Podcast
Working Healthcare
Hosted by Meredith Hirsh · EN
The truth reshaping America’s $5 trillion healthcare system. This show provides a front-row seat to the policies, powerhouses and forces. Candid conversations no one else is telling with the most fascinating healthcare leaders, every week hosted by trailblazer Meredith Hirsh. You can’t fix what you don’t understand.
Watch full video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@WorkingHealthcare
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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@workinghealthcarepod
Meredith LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithfhirsh/
Contact Email: workinghealthcarepodcast@gmail.com
30episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Ep. 107 - From War Zones to Break Rooms: What Healthcare Leaders Miss About Change (ft. Dr. Loubna Noureddin)
1w ago00:56:31Tap to summarizeAt 10 years old, Loubna Noureddin runs from her home in Sierra Leone as gunfire explodes, clutching fear and leaving her teddy bear behind. In the jungle, hungry and exhausted, she follows the smell of barbecue and realizes the feast might be her. Cannibals wait. A stranger who should be the enemy steps in instead and saves her life. That is where her story of leadership starts. Not in a boardroom. In survival.On this episode of Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Loubna, a refugee kid who grows into a leadership scholar, healthcare executive and author of Determined to Change. She moves from war in West Africa to civil war in Lebanon to the quiet safety of Montreal, where she begins to understand why some people break under constant threat and others grow braver.Loubna now looks at American healthcare and sees the same nervous system on overload. Change initiatives fail. Employees shut down. Leaders rush from one transformation to the next while nurses cry in break rooms and managers feel more like therapists than bosses. She argues the problem is not that people resist change. They resist confusion. No one turns off the air in the “bounce house,” so everyone keeps jumping harder until they burn out.In this conversation, Loubna shares small, specific practices that shift cultures: 10 intentional minutes of connection a day, an empty chair in every meeting that holds the fears no one wants to say out loud and clear priorities that do not change with every email. She calls leaders back to something simple and radical in a tech-obsessed system: humanity matters.If you feel overwhelmed by change or responsible for people who are, this episode grounds you and gives you language for what your team already feels. Tune in and learn what a girl in a jungle teaches today’s C-suite about surviving change.Contact Loubna:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loubnan/ Facebook handle: Mind Market Consultants Instagram handle: https://www.instagram.com/mindmarketconsultants YouTube handle: https://www.youtube.com/@mindmarketconsultants3092Contact Meredith:Website: meredithhirsh.com Instagram: @workinghealthcareFacebook: WorkingHealthcareLinkedIn: @meredithfhirshYouTube: @WorkingHealthcare
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Ep. 106 - Why Healthcare Keeps Saying No to Better Solutions (ft. Holley Miller)
2w ago00:51:31Tap to summarizeWhat happens when an industry built on science and data refuses to act on its own evidence? Host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Holley Miller, a veteran health tech strategist whose 40-plus years navigating medical device adoption, robotic surgery and emerging technology has given her a clear-eyed view of why healthcare is structurally designed to protect the status quo even when it underperforms. Holley reframes clinical resistance not as stubbornness but as rational risk management and makes the case that what looks like innovation failure is really a change management crisis hiding in plain sight. From laparoscopic surgery to AI adoption, she breaks down what it actually takes to move stakeholders, why incremental change rarely sticks and what leaders get wrong when they lead with solutions instead of problems. If you have ever walked out of a conference fired up and watched the momentum die in your next team meeting, this one is for you.Pull up a chair and tune in. This conversation will change how you think about change.Contact Holley:LinkedInYouTubeContact Meredith:Website: meredithhirsh.com Instagram: @workinghealthcareFacebook: WorkingHealthcareLinkedIn: @meredithfhirshYouTube: @WorkingHealthcare
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Ep. 105 - Why Healthcare Leaders Must Do the "Heart" Work with Lindse Murphy
