This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by someone
who's a brilliant leader of an orthopedic
practice.
We're joined today by Eric Witte. Eric's the
chief operating officer at Genesis Orthopedics.
It's real time a chance to visit with
him. Genesys
Orthopedics is sports medicine.
In in addition to him being, a sports
medicine,
running orthopedic practice,
he is also has something that that is
very close to my heart. He's a University
of Illinois graduate from Urbana Champaign. And at
some point, I will bother him on whether
he's a Cubs or Sox fan and a
lot more. Eric, can can you take a
and tell us a little bit about yourself
and about Genesis Orthopedics in in sports medicine
in the practice?
Yeah. I'm so glad to. And and, hey,
let's start out with an I l l,
Scott.
No. I n I, Eric. I can't even
tell you how much I appreciate that, and
let's hope they keep on getting better. We'll
see how it goes. Thank you. We still
have, one of the kids down there, so
god bless. Eric, so tell us about about
the practice and about your career.
Yeah. Sure. I'm happy to. So,
my background for getting into health care,
so everything's fine now, but I had a
blood disorder when I was back in junior
high. And after going around from specialist to
specialist for about six months,
finally, my referral got sent over to a
pediatric he monk at Loyola who came in
on his day off to save my life.
So just from a very young age, I
was so curious about how the health care
system worked together.
Ultimately, I had some physical therapy on my
back this summer going into freshman year of
college, which helped me realize that we health
care providers have this opportunity to
improve the quality of life for our patients.
So
got my doctor of physical therapy degree,
you know, kept asking more questions, got some
great mentorship
from, Ascension when I was working in one
of their CIN ACOs,
and got an MBA through there.
I was then in hospital operations for a
while, became a CEO,
moved over to doing some consulting at Optum
with some amazing
leaders across the country who are building,
just a great value based care infrastructure.
And then had the privilege to jump over
to the health plan side
and try to solve the unsolvable
problem here, which is how do we figure
out how to make health care affordable but
not horrible.
So I've had this kind of nomadic backgrounds,
you know, just built around this idea of
how can we help our clinicians work together
across these various stakeholder groups
within hospitals,
health plans, and medical groups, which has been
just yeah.
And what an amazing career. What an amazing
origin story as to how you got there.
Really fascinating.
Take a moment. You talk about how do
we make health care affordable and not horrible.
And I I'm just having the hardest time
seeing it as we get to 340,000,000
people in our country and not nearly enough
doctors, nurses, and so
How do we do that? How do we
start to make it affordable and not horrible,
horrible
and just accessible? How how are we gonna
get there? Any thoughts there?
Yeah. It's a great question. And, you know,
even having worked in this environment, Scott, I
I still call it the unsolvable problem.
So it's something that a lot of us
are working together across the industry. And I
think one of the main things that I've
learned just in being in these various settings
is that we don't understand the challenges that
exists in outside of the settings where we
primarily work. So I think just as we
can figure out how to work better across
these different large stakeholder groups,
when we have the empathy to understand the
challenges that our executives,
who sit in other seats,
I think then we can find these win
win scenarios that are gonna improve quality and
access and affordability for our patients.
Thank you. And and you're in a great
orthopedic practice.
Are you having a hard time recruiting, or
I take it you're such a great practice
that it's not that hard to recruit? What's
your sense of that?
Well, unfortunately,
you know, charm isn't always enough to get
great providers to join your group, although it
is a great skill for the team that
we have there.
Genesis is probably one of the,
the oddest
orthopedic medical groups
that I found in my professional career. So,
they were sitting down about six or eight
years ago, and they said, hey. What if
we actually did that stuff on our website
that says
vulnerable patients of all kinds deserve extraordinary care?
And so they did the most courageous thing
that I've seen, and they said, well, let's
let's change our financial policies over here. We're
gonna sign on with every Medicaid health plan
that we can find, and we're gonna make
sure that regardless of their ability to pay,
no one gets turned away from the practice.
So the practice, you know, went from essentially
0% Medicaid
to being our largest portion of our payer
mix.
So,
you know, then after doing this and having
these increases, they were still dissatisfied and felt
like they weren't living that out. And so
they started to use the area deprivation index
to figure out where there are,
you know, deficient orthopedic access and started moving
clinics into vulnerable communities to make sure that
these people had access. So
certain sacrifice And where did the passion and
drive come for that? Because that that is
you you you started off with,
you know, so many orthopedic surgeons
do so well. They work so hard. They
make a great income,
and their practices aren't focused like you say
they are. There are certainly a high percentage
that do everything they can to take care
of those that can't afford to pay,
You know, but but most don't position their
practice that way and certainly any business leader
from a strictly business perspective say no. No.
No. No.
You're in a beautiful suburb. Focus heavily on
the affluent who have great insurance and could
pay their co payments and could pay their
deductibles and so Almost nobody says, you know,
let's move the practice into the lower paying
areas
and let's take care of that, particularly
with most private practices don't.
And and god bless them for doing so.
What a fantastic thing. But what was the
motivation? Who had the spark? Who had the
discipline drive to make that happen? Who who
are the physicians that said,
let's do this. What this is just the
thing to do, and let's do it.
Yeah. I mean, our our surgeons have very
difficult lives. There is so much pressure on
them. So all my empathy for, you know,
the hard tenacious work that they have to
do.
You know, a lot of clinicians are often
removed from, you know, having to think about
these difficult questions like payer mix and contracting
and those sorts of things. But, you know,
when you think about orthopedics,
you know, there's a mom out there who's
calling on behalf of her child
who fell at the playgrounds, and she's worried
about a fracture for her her child. And,
you know, the notion that somebody would call
up
and seek out care to turn them away
and say, you're too poor. We can't take
care of you. I mean, it's just something
that the practice could not stomach.
