sale to the CFO and the coo.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Are you using like a Snowflake or are you using fire? Like what's the base architecture?

[A]

So snowflake, that's a data warehouse. And think of Snowflake as you're just taking data and you're kind of shoving it over to this big data warehouse. But you got to build custom use cases and things like that. That's not. It's really just a different animal. We're more of a middleware software product. Okay. And so any type of application that you can possibly imagine, I mean the larger health Systems have thousands and thousands and thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of applications across our hospitals. And it's because of these single point solutions that have been acquired. The shadow, it just hygiene friendly M and A, all these things create blow. And it's not even problem just in healthcare. It's across the world, all organizations have technical debt. And so what we do is we're taking that structured, unstructured data and imaging data and we're pulling it into our platform and we're providing querying tools and those types of UIs so that the clinician, the operator, the financial organization can use that data in a different way than they were before. But the bottom line is we're shutting down software licenses, we're shutting down infrastructure, we're freeing up personnel and we're reducing cyber risk.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

These are very hard cost takeout.

[B]

These are not soft harvest the data and then consolidate and expire, shut down, terminate, whatever you want to call it.

[A]

Yeah, decommission.

[B]

Decommission.

[A]

That's.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And on average, how many systems are you consolidating roughly?

[A]

We're typically going to work with the larger health systems. We do have some systems that are less than 2 billion in revenue, patient revenue, but we're working with systems that are 20, 25, $30 billion patient revenue system. So the difference between a $2 billion health system like we're working with one right now, they just acquired another health System. They've got 130 applications that are just now redundant and bloated. But a third of those are ones where you need the data as well. And for retention rights for PHI, you have to keep the data for at least seven years. Some health systems want it for 10 years, 15 years. If they're pediatric, it's media, I think it's 21 years after they turn 21 or something. The DOD is 75 years after death, by the way. So you have to keep that data. And clinicians, let's just face it, clinicians are hoarders. They don't want to give up any data ever. So if you take a $2 billion health system that just acquired another health system and they've got 45, 50 some applications that needed data pulled out of that, we're going to do that. You could do that in a matter of months. Wow. We have other health systems that we're doing 25, 35 applications in a quarter that was shutting down. And so one of our clients is public information. There was a Gartner report written, a case Study that I always like say, I didn't pay for it, it was unsolicited, they would never take my money. In July is what Trinity Health, which is the sixth largest health system in the country. And so with that health system, we have shut down 800 applications of like 7,400 across 93 hospitals. And I've saved, as of the white paper, 68 million in hard cost. And we're on our way to take out 100 million. Wow. These are hard cost. These are software licenses and maintenance mainly.

[B]

So do you have a risk based, performance based license or.

[A]

Today we don't. That's. By the way, that's a net number after the paid fees for all the, all of our stuff.

[B]

That's incredible.

[A]

So today we don't do the risk based, but I've always said we be totally open to that. And so I've actually openly discussed that with prospective clients and current clients. Current clients, like, well, wait, wait, why would we do a risk based. You're already giving me this massive 510 to 1 ROI. Yeah. What would be the reason why we would do that? Or for prospective clients who don't understand that there's this massive gold mine sitting underneath their nose. So I just actually published a new white paper, but I'll describe the front cover, which is a, a meme that I've been using for since I was at CERNER Way back 90s actually. And so imagine it's a cartoon and there's these big strong men and they've got these ropes and they're pulling this wagon down the road. And on the wagon they have these square wheels and they're just moving it along slowly but surely. And very, very hard labor. Like Jean Valjean from Les Miserables or something. Very hard labor. Great.

[B]

That's so great.

[A]

Yeah. And inside the WA wagon you've got these beautiful radial Michelin tires.

[B]

What a great metaphor. Yeah, that's so great. Yeah.

