A Conversation with Geisinger's President and CEO, Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD

As we celebrate 10 years of the Wharton Healthcare Quarterly (WHQ), we're taking a look back and a look ahead with healthcare leaders. Geisinger's President and CEO, Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD, discusses innovation. Also, hear from other healthcare leaders who've been featured speakers during the WHQ anniversary webinar series or written an anniversary spotlight article in the WHQ.

Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD, President and CEO of Geisinger

"I started being interested in urban policy, and it wasn't even health-specific necessarily. I did grow up in a physician household. So, I'd been around patient care, if you will, my whole life, and I always had an interest in really seeing how health can impact the state of communities. I’ve been involved in community-oriented things, especially post-college when I spent a gap year teaching in an inner-city youth program after college. And, I think seeing front and center there the impact of all sorts of social factors and how it impacts the ability of people in a community to lead fulfilling lives, and health was a key component of it.

That's what first got me interested in going “upstream” and solving problems to impact the downstream. Then I progressed to medical school, where I think it was another opportunity to apply those learnings and understand that health-specific aspects are closely tied to communities and societal factors. And that's how I stumbled into and had an interest in health policy and some of the non-clinical aspects of healthcare. At the same time, I was very interested in the clinical aspects. And, so I think over time in my career, that's how the two worlds came together."

Helena Plater-Zyberk, CEO and Co-Founder of Supportiv

"I'm about eight years into my digital health entrepreneurship journey. At this point, I'm a two-time serial entrepreneur. And to this day, I look back and laugh because at no point in my career leading up to that jumping-inpoint did I ever anticipate being in healthcare. It wasn't on my radar.

What attracted me, coming out of the education, tech, and services space, was the idea of building solutions that track new people into the healthcare system. At no point have I ever been interested in, say, digitizing what were previously in-person interactions. There is a system that works, but it works for some people and not everyone.

So, what I've been doing in my career and particularly at Supportiv , with this peer support network that we've built in the mental health domain, is being a realist saying there are massive swaths of the population for whom the existing traditional mental health system doesn't work. It's not attractive. Yes, lots of other folks out there have solved the convenience issue, but what other kinds of solutions can we build that are engaging, that are attractive, that are pulling in the millions of people that would otherwise not engage?"

Alexandra Drane, Co-Founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS

"Looking back I realize how much my upbringing continues to shape who I’m becoming… My dad was a rabble-rousing serial entrepreneur who created some pretty transformational technologies, and eventually became an angel investor.?My mum’s an activist who believes in radical transparency, and my stepdad, who is like another father to me, is a data wonk.

What inspired me to get into healthcare was actually not healthcare itself. ?In fact, I thought healthcare was boring.?My obsession was technology, and building and growing things. ?Funny how in retrospect I didn’t think those things overlapped.?

Coming out of college my dream was to go work with Thinking Machines – a Boston-based technology company that was a pioneer in the field of massive parallel processing (a technology rivaling what was then classified as ‘super computing’).?Denny Hillis was my hero.?But my dad pointed out, ‘You haven’t really earned the right to choose a sole focus on technology until you’ve tried other things.’ So I went to work at a Bain spin-out called CDI – they had a fierce entrepreneurial spirit and sometimes took equity in place of fees.?They were about as ‘radical’ as strategy consulting companies were back in the day…

My very first case was healthcare… it was focused on what would eventually be considered ‘disease management’ for organ transplant patients – and their caregivers.?I went home and called my mum and said, ‘Ugh.?Healthcare is so boring… why can’t I be working with an interesting industry like automotive or retail.’?

Within about three days, I was madly in love.?I realized it wasn’t technology that fascinated me… it was humans.?Humanity.?Who we are, why we do what we do… And really, the most foundational aspect of humanity is to care for others and be cared for ourselves.?And that’s health.?Technology is just an enabling factor.?

So, I got into healthcare by accident…but I’m here with fierce intention now."

There's still time to sign up for Drane's webinar , "On Caregiving: What's Hard, What's Helping and the Post-COVID Opportunities for Support." It's free for WHCMAA members and HCM students. Others are welcome to attend, for a small fee.