So I think all physicians out there, all
of our health care provider infrastructures,
you know, wanting to make a difference and
improve the health outcomes for their community.
So I think sometimes we can make a
little bit of sacrifices here and there and
still,
you know, make sure that we can,
you know, eat and live indoors.
So
we've had some challenges for for certainly figuring
out how to make the books work in
this regard, but I think a lot of
people are willing to take a little bit
of sacrifice if it means that they know
that they're doing something that's truly transformative, Scott.
That's really an amazing, amazing story, and I
and I love that, Eric. I'm so glad
to get a chance to hear about it
and talk to you.
Tell us a little bit more. Like, we
got another half of the year left. What
are you most focused on and excited about
for the rest of the year?
Yeah. It's a great question. I got a
lot of things I'm looking forward to. I
mean, for one,
you know, the current administration calls it make
America healthy again. And, frankly, I think it's
a really good angle to play, and this
is something that feels like it works well
across the aisle at least as a North
Star statements
here. You know, because many of the health
care challenges that we have, they're not red
problems or blue problems,
but these are problems that exist across, you
know, our geographies, across urban and rural settings.
So, you know, I look forward to having
our,
you know, our administrative,
entities over here work together to do this
stuff.
There's been some, you know, things as simple
as just trying to improve,
compact licensure. You know, as a physical therapist,
I've been working with
the the PT compact in the state of
Illinois.
There are other clinical specialties like nursing who
are also interested in this. And if we
can improve our ability to,
you know, allow our clinicians
to practice autonomously and within their areas of
expertise.
You know, I consider my my role as
in a a clinical executive here that I
want the hardest thing our clinicians to do
in the practice is to practice medicine.
And I tell them, if something in your
job is harder than just taking care of
the patients, this is a failure of management.
I'd like to hear about this.
You know, I also think that,
value based care still continues to have a
lot of opportunity for improvement here.
You know, I don't think that this is
something that where we've cracked the code, and
we need to continue to kinda unpack that
a little bit more and find the next
evolution of gains that we can make in
this space.
But but I love that perspective that your
job as a leader of the practice, administrative
leader of the practice is to make the
doctor's job
practicing medicine. And they could be in as
well as the businesses that they want, but
you want their stress to come from making
sure they're doing the best possible care for
patients, not for make sure the billing gets
out, things get scheduled right, and so and
so on. I just love that perspective.
Eric, you've had this fantastic leadership career, and
it it it's obviously clear you graduate from
the University of Illinois because anybody from there
must have a great career. But but take
take a moment and tell us.
well, I'll get to the I'll get to
the real question in a
Cubs fan, Sox fan,
where are you at on the future? The
beers, the bulls, the hawks? Any quick thoughts
on Chicago sports as long as I've gotcha.
Well, Chicago sports has certainly had some tough
times in some recent years. But, Scott, I
grew up just a couple miles away from
Wrigley Field, so we were able to walk
there when I was a little kid. So
I got happy memories sitting out there in
the bleachers,
getting sprayed with the hose,
waving at the outfielders.
And and and did you have a favorite
player growing up? Where were you at on
that?
Oh, man. You know, anyone who got to
watch,
Andre Dawson make a throw from the outfield,
that guy could throw a strike from the
Ivy. It's so funny you say that because
that's the thing that came to my mind
as I was asking the question. That's so
funny, the hawk, an amazing, amazing, and exactly
those those vivid memories I'm throwing from the
outfield. It it's it's like watching Bo Jackson
throw from the outfield. I am so happy
you said it because it's exactly what I
meant when there were so many other great
players that we watched over the years. Oh,
fantastic.
Tell tell me now, what advice would you
give to emerging leaders wanting to have an
impactful great career?
Oh, man. You know, thinking about my own,
journey along there, I would say I I
would encourage them to betray their ignorance.
I felt so much pressure as a young
leader that I needed to be credible in
as many subjects as possible. And I feel
like I stunted a lot of my early
growth because I wanted people to think I
was farther along than I actually was. So
I actually joke with another fellow leader that
I worked with,
and we centered ourselves around the phrase, it's
better to look uninformed
than to be uninformed.
I I I I love that. That might
be
my the favorite
phrase of the day, and and if you're
okay,
I might use that and give you credit
for it.
It's better to look uninformed
than be uninformed. Is is that the phrase?
Yes, sir. That's correct.
I just absolutely love that. And and that's
the willingness to ask questions where you don't
know
versus pretending like you know and then being
moronic.
So it's it it's better to
look uninformed than actually be uninformed. I love
that.
Yeah. It's been a huge asset. Yeah. I
I just love that. Eric, I wanna thank
you so much for joining us today on
the Becker's Healthcare podcast.
Obviously, a fantastic orthopedic practice.
Congratulations,
and what a magnificent career. Thank you for
being with us today. Yes. Scott, I gotta
take one more before I'm gonna allow you
to go here and just say, one of
the things that I feel like I'm so
excited about what you've done here is collocating
these hospital and payer conferences. You know, looking
for ways to help our groups
join together in in similar spaces to solve
these kinds of challenges together.
My background, you know, has just found the
the crucial asset that we have in doing
this kind of stuff. So I'm so grateful
for the work that you're doing in helping
us cross the aisle, understand each other, and
solve these hard problems. Yeah. Well, thank you
so much for that. Thank you. What a
what a fascinating time that we're in and
what a challenging time. Eric, thank you for
joining us. Just fantastic. Thank you. Yeah. Be
well,
Scott. Thanks.