Bonus Drop: Accelerate Payer Innovation (ft. Sakshika Dhingra)

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation, challenges, and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now, your host, Ed Marx.

Hey, Ed here. Digital Voices, I'm so excited about this particular episode because it is a bonus drop. And the reason I'm so excited about it is because it's all about a new book that I have the pleasure to write with 2 super amazing people, and one you're going to meet right now, and I'll save, uh, for a surprise towards the end who the other, uh, individual is. But I want to bring in my friend right now, Sukshika. Sukshika, welcome to Digital Voices.

Hi, Ed. Thank you so much. I am super excited to be here.

I know. So you You and I, we first met, I think it's like 2 years ago. And I think the CEO of Tech Mahindra, he's like, Ed, you have to meet this person and you need to spend some time with them and just get to know them. And you've got a lot in common. So I remember that first phone call and we just got along really great. And since then you've got to meet my family and I've met some of your family virtually. And we just had this great friendship and relationship. And as we were plodding along and you're on the payer side, as I'll let you introduce yourself here in a second, And we're like, wow, just like we've done Voices of Innovation for the provider side, and it's been like a bestseller in 2019, the first edition so did so well that we're coming out with a second edition this summer. So this is recorded 2023 in May, and so in a couple months we'll have the second edition out, and we expect it to be a bestseller too. And and the reason we write these books is not so that we can say, hey. you know, look at me, I, I wrote this book, because actually these books are a compilation of other people's work, and that's what makes it super exciting. But the most important thing, and I know I'm jumping way, way ahead, but you can sense my excitement about this, all the royalties— so Sakshika's not taking any, our other editor is not, and I'm not— all the royalties go to cure cancer. Bottom line, go to cure cancer. So all of us have been impacted by cancer, We hate cancer. We do what we can to stop cancer. And this is one way of adding value to the industry and knocking cancer, giving 'em a sock in the gut. So, so, so excited about this. So yeah, so Sachika, tell us a little bit about yourself. That was a long intro by me about this podcast, but tell us a little bit about yourself. Like you have family and, and you know, what do you do in terms of, uh, your, you know, your work life?

Sure. Hi everybody. Well, I am a healthcare industry expert with more than a decade of healthcare experience. I've been mostly on the product management, product delivery side. I consider myself a serial entrepreneur and strategic driver, and at the end of the day, a problem solver. I have been with Humana since 2020 as a clinical strategy leader. And Ed, like you said, I have been in the payer space and I love it. I think payers have such a unique and promising position in our complex healthcare ecosystem. We are collectors of data. We sort of sit in the middle. We're orchestrators of our consumers' next best action. And man, that's powerful.

Yeah.

And with this great power, there comes a greater responsibility, just on payers as well as payvider side, to collaborate, to listen, to blend cultures, eliminate barriers, and I think to co-create healthcare solutions that are as simple as shopping on Amazon, right? That's all we want, right? Yeah, so that's my work life. I am married, as you said, you virtually met my family. I live in Jacksonville, Florida. Florida, sunny Florida, with my husband, Vivek, and my 5-year-old son, Avir. As a matter of fact, I met my husband at my first healthcare job, which was at Florida Blue. Well, it was Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida at that time, and I've been in healthcare since. And in the many roles that I've held with multiple payer organizations, as I said, I've been with Blue Cross Blue Shield, not just of Florida, but Michigan as well. Allstate, Optum, and now Humana, the golden thread of my career has been member centricity and member advocacy. And I know this may sound like a cliché or something that we've been saying for years, really, but it's still relevant that in our healthcare consumer journey, they deserve better. And the only thing that we can do to deliver on that promise is innovate, innovate fiercely, innovate continuously, and innovate iteratively. And I know we're going to talk about innovation a lot too. You already referenced the book that I'm super, super excited about. But yeah, that's a little bit about myself and my work.

Yeah, no, that's cool. And you're spot on. And so what we recognized was that innovation is uneven. So we saw that first on the provider side. Some organizations were really good at it, super focused, others weren't so much. So we're like, how do we learn from one another? Because that's a beautiful thing about healthcare, even though we're coopetition or sometimes competitors. Everyone's trying to do the right thing for the patient. So there's a lot more freedom in our industry than others where people share sort of best practices. And that's what we did with the Provider Book. So basically, we just took a framework of innovation. So there's a lot of frameworks out there. We adopted one that's generally accepted as a best practice. And then we asked for contributors from around the world. And we had a ton of contributors. So we had to limit it. And we'll talk about sort of that process. But we had a couple hundred. We had to limit it to about 40. So basically, we took 4 or 5 essays or best practices from all of these different companies and organizations and how they fit around this innovation term. This was like an 8-stage innovation cycle. And so you could get this book, and maybe you were struggling with innovation or doing pretty well with innovation, wondering how to get to the next level. You could read this book, and it wasn't just theory. It was actually people doing innovation, and you could literally take the principles, maybe not the exact thing they were doing, 'cause every organization's a little bit unique, but you could take the principles or the heart of what they were doing and apply it to your organization. Sure enough, that's what happened. So I got all sorts of feedback during the pandemic, how people were buying up this book, like I said, bestseller, and then they were learning how to do innovation on the fly and responding to the crisis at hand. So that's why we decided to do second edition, and now that we have all this other experience, you know, there's a lot of brand new content. Still the foreword is by my former boss at the Cleveland Clinic. And so super, super excited. So speaking of which, Sakshika, who is the foreword writer for our book, for Voices of Innovation: Payers?