Harris Contos, DMD, MBA | Owner/Principal Asclepius Consulting; Strategic Health Care Consulting

"Pretty much the usual (na?ve) belief in making things better, mixed in with the intellectual, philosophical, moral, and economic dimensions to the questions of 'who shall live,' 'what is the good life,' 'what is the good society.'?

More prosaically, after a “random walk” career doing a lot of different things in healthcare in a galaxy far, far away from dentistry, some ten or so years ago, I found myself rather unexpectedly deeply involved in the “iron triangle” of cost, access, and quality issues in dental health.

Dentistry is on the far-flung fringes of the healthcare universe, clumsy at best in comprehending, acknowledging, and addressing its inherent cost-access-quality issues.?It is ripe for transformation under value-based health reform, yet at the same time wholly unequipped and unprepared in policy understanding and management capability to deal with it.?The potential exists for exciting, earthshaking teardown and fundamental rebuilding of an entire segment of healthcare;?yet also the deflating prospect remains for the persistence of the costly, inaccessible (for many), and unaccountable status quo dentistry."

Z. Colette Edwards, MD, MBA | National Medical Director, Associate Health and Well-Being for Humana

"The driver for me, for being in healthcare, was what people think of as being cliché. But, I think you hear it from a lot of people in healthcare. And I think when people say it, they actually mean it.

So, part of it was an interest in science, and a lot of it was an interest in having interactions with people and feeling I could have an impact on their lives and make things better. It was going to provide the opportunity to help people at their best and worst times in life. And at the end of my career, I would have made a positive difference in the lives of others.

I'm a gastroenterologist. I surprised myself in selecting that specialty, but it provides the opportunity to see a range of patient ages, address a variety of conditions, often verify visually the accuracy of a diagnosis, and often to intervene in the moment.

I had my father as inspiration. He never pushed me one way or the other, but I could see how much he enjoyed what he was doing. And, I could see the impact that he had going into healthcare as a physician, first as a GP and then later as an anesthesiologist.

I'm a lifelong learner, and in healthcare, I would always be learning something new.

And, then with regard to going forward with getting my MBA, that was looking at it from the standpoint of the impact you have as a physician. There is absolutely positively nothing that can replace the patient-physician relationship and the honor of caring for others. People will share with you the most intimate and most important things to them, which they may not share with anyone else.

There's nothing that can replace that type of relationship, but with getting my MBA and some of the work I've been able to do since then, I am often able to help more people all at once and more quickly than seeing patients one-by-one sometimes allows you to do."

Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD, President and CEO of Geisinger

"Any time you're able to reinvent or rethink 'routine' in terms of how somebody's care should be delivered, I think that's pretty rewarding. What they have access to today is different than what they had access to yesterday. So, it's very concrete. I think that tangible, demonstrable differences in how they can be healthier is very fulfilling. I think the other is COVID. To be honest, as much as it's posed many challenges, I think just seeing the team and the community kind of rise up to the challenge. That's been very inspiring."

Helena Plater-Zyberk, CEO and Co-Founder of Supportiv

"One of the things that has always given me energy is being altruistic. When I was back in education services at Scholastic, I advocated for us to open up teacher resources for free to the teacher community.

Then, at my previous company, we were a digital, physical therapy company. I worked with one of the largest national health insurers in the country to get them to offer free, sponsored access to veterans.

And then here today, at Supportiv, in the mental health domain. The day that awareness grew that this pandemic was emerging back in March 2020, we threw open a way for healthcare workers to access Supportiv’s mental health support for free. And that is what really charges me, and that's what makes me feel good about the type of work that we do."

Alexandra Drane, Co-Founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS

The serial entrepreneur shared a candid and insightful lesson in revealing the theme of her career journey. It’s not the success she focuses on, but the twists and turns. It led her to discover that traditional clinical metrics are only one piece of the puzzle. Drane explained, “We came around to this new idea that we have to expand the definition of health to include life. Because when life goes wrong, health goes wrong.”