3w ago00:53:27Tap to summarizeWhat happens when the people treating trauma are quietly drowning in it themselves? On Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Lindse Murphy, behavioral health executive, board-certified behavior analyst and founding CEO of a statewide nonprofit advancing women in leadership, to explore what it really costs to lead in healthcare without doing what she calls the heart work. Lindse grew up navigating a childhood defined by instability, a mother's undiagnosed mental illness and the kind of survival mode that never fully switches off. That resilience became her career, propelling her from psychiatric units to C-suite leadership during COVID, where she was fielding calls not about patients in crisis but about physicians and nurses who were. She walked away from it all with clarity and purpose, building something the industry still struggles to prioritize: the well-being of the people doing the healing. If healthcare is going to fix itself, Lindse says, it has to start there.Pull up a chair and listen. This one stays with you.Contact Lindse:Website: influentialexecutivewomen.orgInstagram: @Lindse_MurphyLinkedIn: /lindsey-murphy-a86b2b145Contact Meredith:Website: meredithhirsh.com Instagram: @workinghealthcareFacebook: WorkingHealthcareLinkedIn: @meredithfhirshYouTube: @WorkingHealthcare
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Ep. 104 - Reclaiming Joy When Medicine Loses Its Meaning with Dr. Alen Voskanian
4w ago00:46:01Tap to summarizeWhat happens when the thing that broke you isn't the hard work but everything around it? On Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Dr. Alen Voskanian, physician, author and palliative care specialist, to explore what's really driving burnout in American medicine. Alen arrived in the U.S. at 19 as a refugee with no doctors in his family and no roadmap, just determination. He became a physician, found his calling in underserved communities and then nearly lost his joy to the relentless administrative friction he calls "pebbles in the shoe." His book, Reclaiming the Joy of Medicine, is a challenge to every clinician and healthcare leader: stop waiting for a once-in-a-century crisis to force change. The conversation is sharp, honest and deeply human, a reminder that care is literally in the word "healthcare." It just needs to be put back.Grab a listen and ask yourself: what pebbles are you carrying?Contact Alen:Instagram @alenvmdLinkedIn: /alenvoskanianmdPurchase Reclaiming the Joy of Medicine on AmazonContact Meredith:Website: meredithhirsh.com Instagram: @workinghealthcareFacebook: WorkingHealthcareLinkedIn: @meredithfhirshYouTube: @WorkingHealthcare
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Ep. 103 - Follow the Money: Inside America's Drug Pricing Black Box (ft. Tesh Khullar)
May 1900:53:24Tap to summarizeIf we are insured and spending nearly half a trillion dollars a year on prescription drugs, why are patients still standing at the pharmacy counter being told no? This episode of Working Healthcare follows that money.Host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Tesh Khullar, founder and CEO of Prism TPO and co-founder of HouseRx who has spent his career inside drug distribution, oncology data and specialty pharmacy. He explains how PBMs, vertically integrated insurers, 340B arbitrage and opaque rebates pull value out of the system before it ever reaches patients or independent practices.If you want to understand why the system works the way it does and who really absorbs the cost, this is the conversation to start with. Tune in.Contact Tesh:Website: prismtpo.comLinkedIn: /tesh-k-269669 Contact Meredith:Website: meredithhirsh.com Instagram: @workinghealthcareFacebook: WorkingHealthcareLinkedIn: @meredithfhirshYouTube: @WorkingHealthcare
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Ep. 102 - Burnout, ‘Good Girls,’ and a System Never Built for Women with Sadie Wackett
May 1200:53:56Tap to summarizeWhat if the real problem isn’t that women “can’t handle it,” but that the system never considered them in the first place? On this episode of Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with leadership coach and former chief people officer Sadie Wackett. She spent decades as the only woman at the table in male-dominated industries. Drawing from her experience navigating IVF, international relocation and executive life in Palm Beach, Sadie explains how “good girl” conditioning, perfectionism and people-pleasing quietly burn women out, even as the workplace rewards them for shrinking into the role. That pattern is costly. Together, Meredith and Sadie examine why so many high-achieving women feel numb, exhausted or as if they’re living someone else’s life. They also discuss what it takes to rewrite that script without blowing up a career. If nearly half of women report burnout, we need to stop treating it as a self-care problem and start recognizing it as a workforce and mental health crisis hiding in plain sight.Trying harder is not the answer. Press play to hear what can actually help high-achieving women in healthcare lead, thrive and stay in the work they care about.Contact Sadie:Website: sadiewackett.comFacebook: @Sadie WackettInstagram: @sadiewackettLinkedIn: /sadie-wackettContact Meredith:Website: meredithhirsh.com Instagram: @workinghealthcareFacebook: WorkingHealthcareLinkedIn: @meredithfhirshYouTube: @WorkingHealthcare
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Ep. 101 - Virtual Physical Therapy Was Written Off as Impossible. Ashok Gupta Proves It’s Not.