Well, it's so exciting that we got Sachin Jain, the president and CEO of SCAN Health Plan. And I just love him. I follow all his talks, insights. They're so valuable. He's a leading voice in the healthcare space. He's— I mean, Forbes always, you know, taps him on his shoulder for giving them the latest and the greatest, you know, on healthcare. And I just could not be more excited about him writing our foreword.

Yeah, me too. Because that just shows you how important this work is. And I follow him too. He's great. He's done a podcast for us. That we need to— it's in our vault that we need to drop here pretty quick. So let me just quickly talk about the benefits. Like, if you're listening and you're like, oh, ho-hum, I'm not sure I want to do something like this, too much work, that sort of thing, let me give you 3 or 4 benefits and then we'll wrap up. Suchika, maybe you can sort of share what that process is. But, but here are the benefits, and we've already sort of touched on them high level, and there's no particular order, but one is It's great for your organization's brand. So it's great for your organization to showcase, look, we are Company X, and this is how we did innovation and how it improved member satisfaction or improved clinical quality or whatever it might've been. And then someone else who might be struggling can use that around the world. And so you're impacting people that you don't even know, organizations you don't even know, all for the common good. So it's amazing for the brand. It doesn't cost any money. That's the second thing. There's no money. There's no like tricky thing like, oh, we'll take your submission, but you know, here's the thing, you need to pay $1,000. No, no, no, no. This is all completely legit, above board. So that's 2. A third one is your personal brand. So people are always like thinking about writing a book. Oh, it's so hard to write a book. And it is hard. I've written a few and it's hard, but this is an easy way to get into it. Be a contributor to a book, see how that goes, and then based on that experience, you might write your own book. So a great opportunity to contribute and very good for your career. You know, again, I'm going to go back to my very, very favorite, and that is we're going to kick cancer in the, in the caboot, whatever it's called, you know, without, you know, getting an X rating here on our podcast. Uh, we're going to kick its ass, uh, and we're going to do it by— we're selling books, and again, all the royalties, all the author royalties go to cure cancer. In this case, we selected Mary Crowley Cancer Research. That is a phase 1 clinical trial company, and their tagline, Sakshika, as you know, is Hope Lives Here. So this is where people go when there's no hope. Like, they've, they've gone through every sort of drug that's available on the market, and they're like, nothing's working. They go here. It's an amazing place. I serve on the board. Uh, we had a board meeting last night, my— or yesterday afternoon, and my heart's just so touched every time I go there and see the great work that they're doing. They are on the front end, they're on the battle's edge kicking cancer's ass. We're so excited about that. Those are 4 reasons. Before I ask you the question, Sakshika, how did I miss any other reasons why people should contribute?

No. I mean, what's not to like? Come on, people. Ed, you know, I recently lost my father to cancer. Yeah, without getting X-rated, just all the things to cancer that we can think about. And it's just, it's an amazing, amazing opportunity. And before I talk about the process on how people can sign up and get started, I listen to your podcast all the time, and I would be remiss if I didn't tell you what's on my Spotify.

Yes.

So I'm gonna tell you, I am really into Black Panther 2. soundtracks these days. If you have not heard, please go. They are a vibe. And the one that I like the most is All the Stars. It's by Kendrick Lamar and SZA, I think she says. Ah, magical, magical voice, and I love the track. Now, coming back to the amazing book and the huge opportunity that we just talked about, guys, Like Ed said, it's super simple. As your first step, you just have to send an email with the subject line Interested to voicesofinnovation@gmail.com. Again, voicesofinnovation, no space, nothing, @gmail.com, and we'll get you set up. You'll then receive a detailed instruction sheet for the format of your essay, list of topics that you can choose from, referencing the framework that Ed just talked about, the word limit, and everything else that you may need. And we'll help you along the way if you have any questions. It's not complicated as you may think at all. This is the easiest way you can co-author a book. We are currently doing our call campaigns to essay contributors just like this one, and the essays are going to be due by June 1st. We are targeting fall of this year for publishing. So you can imagine we have a tight timeline. So again, if you guys are actively working in the payer or payvider space and are listening, believe me, this opportunity is for you, you, and yes, you. I'm talking to you. Come and join us, help accelerate payer innovation and kick cancer's ass.

Yeah, I love it. And it really is, Sakshika, you said it 2 or 3 times. It really is simple on the contributor's end. You know, you write this essay, we'll help you, we'll give you feedback, we will provide editing at the end. It gets complicated on the back end, but you don't have— you don't see that, you won't worry about it. But working with our publisher, we go through multiple edits. It's really quite an interesting process, complicated process to actually get the book out, but you don't have to worry about that. You just submit that essay and we will take care of the rest and communicate with you along the way. So we, we really love to have, uh, as many contributors as possible, uh, Sakshika. So I hopefully everyone will feel comfortable, uh, responding. So if you have any questions in the show notes, we will drop that email again, voicesofinnovation@gmail.com. You'll get all the details. Uh, Sakshika's email will be there. My email will be there and feel free to reach out if you have any questions. And I think that about wraps it up. Sakshika, how was your first podcast?

Oh, it was fabulous. It was fabulous. I mean, I couldn't expect anything less. It's your podcast. And gosh, I've heard it like since I've known you. And to be here, it's just a little bit surreal, but it'll sink in. It was so much fun. Thank you so much for having me, Ed.

Yeah, you're welcome, Sakshika. And thank you as always to our amazing producer, Megan. And we will talk to you at our next drop. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to Digital Voices Podcast with Ed Marx. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening.

Thank you.