That revelation came out of failed efforts she said, and ultimately led her to co-found ARCHANGELS with?Sarah Stephens Winnay . Listen as Drane shares what drives her to continue innovating each day.

Harris Contos, DMD, MBA | Owner/Principal Asclepius Consulting; Strategic Health Care Consulting

"A few base hits in my career, but no home runs, certainly no grand slams.?

But, the Prince of Serendipity has been kind in recent years. I’ve become part (some say an important part) of a small group of leading-edge thinkers on dental health, with me the self-anointed policy wonk, drawing on my Wharton education. It’s been great to have open, intelligent, ingenuous discussion with my colleagues, far removed from the trite blather of mainstream dentistry that passes as authoritative thinking.?I can’t reveal any secrets as yet, but we may be able to have our voices heard where it may actually have some dramatic effect in reshaping how dental care is delivered."

Z. Colette Edwards, MD, MBA | National Medical Director, Associate Health and Well-Being for Humana

"I get a lot of satisfaction whenever we close out a publication of the Wharton Healthcare Quarterly because we have accomplished our goal. There's something that will stand the test of time that we can look back on that is concrete.

It has turned out that we have been very topical and looked at the really important issues of the day, some of which there have been great advances. Unfortunately, in other areas, we have not made the type of progress often desperately needed as an industry."

Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD, President and CEO of Geisinger

"I think one thing that I've always come to appreciate more and more is that things never go the way that you plan them. There are always going to be curveballs thrown your way. I think the industry continues to evolve as it should, and if we're doing anything right, we're driving as much of the change as we're adapting to. The ability to roll with the punches is a really important trait. If you're going to be in healthcare, you've got to be able to roll with the punches because if we're doing it right, the healthcare of tomorrow and where people get services shouldn't look the same as the healthcare of today. And that means change has happened. Hopefully, we're part of shaping and influencing that change. That means that things will be a little different than what might be comfortable.

It's also what drew me to emergency medicine. Every shift in the ER is not like any other shift you've ever had. There's this notion of and the excitement of the unpredictable and adapting on the fly and roll with the punches. I think that's a key part of that specialty, and it kind of carries over into how I would think about the non-clinical aspects of healthcare as well."

Helena Plater-Zyberk, CEO and Co-Founder of Supportiv

"My piece of advice to absolutely everyone now is that if you're trying to attain a work-life balance all the time, it's not possible. It doesn't exist. It's a myth. What you can attain, though, are ebbs and flows and moments of emphasis on life balance, and moments of emphasis on work balance. And, if you're trying to achieve the concept of balance over the long term, then you can find something that's fulfilling and purposeful and achieve a semblance of happiness."

Alexandra Drane, Co-Founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS

"There’s a saying with race car driving… ‘If you’re comfortable, be afraid.’?That’s been my experience in life… any time I thought I had the answer, or was ‘on top of it’, I was about to get blindsided.?And it’s rarely from what is immediately obvious on the surface.

We live in a world where people draw gorgeous diagrams on a whiteboard in a conference room, safe little boxes with arrows connecting them. ?But boxes on a whiteboard don’t reflect what happens in real life. ?I wish we could all hold hands and jump right INTO one of those little boxes… those little boxes often represent the 10k foot view – which is valuable in high level systems thinking. But what works at 10k feet does not necessarily translate to success in the last mile, or even the last INCH.?That last inch is where real life happens.?Every time I sit in a gorgeous conference room sure I have the answer I remind myself – you need to put your body there.?Get out ‘into the wild’, expose your ideas to the elements.?Almost every time we do that we realize we got something fundamentally wrong.?

The front line of anything is terrifying – and you’ll fail a lot in pushing into new territory.??But that’s AWESOME!!?Even though it doesn’t feel so at the time.?And for sure it's a lot easier to just draw stuff on a board than to put your body there. But life is happening on that front line... and by the time it’s bubbled up to a schematic on a white board, the real world has moved on."