May 500:49:42Tap to summarizeWhat happens when two physical therapists sitting on their couch realize the entire delivery model for their profession is broken? On Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh talks with Ashok Gupta, Doctor of Physical Therapy and founder of TheraNow, about building a virtual physical therapy platform that now serves major hospital systems across the country. Ashok traces the journey from a website launch that drew zero visitors to a pivotal moment treating a hospital CEO recovering from hip replacement surgery — and how that single patient relationship changed everything. They dig into the economics of PT reimbursement, the PTA staffing debate, rural access failures and what a CMS innovation initiative is finally doing to kill the clipboard. The real question Ashok raises isn't whether telehealth works — it's why a system with the tools to change keeps choosing not to.Contact Ashok Gupta:Website: theranow.com Facebook: @theranow Instagram: @theranow101 X: @realtheranow YouTube: @theranow-therapistondemand4024LinkedIn: /dr-ashok-gupta-dptContact Meredith:Website: meredithhirsh.com Instagram: @workinghealthcareFacebook: WorkingHealthcareLinkedIn: @meredithfhirshYouTube: @WorkingHealthcare
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Ep. 100 - Private Equity vs. Independent Medicine: When Wall Street Enters the Exam Room (ft. Anna Sobkiv)
Apr 2800:55:32Tap to summarizeIs private equity helping physician practices survive or quietly redefining the future of independent medicine? Host Meredith Hirsh sits down in her Delray Beach podcast studio with Anna Sobkiv, Executive Director, Healthcare Services, J.P. Morgan Commercial Banking, to examine one of the biggest forces reshaping healthcare today. Anna draws on her experience advising physicians and healthcare businesses on growth, acquisition and succession planning to explain why private equity keeps accelerating and why certain specialties attract so much investor interest. She also breaks down what these deals can mean for physician ownership, practice autonomy and the long-term sustainability of independent medicine. She reflects on building a career in healthcare finance and advising clients at the highest levels of banking in a field where women remain underrepresented. Listen now for a sharp conversation about private equity, physician practice ownership and the future of healthcare.Contact Anna Sobkiv at:Email: anna.sobkiv@jpmorgan.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-sobkiv-mba-3697952aContact Meredith:Website: meredithhirsh.com Instagram: @workinghealthcareFacebook: WorkingHealthcareLinkedIn: @meredithfhirshYouTube: @WorkingHealthcare
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Ep. 99 - CEO Shift: How Leadership Changes as Healthcare Companies Grow (ft. Joe Luminiello)
Apr 2100:55:18Tap to summarizeWhat separates an entrepreneur from a CEO, and why does that distinction matter in healthcare today? Host Meredith Hirsh talks with RCG Intel co-founder and CEO Joe Luminiello about how leadership must evolve as healthcare companies grow and scale. With more than four decades of biopharma experience, Joe explores the tension between vision and execution, the difference between authority and power, and the risks of misaligned leadership in scaling organizations. The conversation reveals how strategy, culture and decision-making influence outcomes across the healthcare system at a time of relentless change. Listen now for Joe’s sharp perspective on leadership, longevity and scaling success in healthcare.Contact Joe Luminiello at:Website: https://rcgintel.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeluminiello/Contact Meredith:Website: meredithhirsh.com Instagram: @workinghealthcareFacebook: WorkingHealthcareLinkedIn: @meredithfhirshYouTube: @WorkingHealthcare
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Ep. 98 - Ukraine to U.S. Medicine: Dr. Maryna Yudina on Prevention vs Profit in Healthcare
Apr 1400:52:48Tap to summarizeQuestion why prevention keeps losing to profit in American healthcare. In this episode of Working Healthcare, host Meredith Hirsh sits down with Dr. Maryna Yudina to explore how her journey from Ukraine to the United States shaped the way she sees cost, incentives and value in medicine. Now working in preventive brain health and neurofeedback, Maryna shares where the U.S. gets it right, where it fails patients and why the system so often waits for crisis before it acts. Hear her perspective on delayed intervention, rising costs and the business forces shaping care. Tune in to learn what American healthcare truly rewards and what must happen if prevention is ever going to win.Contact Dr. Maryna Yudina at: Website: qss.rocks Email: success@qss.rocks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-maryna-yudina-bb843643/Contact Meredith:Website: meredithhirsh.com Instagram: @workinghealthcareFacebook: WorkingHealthcareLinkedIn: @meredithfhirshYouTube: @WorkingHealthcare
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