Change Healthcare for the Better

“What would it take to change healthcare for the (infinitely) better”

Download the full transcript:  p5 Protocols – Change Healthcare for the Better – 02.14.18

Welcome to the next edition of P5 Protocols, the new subtitle of which is now: What would it take to change healthcare for the (infinitely) better.  If you are coming from SoundCloud or iTunes, you can find our newsletter and our transcript at www.p5protocols.com.  Our firm website is www.P5hv.com.  Our newsletter has great articles, quotes and other insights and is meant to be short and sweet but also lead to more content for those with lots of free time.  I first have to say that I am extremely excited about today’s podcast – and those around me know I do NOT like using adverbs but sometimes there is no alternative.

As we dig deeper and deeper into healthcare and try to get every edge we can get in saving costs, improving quality and massively growing accessibility, we find ourselves looking at every aspect that not only can propel it forward but also what could hold it back.  So the overarching theme of our newsletter, P5 Insights, and podcast series, P5 Protocols, is what is needed to occur to drive healthcare forward in a cost-saving, highly effective impact driven way

We will explore:

1. Integrative medicine in general where we will talk to practitioners that can pull together the whole practice of medicine as treating the body with every available practical tool
2. Nutrition and diet – note I formally start today as a client of Alison Gannett, our recent podcast guest – for a 3 to 6 month trial on hardcore keto
3. Detoxification as a major tool
4. Exercise / Physiology
5. Other tools such as extreme cold, heat such as infrared sauna, hyperbaric oxygen therapy
6. Breath work such as that by Wim Hoff and others
7. Mind / Body via meditation, yoga, gigong, tai chi, mindfulness, polyvagal theory, HRV training and other effective methods
8. Drugs – repurposed, phages that kill bacteria, and other methods, etc.
9. Telehealth and remote monitoring
10. AI and Machine Learning to create insights and prescription – quantum computing will throw this all into high gear in a few short years
11. Ever cheaper regular diagnostics as well as
12. The rise of the iPhone and other mobile devices as diagnostic tools
13. And above all the change in culture that needs to occur in moving from a practice dominated by the egos of the providers into one that is dominated by empathy for the patients and their families or support systems AND tolerant of diversity of thought

We are going to start with this last issue, a cultural change, the need to move to empathy as a driving force.  Empathy requires that people listen.  Listening enables all kinds of great things to emerge.  Slowing down oneself and listening to where one’s body hurts, or looking in the mirror to see what has changed or getting feedback from loved ones that know you well can provide deep insight into things you never would have thought were that evident.  Also to patience and trust.

Now, bear with me on this short anecdote and don’t shoot me for having what I believe is an endearing perspective:

As a boy, when I was sick, I always wanted my mom, not my dad.  When things were great, my dad was great.  We’d throw a football, play basketball, trudge through golf if I had to, play gin, sit for hours at our backgammon table and play for a whopping $1 (buck) a point.  Starting at 15, when I went to boarding school until he passed away in 2011, every time I visited, we’d keep an open tab ending with him always paying if I was ahead and me usually “forgetting” to pay him if he was ahead.

But I digress.  The point is that my mother provided the TLC.  She brought me the soup, put cool compresses on my head.  Did puzzles with me.  Took me to the doctor.   The day I got into a few top boarding schools, she brought to school hamburgers from my favorite place.  As I became a moody teenager, she listened for hours and when those moods made me less than pleasant, she never talked back.  In fact, the first time I ever knew of her being truly angry with me was only recently when I arrived to visit for vacation with kids and our dog in tow.  I will let you, the listener, guess which made her upset.

My point in droning on and on about all of the things my mother did is those are things moms and most women do.  They show empathy and patience in ways men cannot.  Where most men go ego, most women go empathy.  I believe women have an ability to anticipate and see things in their children and in others that men are either incapable of seeing or moving too fast to do so.  And before the world starts beating me up, I think it is worth hearing that I openly admit these are generalizations and in today’s world, even constructive generalizations can get one in trouble.

My goal here with P5 Protocols is to open up a broad dialogue that puts everything up to question.  I spoke with three very accomplished female MD / PhD’s yesterday.  All three are quite active in the medical profession at the peaks of their careers, but still see massive bullying by men who have also told these women to stop trying to show leadership.  Go figure.  It is rampant in the medical world – huge sums of money are at stake and when that happens people get greedy, especially men who have fears about providing for themselves and their families.