Harris Contos, DMD, MBA | Owner/Principal Asclepius Consulting; Strategic Health Care Consulting

"Things exist as they are because they are the products of multiple forces - social, political, economic, cultural, what have you. It’s all called the status quo. It seeks to protect and perpetuate itself for fundamentally the economic and political gain of its members.?

Be mindful of how it assesses threats in the environment to its existence.?That can help you strategize how to bring about the change you seek or were hired to bring about, or at least give you the opportunity to walk away in time.

In no case should you drink the Kool-Aid they offer."

Z. Colette Edwards, MD, MBA | National Medical Director, Associate Health and Well-Being for Humana

"I would say to remember who you are and what your values are. Although you will change over time, the core of you, the essence of you, and whom you want to be probably will not.

You need to protect that because there'll be a lot of pressures in life, a lot of choices to be made, a lot of distractions that can get you off your path. But, if you stay true to yourself, then you'll be able to sleep well at night.

And, I think that will best position you to be happy and to have made a difference in the long run."

Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD, President and CEO of Geisinger

"It was the summer after college, and it was, more importantly, not just many years ago, but many pounds ago. I biked across the country. I was part of a group. There were probably about 20 of us. We were raising money for Habitat for Humanity. We went from DC to San Francisco in the thick of the summer. We encountered a bunch of riders going the other way, going from west to east, and they let us know that “You guys aren’t going the right way.” You encounter a lot of headwinds going east to west. And those turn into tailwinds going west to east. That would've been nice to know a couple thousand miles ago, but it was an unbelievable way to see the country. A lot of communities that, frankly, you wouldn't see if you were road tripping in a car and just stopping somewhere near the interstates. When you're biking it, you get to touch and feel each one of these communities at every stop. And I thought that was just something else. I'll never forget it."

Helena Plater-Zyberk, CEO and Co-Founder of Supportiv

"I'm social. I network. I love events. I love people. So, anyone who's interacted with me would tell you that I'm an extrovert. The reality could not be less true. I am an introvert through and through. I suffer from exhaustion chronically because of the social interactions that I have. And I think that introversion is an obstacle when people feel I can't start a company. I can't manage and lead teams. I can't lead the charge on this initiative because it will drain me. And I want to say it IS possible.

It goes back to understanding what self-care is about, understanding when to enact personal limits, how to recuperate yourself, how to recharge yourself, but it's entirely within the realm of possibility."

Alexandra Drane, Co-Founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS

"I love humans. I find people FASCINATING.?You could stop any person on the street and do a full documentary on their life – and you’d see all these gorgeous things about who they are which might not be immediately obvious on the surface.?

And I want to be a race car driver."

Z. Colette Edwards, MD, MBA | National Medical Director, Associate Health and Well-Being for Humana

"I think they would be surprised to know that I collect perfume bottles. I also love taking boxing, dancing, and fencing lessons. Also, I tend to be quiet and reserved so people would be surprised by the sense of humor that people who know me well know I have."

Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD, President and CEO of Geisinger

"So much can happen in 10 years, and I think that's very uplifting and encouraging. At the same time, I know that we sometimes get stuck. I sometimes get stuck in the day-to-day and even quarter by quarter or year by year. I think we're at a moment in healthcare where we have an opportunity to reinvent, and we have an opportunity to create the path where people have access to services that are going to make them and their communities healthier. And, I know that healthcare as an industry hasn’t always gotten it right. You know, it's a clunky model that we have. Sometimes it's really difficult. It's not easy to attain the services you need or insurance. I think we have an opportunity to do a lot better. And I think, for a whole variety of reasons, the stars seem to be aligning in a way where I think this is the moment. You know, maybe not just this second, but these years, these handful of years in the industry, are creating a big opportunity for us."

Read the Anniversary Spotlight article , "Moving Upstream Together - How Geisinger built a perpetual innovation machine to improve outcomes."

Helena Plater-Zyberk, CEO and Co-Founder of Supportiv

"This is real trauma that has happened to us on a, not just at a national scale, but a global one. Our human responses have been physical, mental, and emotional. We're inundated with headlines saying this is going to impact us for generations. And, at the same time, we're getting headlines and data, and real concern about the bandwidth that licensed mental health professionals have to handle this onslaught of people and their needs. So it feels like a bit of a hopeless situation. How are we ever going to emerge and come out of this?