[A]

I was like say to people like, well, what do you see here? And then the right answer is is that the solution to the problem is right underneath their nose. And so there's a trillion dollar duck punch that just happened with the one big beautiful bill act. I've actually heard it and should. The only way to say it is OV3. I thought that was. I found that out this week at a conference. Ov3 such a correlated say it's Hecky. Right. So ov3. So ob3 caused a trillion dollar debt punch in funding Medicaid and ACA funding just gone over the next 10 years. And so that is a wallop. But yet they're looking at they got to drive rev cycle, they got to take out costs. So there was a Gartner case study that just came out a few weeks ago and it asks healthcare CIOs, health system CIOs, from January 1st to now, this is a September study. Did your agenda change? You know, these are garter studies. They're very high level.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

92% said, yes, my agenda has changed. So you think about healthcare health system CIOs. That's unreal. 92% said my agenda is totally changed. The second question was, what is the most important initiative that you have right now since everything's changed?

[B]

And number one, cost optimization, cost containment, cost optimization. Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

59% cost optimization. But yet no one, unless we've spoken to them, is thinking about application decommissioning or rationalization. They don't realize that what they have today, which is those stone wheels, when I had the graphics person right on there, it says legacy archiving, which is all my competition.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And then the beautiful Michelin tires, they all say clear sense on it. And so because they just don't realize that there's this massive amount of cost savings. I mean like tens of millions, hundreds of millions on the sides of system and the M and A and that kind of thing, that kind of money is sitting there and they don't realize it. And so last point I'll make on this from roi. So the average not for profit health system is an operating margin of 4%. Okay, so for every, this is just math. For every million dollars of cost takeout of OPEX cost takeout that you do for a 4% operating margin, organization is $25 million of replacement revenue. So for every million dollars we take out, it's as if they just dropped in their lap $25 million of new revenue. And so $4 million is $100 million of revenue. As if they got $4,100,000,000 of revenue. So the numbers are staggering. Even though I'm talking about multibillion dollar health systems that cost take out of a million, 2 million, $5,100,100,000,000 cost takeout on a $25,000,000 system is billions in revenue that you would have to get otherwise.

[B]

Now that's terrific. Let's unpack your background. How did you get into healthcare?

[A]

Yeah, so I got a degree in psychology and I thought I was going to be a therapist and write papers and do research and teach and that kind of thing. And then after my undergraduate, I worked in a inpatient psych ward. The full nine yards, restraints, the whole.

[B]

That's incredible experience. Yeah.

[A]

Yes. And I was there about a year. Like, what am I doing here?

[B]

Surviving is what you're doing.

[A]

Oh yeah, I was definitely surviving.

[B]

Trying to survive the night.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, it was tough. So I wanted to get out of that because that was not my thing and it wasn't my calling. And God bless the people who do that type of work, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. But I really wanted to stay in healthcare because I really liked healthcare. I liked helping people. And so I got on the business side. Long story short, when I decided to get a master's in business school, I said I want to do in health services. So there's a health services administrative degree at George Washington University. And so I always like to say, I happened to find out from a high school friend that I kept in touch with, he said, did you know that GW pays for your education if you work there at the medical center? I'm like, I did not know that. Well, that was an easy math. So there was an opening in IT department in the medical faculty associates. And then next thing I know, I'm in it. I knew nothing about it.

[B]

Oh, that's cool.

[A]

And this is in 1995. And so I wedged my way onto this EHR search committee. This was HBOC and Cerner and IEX. EPIC wasn't. I mean, EPIC was formed in 92, I think.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so they weren't even early days.

[B]

Yeah, this is really early days. Yeah.

[A]

And I just sort of used my role as a 26 year old graduate student slash IT coordinator to say, hey, would you like to come on site? By the way, I'm looking for an internship because I'm custom creating my own degree. I got the D in school to allow me to do that. Healthcare tech degree never existed. And I need an internship. And so I somehow convinced Cerner to become. I'm the first graduate intern. So. And that's kind of how I got into healthcare and healthcare tech.

[B]

Got it. If you weren't doing this job, what would you be doing?

[A]

Oh man.

[B]

What are you most passionate about?

[A]

I'd probably be a lawyer.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Yeah, I think I'd be a lawyer. I like to do research. I like to find compelling arguments and make my point. And I use that. I use that for purpose of marketing and selling. But way back I think I wanted to be an attorney.

[B]

You're a commander Debater on the Myers Briggs. I bet.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

What about hobbies? What are you doing when you're not working?

[A]

So I like active hobbies. I like to box, but not. Not in a ring, so to speak. 54. I don't want to show up with a black eye or something.

[B]

But you mean like box presence or y.

[A]

It's good. My dad was boxing. I got a title box. Things to shout out. The title box.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So big, heavy bags and. Yeah, yeah, it's. I probably burn a thousand or more calories in a workout. I mean, it's super intense. And you do a hit workout. You do eight rounds of boxing, you do core, and I like to do that. I golf. I'm working my way down my handicap on that. So I like to golf, and then I like to go outdoors and hike and nice with my wife and just things that kind of get me out there in the woods and.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that kind of thing. And where.

[B]

Where are you based?

[A]

So I'm in Nashville, Tennessee. Oh, you're in Nashville. Yeah.

[B]

Are you right in the city or are you Franklin or outside?

[A]

I'm in Brentwood.

[B]

Brenwood.

[A]

Oh, yeah. And I moved my company from Jacksonville. I've lived here twice now. I'm really from the D.C. area, but I moved here twice. But this is the healthcare methodology.

[B]

Yeah. Jacksonville, Florida.

[A]

The company was in Jacksonville. I never lived there. I've probably been there three times in my life, actually. Okay. And I wasn't moving. And, you know, there was a real reason to bring the company here in Nashville, since it's such a dominant. They call it the Silicon Valley of healthcare.

[B]

It's such a great town, too. I mean, there's so much going on there.

[A]

It's an awesome town. Yeah. We pump out on the health care side, we pump out $97 billion of revenue on health care every year. And just Nashville. There are 900 health care companies in Nashville.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And several hundred thousand workers is by far the dominant industry here.

[B]

I just hired my chief commercial officer. She lives in Nashville.

[A]

So. Yeah. And then when I moved the office from Jacks to here. Yeah. I also live in Brentwood, and it just so happened. I'm three minutes from my house. It just worked out.

[B]

That's so nice. Yeah, that's awesome. This is the Risk Never Sleeps podcast. I got to ask you, what's the riskiest thing you've ever done?

[A]

That's a great question. I'm going to give you two, but they're both connected. So one was, I originally moved to Nashville from the D.C. area. I was after 9, 11, I just like, I got to get off the road. I was captain, I was young and traveling too much and I was just, you know, picked up the fam and go to Nashville and work the ARD intel service. So. And I was like a deputy CIO there, effectively rolling out starter actually. And so as an O2 and after that, Stan, I wanted to get out of Pulse Systems. I went to the payer side working for a vendor and my third day on the job, I happened to be in some meeting where we were looking at acquiring a company and rolling out a big product with Cigna and on the post, acute length stay and hospital reduction length of stay. And I just had a lot of questions about what the tech was supposed to do, what we were selling to Cigna. This was new for us. And then as a long story short, they said, you know, I know you're the CIO of this company, but would you think about maybe just taking over and creating a product and own product instead? Like day three or day four for me. So that was my pivot point in my career as I went from IT management to building product. P and L management, sales, marketing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I'll fast forward a few years later. I went to a company called Inovalon in 08, so Novalon when I joined there, we were, I'll say, well, less than 100 million, maybe, I don't know, 70 million, something like that. 08. And we were called Med Assurance at the time and I was the head of clinical products. And in my interview, the CEO, whose founder, wonderful guy, his name is Dr. Keith Dunleavy, was asking me, I shouldn't say this out loud because they'll probably tick that I said this, but I remember very well. He said, you know, you made a comment about 20 minutes ago that you'll move mountains with pen and paper or pencil and paper, say we're an IT company and I want to make sure that this you understand that we're a tech company. I'm like. I said, you just gave me the best compliment I've had in five years. I've been trying to prove to everyone that I'm actually a business person, the tech background. But I'm like, you realize I was a CIO before like five years ago. So he's like, and I could tell you forgot. So you will stage two. So anyway, I had a great run there. 10 years, nice. Back from Nashville to the D.C. area. We went public at 4 billion. All organic.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

2015, it was like the, I think at the time of the top NASDAQ IPOs of the year. Great experience, confetti and all that stuff. And then they went private at 7 billion years later. So that was a huge risk.

[B]

Who took it private?

[A]

That would be. Was it p. Yeah, it was me. If I'm already. I remember, I, I mean gone for a couple years.

[B]

That was at Improvado. We had the same ride. We went public right on that time frame and we went private. Tumblr, Bravo took us private in 16.

[A]

Yeah. Being, you know, going public is not. You've done this. So. Yeah, it's not as exciting.

[B]

I mean it's exciting to do it and do it maybe twice and then realize, damn, so much work we had.

[A]

I think 13 banks at took us public and it was a huge public offering. And the story I always like to say is that was day one. Yeah, that was the end. That was the beginning. And so at 9am we're on the NASDAQ floor and we're, we're all over at International tv, me and the CEO and like five other leaders in the company. And my boss is on CNBC being interviewed at like 10, 10 o'. Clock.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At 2pm my wife was off shopping, buying purses with all the other spouses. I'm in White. Was it White plains. White Oak, New York.

[B]

White Plains, New York.

[A]

White Plains, NY. In some really crappy conference room. This like a 10 by 10 conference room with no table to put a projector on. I used a chair and I was trying to sell ACO a program, risk adjustment programs. And I never told them what I was doing drinking Champagne Mimosas at 9am because they wouldn't care. They could give it, you know. And so. But that was day one. It just, it's hard to be a publicly trained company. Everything is so transparent.

[B]

You become a slave to the quarter.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And you make decisions based on that which quite frankly may not be the right decisions for the company long term.

[A]

I totally agree. And I had gone and I left ecstatic. But they went private in 21 and that's, you know, I think that that's why it frees you up. And so companies who are having problems. We weren't having problems, but just companies who might have a longer term view. I think it's a lot easier to go private personally. As much as fun it was and from an ego perspective it felt great.

[B]

And you know, the money's not bad either.

[A]

And the money was good too. I could lend the end.

[B]

So who's that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All those purses.

[A]

Details. Yeah. All those purses I had.

[B]

I remember my first ipo. I shouldn't even say this, but I was in San Francisco and I called my wife. I'm like, I'm going to buy an Andy Warhol.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

She's like, what? I go, I'm buying an Andy Warhol.

[A]

Did you buy the Campbell suit?

[B]

No, I didn't buy that. No, no, no, no, I bought another one. But anyway, we still have it at Silver Our Fire.

[A]

That's cool.

[B]

Yeah. No, but it was stupid money. It's like. And I was a kid, like I was, I was so young. I like, I just love art and I love culture and anyway, you could go back in time, speaking of kids, and tell your 20 year old self something, what would it be?

[A]

So I got a bowl here. I'm gonna go off camera.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

So this is my bowl. Okay. Oh yeah, you like art. So this is made out of pistons and sports shoe and you know.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

Yeah, it's pretty cool. So I like to think of take the bull by the horns. So my CEO at that company, when I did that change from the CIO to Ops, he had a bull on his desk. His name is Jim Deal. He just passed away a few months ago. He's a wonderful guy. He was at Healthways and, and he was CEO of Inspiros where I was and you know, Merrill lynch bull on his desk. I was like, that's badass. I need to get one of those. It took me six, seven years to find something. I found it in some island on cruise.

[B]

But when you were on Wall street, did you grab literally that bull by.

[A]

The street next to that bowl? Definitely.

[B]

That's so great.

[A]

Let's take the bul horns and then get out of your own way. Yeah. Is what I would say myself. And, and that's. I told my 54 year old self that too, by the way. Is. Yeah, just I have a hard time sitting still and I, I think, you know that OV3 bill is probably the biggest bill and it's definitely since aca, maybe even before that. So it's a huge change to healthcare. And so that is just an example. Take. There's never let an opportunity go to waste, you know, is another line I like to use. Yeah. And so being aggressive first to market drive value. I think you can figure out how to make money if you figure out how to drive client value is number one. Number one through ten most important things that I think anybody should do in any Company is client value. Yeah.

