Why Healthcare Costs Keep Climbing

Is American healthcare collapsing?

In this clip from our episode "How AI Could Save a Collapsing Healthcare System," host David E. Williams and Dr. Robert Pearl, Author of ChatGPT MD, break down why the current system is financially unsustainable and why physicians have never had the tools to fight back. Until now.

Listen to the full episode here

🎙️⚕️ABOUT DR. ROBERT PEARL
Robert Pearl, MD served as CEO of The Permanente Medical Group (Kaiser Permanente) for 18 years and former president of The Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, leading 10,000 physicians and 38,000 staff responsible for the care of 5 million Kaiser Permanente members on the west and east coasts. He is a clinical professor of plastic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, teaching healthcare strategy, technology, and leadership. Pearl is board certified in plastic and reconstructive surgery, with his medical degree from Yale and residency at Stanford.

He is the author of three books: Mistreated: Why We Think We're Getting Good Healthcare—And Why We're Usually Wrong, a Washington Post bestseller (2017); Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors & Patients, a Kirkus star recipient (2021); and ChatGPT, MD: How AI-Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine (April 2024). All profits go to Doctors Without Borders.

Pearl is a LinkedIn Top Voice in healthcare and host of the podcasts Fixing Healthcare and Medicine: The Truth, with two monthly newsletters reaching 50,000+ combined subscribers. He has presented at The World Healthcare Congress, the Commonwealth Club, TEDx, HLTH, NCQA Quality Talks, the National Primary Care Transformation Summit, and international conferences in Brazil, Australia, India, and beyond. His insights on generative AI have been featured in Associated Press, USA Today, Forbes, Fast Company, WIRED, Modern Healthcare, Medscape, Becker's Hospital Review, the Advisory Board, and the Journal of AHIMA.

🎙️⚕️ABOUT HEALTH BIZ PODCAST
HealthBiz is a CareTalk podcast that delivers in-depth interviews on healthcare business, technology, and policy with entrepreneurs and CEOs. Host David E. Williams — president of the healthcare strategy consulting boutique Health Business Group — is also a board member, investor in private healthcare companies, and author of the Health Business Blog. Known for his strategic insights and sharp humor, David offers a refreshing break from the usual healthcare industry BS.

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For over 20 years, Health Business Group has helped healthcare software companies, tech-enabled services businesses, life sciences companies, and payers make smarter strategic decisions. Led by podcast host David Williams, the firm advises clients on sharpening AI positioning, entering new segments, and building commercial strategies for value-based care. See examples of our work here

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Transcript

David: 0:07

So you've argued that, you know, AI empowered patients and doctors can take back control of American medicine. And I got a little bit of a sense of it right there when you're describing it. But what does that look like, um, in practice? What, what is a, what should a patient's experience be like in an AI enabled healthcare system?

Dr. Pearl: 0:25

So I would, I'd say two things we should be talking about. One is just what's the experience we like for the patients, and number two, how does it take over American medicine for the patient? I think it's going to empower them to know about their diseases. So before they even come to the doctor, they will have had a conversation. You know, I think back to a podcast host that I spoke with actually right after the book came out, who had never used generative ai and her husband had fallen, she slid, he slid down the mountain about a hundred feet skiing, uh, and his, uh, shoulder still hurt him three months later. And she said, Dr. Pearl, you're a skier, you're a doctor. What's going on? I said, I think I know exactly what's going on with him, but why don't you use Chachi pt? See what it says. So five days later, she calls me back, said I did exactly what you said. It said he probably had a rotator cuff tear. I knew what the rotator cuff was. When I saw the doctor, he needed an MRI to establish the diagnosis. I knew why I didn't have to question whether it was overtreatment or not. And the clinician said to me after the surgery, oh, and the application also said, see an orthopedic surgeon because you almost definitely need surgery. And when I did, when I saw the uh, surgeon, he did the procedure. He said, if I had waited a couple more months, I couldn't have reattached the tendon to the bone.'cause it would've been, the muscle would've shrunk. That's empowerment. The issue to me really though, is how do you change and transform the American healthcare system? This system is breaking. We're seeing already the changes happening to Medicaid. We're seeing it to the individuals on the exchanges. We're starting to see Medicare. We're seeing every aspect of this. Being impacted, businesses are spending over $25,000 a year to provide medical care to a family of four. This is just not viable and the US economy keeps adding. Uh, over a hundred thousand jobs in healthcare while everyone else is using these tools to be able to be able to become more productive and more efficient. But the problem has been that clinicians have never had a good way to be able to take back control of American medicine. And what I mean by that is to be the drivers of the care for the patients. They're responsible. Insurers have done it. We've seen, uh, elected officials do it. We've seen hospital administrators. Generative AI is the tool to so solidify that bond between the doctor and the patient to be able to have the doctor in the patient's home rather than managing hypertension, the number one cause of strokes every three to four months in an office. Have an application there, often programmed by a vibe, uh, coding tool to be able to have the patient enter a couple of readings every single day for a month after a month. The doctor could figure out how is the patient doing? You don't have to wait three or four months. You could actually make the changes more rapidly, improve the health and. Be able to take, not pay for volume. The more you do, the more you get paid. Even if it doesn't do any good, but pay for value and now you have something that the clinician can do that no one else in the healthcare world can do it. The insurer can't do it. The elected official can't do it, and the hospital administrator can't do.