Patients rarely tell you what's actually wrong. Neither do health plans.
More than two decades ago, I became a physical therapist because I wanted to help people move better. I didn't expect that instinct to define my entire career.
As a clinician, the job was never really about where it hurt. That's just the presenting complaint. The real job was finding what was actually causing it, then building a plan around that — not the symptom.
I've spent the years since doing the same thing for a different kind of patient: strained relationships between healthcare companies and the health plans they serve.
The presenting complaint is always some version of "this account is unhappy." Almost nobody stops to ask why, underneath the assumptions everyone's already made. I do. That's usually where the real answer — and the real fix — is hiding.
I built my career on that instinct: first as a physical therapist and practice owner, then leading enterprise health plan relationships worth tens of millions in retained and expanded business. Diagnose the real problem. Build the solution around the person or the account, not the complaint.
This spring, I went through something a lot of healthcare leaders eventually do — a layoff — after four years running some of the most complex relationships in my company's book.
“That's what I mean when I say I'm the clinician who speaks payer.
I'm exploring what's next: healthcare growth, client strategy, or executive partnership roles where that same instinct creates real value. Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing some of what it's actually looked like in practice — including a couple of relationships everyone else had already given up on.
If that sounds like a problem your team is sitting on, or a person you need in the room, I'd genuinely love to talk.