[B]

Amen. You're on a desert island. You could bring five records with you. What would you bring?

[A]

All right, so this is a hard question. Oh, really? Okay, fine. Albums. Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

All right, so here. Here we go.

[B]

Only because you have a love of music. You have so many I.

[A]

Music.

[B]

Okay, me too. Okay, good, good, good. Oh, I'm excited now. Okay.

[A]

Yeah, I love music, so I have appetite for instruction. My Guns and.

[B]

Guns and Roses. Yeah.

[A]

I've got Plush by Stone Temple Pilots.

[B]

Oh, my God, I love that.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I love the acoustic version.

[A]

Oh, the acoustic version is great, too. On the MTV. Yes, absolutely. So good. Van Halen, 1984.

[B]

Oh, you're a Van Halen fan.

[A]

All right. Nirvana, Nevermind.

[B]

Oh, wow. Oh, nice. All right, I see a theme.

[A]

Okay. But then I'm gonna break your theme. Is it just an album with classical music? With Mozart, Beethoven.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, Amadeus, etc. Just. Yeah. Because that's how I like to meditate. And especially when I'm on airplanes. Just, like, just chill out.

[B]

Same. Yeah, yeah, Start in there, too.

[A]

But you wouldn't.

[B]

The rooster.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right, I'll go onto your island. What's the figurine behind you? Is that, like, from the movie?

[A]

This?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I didn't realize I was here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So this is a zombie.

[B]

Oh, kill your zombie apps.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Was that something you guys did as a promo?

[A]

Yes. We mailed out, like, a hundred of these things to CEO, cfo, CIO and coo. I love that.

[B]

Was it effective? Did it work?

[A]

Yeah, we got a lot of attention. We're about to send out another 150 of those. Well, you know what? This was the hardest thing to find was actually a zombie. So we had to go in, and I don't have the new zombie. There's another zombie, and the head pops off, and it's.

[B]

That's cool.

[A]

Reality is that if you think about it, what I was describing on cost takeout and application rationalization, it's like, okay, but that's not AI. And that's. I mean, we do AI in there, by the way, but it's not just sexy. It's a hardcore tech debt cleanup. And how do I get people's attention? And I said, okay, well, zombie apps, that's a term. It's a real term from the 90s and resurrected it to today. And so Gardner wrote a piece that they update every few years, and they said that when any company, not just healthcare, they're really good at rolling out new applications. What? They're really lousy at is killing the applications that they're replacing. And they said you should have the application Undertaker team. So there's definitely a theme here.

[B]

That's great.

[A]

So my next thing might be the Undertaker team, and so I might start buying a bunch of undertakers.

[B]

That's great.

[A]

The big seven foot wrestler, you know?

[B]

Yeah, I love it. Like, you could do a whole play on horror movies from like.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Gone to the Dead.

[A]

It should try and get attention on a really important thing. Yeah, that. That's like. What is a zombie app? Well, they're working in your data center. They're not being used. They're siphoning your budget, and they're major cyber risk and they're lethal, and that's what a zombie app is. And so trying to get attention on a subject that people aren't really thinking about.

[B]

There was a movie in the 80s. It was a horror movie. There's an orb and there was a gentleman they called the Undertaker in the movie. I don't know if you remember the movie. I can't remember the name of it right now, but I'll send it to you after. After the call. My brother's going to kill me because he's like, that was one of the movies we love to watch when we were kids. How could you forget that? Anyway, well, listen, it's been a real pleasure to meet you, Jason, and hear your story. Yeah. Really appreciate it. Yeah. This is Edgar from the Risk Never Sleeps podcast. If you're on the front lines protecting patient safety and delivering patient care, remember to stay vigilant because Risk never sleeps. Thanks for listening to Risk Never Sleeps. For the show, notes, resources and more information and how to transform the protection of patient safety, Visit [e-mail] that's C-N S I N E T dot com. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet. And until next time, stay vigilant because Risk never sleeps.