At P5 Health Ventures, we have happened upon women everywhere we want to look.  At Cohero and Primal, our first investments, the founders were women.  At our next investment that will close in a few weeks, we have a woman founder.  Ironically, Babyscripts, a portfolio company, the founders who were featured in last week’s podcast, is about maternity but founded by two very empathic men.  We have two other companies at which we are seriously looking also founded and led by women.  Women just seem to pop up in the businesses that require empathy, ongoing care, deep understanding of patient needs, and open-mindedness to new ways among other positive traits.  And when we find businesses led by men, those men seem to have a high level of empathy.

As devices and associated texting and social media invites less and less direct human interaction, empathy is on the wane.  We cannot let that happen and women are the key.  In the healthcare system and in the venture world and everywhere else, modern media is leading to congressional hearings that will ensure equal pay and other important laws – all concepts that I not only support but openly embrace.  I just hope that the laws are written so as not to backfire.

If you are hesitant on the concept of women playing a bigger role in healthcare and in business, listen to the beginning of this video link https://www.scmp.com/video/2099485/hire-many-women-possible-jack-mas-secret-alibabas-success coming from Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba.  He emphasizes that the 20th Century was one of muscles, while the 21st Century is one of wisdom.  He says that Alibaba’s secret sauce is hiring women.  I recall spending a week in Kuwait back in 1994 at Kuwait Airways negotiating a contract with two western dressed arab women lawyers.  They were far and away the smartest, most emotionally balanced people in the room all five days I was there.  Small sample size, but I have heard this consistently out of that part of the world – where men’s egos are on the line all of the time – that women bring level-headedness.

Perhaps it is time to go back to Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence.  To men, a lot of women seem to lack that; they appear emotional.  But I find that occurs more in the home between spouses and over-tired parents in general.   Did you ever listen to “It’s not about the nail?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg  The irony of that piece is that men just want to solve problems and move on.  They want it done.  I know I do.  In this video, the woman just wants to be heard.  So do patients facing tough diseases.  Go back to last week and my posting in our newsletter about Nixon’s war on Cancer that failed.  War is about slash and burn, not listen and learn to come up with a better solution.  How many wars were started by women?

Tough problems can’t be solved too quickly.  They need time.  They need nurturing, mostly of oneself.  In the macrobiotic world, which I lived in for six years, cooking for oneself was often the turning point for a lot of people in their road to health.  My teachers felt it was the energy put into the food.  I do not disagree, but I think the very essence of slowing down enough to make oneself a priority, to show empathy for oneself is critical, even more so than just putting your energy into your food.

And another link here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IWSw501WRc is a good interview with Sallie Krawcheck who argues against women being empowered because it means to be given power; she argues that women already possess a ton of power and should not try to use it like men, a topic for another day I suppose.  She argues about the many wonderful qualities women have, which I leave to this video link as well as an amazon link to her book in the show notes, provide them with inordinate power.  I could not agree more.  Intuition, big picture thinking, EMPATHY, building relationships, long-term thinking and just plain caring.  For now, I will leave a link to another expose book that sheds light on a nasty cultural aspect of Silicon Valley entitled Brotopia.  I want to keep this message upbeat, so will decline from expanding on it but need to at least put it out there as it is eye opening!

I will end things and simply say that we at P5 Health Ventures are always looking for people solving really important problems in innovative ways and increasingly we find women deep in those efforts.  We practically beg for diversity as we know it creates stability that is needed to be the foundation for growth.  I hope you will comment back and help us learn and we are excited to watch and play a constructive role in how things evolve over the decades ahead.  To those who are not open to embracing women in all roles, we wish you good luck and thank you for the competitive advantages you are giving us.

Thank you for joining us at P5 Health Ventures.  Again you can find us at www.p5protocols.com or at www.p5hv.com.  If you are not already signed up for our newsletter, P5 Insights, please go to our web site and do so.  And if you have gotten this far, I always must humbly add: thank you for listening.

Until next time…

Show notes:

Books

• https://www.amazon.com/Own-Power-Women-at-Work/dp/1101906251/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518618086&sr=8-1&keywords=own+it+sallie+krawcheck
• https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_8?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=brotopia+breaking+up+the+boys+club+of+silicon+valley&sprefix=brotopia%2Cstripbooks%2C125&crid=4YDO2Y3P2IHX

Videos

• Jack Ma – https://www.scmp.com/video/2099485/hire-many-women-possible-jack-mas-secret-alibabas-success
• It’s not about the nail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg