Episodes

Originally broadcast January 30, 2025.

Noted healthcare leader Dr. Sachin Jain has been publicly releasing his annual predictions for the sector for five years and is proud of his “pretty accurate” track record. He’s out now with his list of top 10 predictions for the healthcare industry for 2025. Dr. Jain states that “Heretofore fringe ideas about wellness and disease causation and medications will continue to go mainstream.”

Dr. Jain has held top positions at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. More recently, he’s been a leader in the nonprofit health world, so he has a unique perspective on the entire field. Listen in as he discusses his ideas with “Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter.

Originally broadcast January 23, 2025

President Trump’s first days in office have resulted in a number of important changes in the healthcare landscape. President Trump has withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization, rolled back drug pricing policies and limited gender-affirming care. In addition, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., awaits his confirmation hearing to serve as secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.

Conversations on Health Care hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter are bringing together leading healthcare journalists to discuss the new administration’s moves and what they mean. Their guests this week are:

• Shannon Firth with MedPage Today
• Michael McAuliff with Modern Healthcare; and 
• Sarah Owermohle with STAT.

Originally broadcast August 22, 2023

As the year begins, some patients remain concerned about how far artificial intelligence (AI) is creeping into the exam room. But AI has been part of health care longer than most realize, according to Dr. Isaac Kohane, a Harvard University professor.

Kohane is the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine’s first publication devoted to AI; it’s a groundbreaking role and we’re proud to share an encore presentation of the interview. He told hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter that “In the 1980s, automated interpretation of an [echocardiogram] would have been considered AI. Now it’s the ability to look through a patient’s record and come up with a differential diagnosis, a second opinion, a therapeutic plan.”

Kohane shared a success story of a mother whose child had difficulty walking and chewing, suffered from headaches and had seen more than a dozen doctors over many years, with no diagnosis. After one doctor recommended a psychiatric course of action, the mother fed the reports from various past medical visits into a generative AI program, which provided an accurate diagnosis: tethered cord syndrome.

Cases like this can represent AI’s potential, said Kohane. But the nascent technology raises issues of bias. “You can run tests on these AI programs and say, ‘Would you propose that diagnosis more often if this was an African-American or an Indian-American?’ … And you can adjust these programs,” Kohane says. The exciting part is that the adjustment would be easier than undoing even unconscious bias among hundreds of thousands of health care professionals, he explained.

Originally broadcast June 8, 2023

The World Health Organization has issued a statement expressing concern about artificial intelligence in health care. In 2023, Mayo Clinic’s then-Chief Information Officer Cris Ross joined us to discuss it. He led innovation projects at Mayo Clinic for over 30 years and told us “perhaps” we should be worried about ChatGPT.

“These technologies are value-neutral but their usage is not necessarily value-neutral. Bad people can use good technology for bad purposes. So I think there’s a very robust debate about whether these technologies should be regulated, whether they can be regulated, and if they are regulated, how we should do that,” Ross told us at the time.

Listen in on this encore presentation as Ross takes hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter through this brave new world that promises to affect every part of health care.

Originally broadcast January 2, 2025.

Conversations on Health Care hopes the new year is off to a great start for you! But before we completely turn the page on 2024, we want to look back on our top issues and interviews from the past year. We spoke to leading experts about the health care policies that were part of the presidential race; the promise and peril of artificial intelligence; the research into happiness; and many other issues.

As President Trump, a new Congress and other new leaders in the states prepare for office, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter present this recap and look ahead to the ideas, innovations and insights driving health care.

Originally broadcast December 26, 2024

Dr. Amit Sood is called the “Happiness Doctor” for a good reason; his resilience approach has been included in over 35 clinical trials. The holiday season, occurring right after an intense election, is an ideal time to learn from Dr. Sood about how to recognize stress and reprogram the brain to deal with it. One of his top pieces of advice: Ask yourself if what is upsetting you will matter in five years? If the answer is no, let it go.

Dr. Sood is the CEO of Global Center for Resiliency and Wellbeing, the former chair of Student Life and Wellness at Mayo Clinic, and the author of the new book “ “It Takes You to Tango: Leverage the Science of Loneliness to Master the Art of Connection.” Join Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter for this insightful conversation that will help us all navigate negative thinking.