It feels like we're on our own. It’s going to be a self-help-driven manner of picking ourselves up. That's American in itself.

The message I want to convey is there is another approach, and that approach is not just trying to help yourself but helping other people. The whole concept of peer support and what Supportiv builds around is that it’s much easier to look at someone else's situation and collaboratively problem solve and get them the resources you see they need. We're inadvertently helping ourselves.

We've all had that moment where we're giving insight and wisdom to a friend, and we're like, “Oh gosh, I need to do that too.” And that's what we're all about. That is a method for lifting us out of this traumatic national situation. So, you know, we can do that on an individual level. We can do that on a community level, we can do that on a societal, and population health level."

Alexandra Drane, Co-Founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS

"Help people realize we’re not alone in the harder bits… especially right now.

Many of us secretly beat ourselves up while we pretend on the surface that everything is fantastic.?I think that’s particularly true with ‘successful’ people.?I’ve RARELY had an experience where I share an insecurity or a fear or a worry about something unflattering where the person with whom I’m speaking doesn’t say, ‘Really??Oh my goodness I feel the EXACT same way! And I thought I was the only one!’??And just like that we both feel better.

There's enormous resiliency that comes from being out loud about things that aren't working. That’s where opportunity lives.?And that’s where we can feel less alone in our imperfection.?It’s the messy bits that make humans who we are – and that’s gorgeous.?

43% of adults in the US right now are serving as an unpaid caregiver to a family member, friend, or neighbor.?70% are experiencing at least one adverse mental health impact (aka anxiety, depression, and/or suicidal thoughts).?23% of us are ‘Sandwich Generation’ caregivers – so we’re getting it from both (or maybe ALL) sides.?52% of sandwich generation caregivers have seriously considered suicide in the past 30 days.

We love that data.

Why??

Because anyone who’s been there knows it’s true… they just thought they were the only one.?Knowing you’re not alone and feeling supported in that reality is the best way to start feeling better.?

Let's talk about the things that aren't working – they hold the key to what can… and that’s not just a top and bottom line impact, it’s a human one."

Harris Contos, DMD, MBA | Owner/Principal Asclepius Consulting; Strategic Health Care Consulting

"Dentistry is pretty much the laughingstock, the Rodney Dangerfield of healthcare. It gets no respect.?Yet all the issues we were educated in from our time at Wharton, i.e., the groundings in the organization, financing, and management of care, plus the more recent ones stemming from health reform such as value-based care, accountability, alternative payment mechanisms, and population health management, not only pertain to dental care but are underscored in it.?

The fact of the matter is we have an edifice of dental education, training, and delivery of care built up over the centuries on custom, presumptions, therapeutic dead ends, outdated science, hostility toward sophisticated organizational systems, and protection of professional turf, all inimical to the way the disease of tooth decay – by the way, the most prevalent chronic disease in both children and adults – is experienced in the individual, in society.?

The financial costs of dental care under this “system,” about 4% of national health expenditures, or about $143 billion in 2019, are considerable; the costs in terms of pain, suffering, lost school and work-days, social deprivation, debility, disfigurement, and even death (from infection, from general anesthesia) are as considerable, if not more so.?And this is no laughing matter."

Z. Colette Edwards, MD, MBA | National Medical Director, Associate Health and Well-Being for Humana

"The goal is to bring together a diverse group of people covering really important topics that are really big challenges in healthcare and problems that I believe we have the opportunity to address and solve. And I think it's important for people to learn about things that they may not have the opportunity to do in their particular personal lives or their jobs or to hear from experts in their field and learn about opportunities to collaborate and how other people go forward to solve problems.

I think if people tune into our May webinar , they will see just one of many examples of the power and potential of the human spirit - the great things that can happen, and the problems that can be solved - when people are brought together with a very focused mission and have a great sense of purpose."

Learn about all the webinars .