On Fridays, we schedule our rounds with Healthcare Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.
This week’s Making Rounds spotlights Tony Vahedian, CEO of diabetes chronic care management company CCS.
Vahedian discussed how his company is trying to improve work culture in the healthcare industry, and how the sector is bracing for technology and Medicaid enrollment changes sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What’s the best change you’ve made or seen at a place where you’ve worked?
One of the things we did really, really early on is understand where our culture was within the organization. We were pretty siloed: The business has been around for almost 30 years and has gone through all sorts of changes. We committed to rebuilding and redefining the culture with myself, my management team, and frankly, the entire organization because culture isn’t built by one individual.
You’ve got to be consistent in your messaging, and you have to create venues to connect; you’ve got to have clear, strategic guidance on where you’re heading. Then we built this culture around collaboration—that we’re all in this together. Culture has been the biggest accomplishment that I’m the most proud of so far. The business has done well, which is great, but we couldn’t have gotten there without the culture.
What healthcare trend are you most optimistic about and why?
We’re coming back with the rebalancing of tech and touch. That’s really, how much true physical, clinical interaction do you need to have with healthcare providers? And how much of it can you do digitally? I don’t think we’ve hit that yet, the right balance.
Navigate the healthcare industry
Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.
Healthcare is learning that the consumer ultimately is going to show us the path. The high-tech side of it all happened because of the state that we were all in during the pandemic, and we learned a lot. There are a lot of capabilities out of that that are really great, that we need to carry forward. But then there are some things for which the human touch, or the human interaction, is meaningful, so we can’t ignore it. I’m excited about the rebalancing. We’re obviously focused on that, and that’s the way our strategy has been built. But I think it’s going to be positive for healthcare in the long run, to be able to leverage technology and touch at the same time.
What healthcare trend are you least optimistic about and why?
I read an article the other day about the disenrollment of Medicaid. I’m not sure how that’s gonna play out yet. It’s unknown how that population is going to leave Medicaid and whether they’re going to come back. That’s what I’m a little bit most concerned about—that you have folks falling between the cracks and not having coverage. It’s going to happen, just because of the sheer 15+ million folks who are going to get impacted.
I’m hopeful that it’s a minimal impact, but I’m concerned that it’s going to be a much bigger issue that we just all don’t quite understand yet.