In this “After the Chaos” episode, Kandice Garcia, RN, and Angela Adams, RN, unpack their enlightening conversation with healthcare innovator Kara Trott. They delve deeply into Kara’s strategic approach to navigating and solving the complexities of healthcare through rigorous data analysis, patient-centric storytelling, and empathy-driven solutions. Kandice and Angela highlight Kara’s visionary foresight, emphasizing the importance of slowing down to fully understand problems before rushing to solutions, and discuss her remarkable ability to stay relevant in the ever-evolving healthcare landscape. This reflection is an essential listen for leaders seeking actionable insights on sustaining innovation and impactful leadership in healthcare. Listen here to the full episode featuring Kara.
Full Transcript
AI-generated transcript. Accuracy may vary; please excuse any transcription errors.
Kandice Garcia, RN
Okay, everybody. Welcome to After the Chaos. I’m Kandice and this is Angela and we have so many thoughts. We just got through with our ⁓ conversation with Kara Trott and ⁓ my gosh, you are right, Angela. She is just like a tiny little ball of fire. I can’t believe what she’s been able to accomplish.
Angela Adams, RN
She’s in her.
Yeah, I met her at a cocktail party at one of my friend’s house. Yeah, that’s how we met. And I feel like I am so honored and privileged to have number one, met her and she couldn’t have come into my life at a better moment just as a CEO and mentor and her talking about like 25 years of building a company.
Kandice
⁓ my gosh.
Angela
And like the lessons learned, it’s been so much fun getting to know her in both a friendship, but then having her on the podcast, read her book. Like she’s very, very inspirational.
Kandice
Yeah, and so knowledgeable. know, I think that we forget how much wisdom is like in this system. ⁓ And you run into it in the most unlikely places like a cocktail party, you know, of all places. You know, she said a couple of things like she’s been in this business for a long time. One of the points that she made was that healthcare has changed, but humans haven’t. And, you know, I think that is so interesting because
I feel like we’re solving the same problems over and over and over again. And she has really taken to, you know, a deep understanding of the patient and let the business grow around that. just, found that approach not only like feels so simple and obvious, but also so refreshing in a place that I think we often get misguided by, but what we’re here to do.
Angela
I totally agree. I think one of the things that really struck me about the way that she developed this company that I think a lot of people don’t put in, enough credit to, and actually you taught me this lesson, Kandice, when we were first doing the ACR Empower program, ⁓ you were like, sometimes you gotta slow down to go fast and you gotta really understand your data and you gotta live in the pain.
of what’s going on and look at all those failure points. And I think that’s what she did really well that differentiated herself is number one, she saw a problem before anybody else was recognizing this problem. Like 25 years ago, we’re still talking about this problem today. She was one of the first like OGs to recognize the problem. Number two, so give her tons of cred for just recognizing that this is a problem that needs to be solved and
Kandice
So.
Angela
We’ve solved it in all these other industries like retail. Why can’t we take parallel lessons that we’ve learned about humans and behavior and what they need and make application to healthcare, which was such a huge gap. But I think too, and if you read the book, man, she goes into detail about the data collection that they went, what was so incredibly substantial and they didn’t just like,
Kandice
Mmm
Angela
do research to tickle their own feathers, they’ve literally had third party insurance companies come in. And if you’ve ever worked with insurance companies, they are master auditors, They are master data nerds. And so she had all of their data validated by third party insurance companies that wanted to prove that frankly she wasn’t right. Because she was saying, this is how much we’re saving.
Kandice
Hahaha! ⁓
and
Angela
by controlling this patient journey and helping your patients and members, we are saving this much cost because it’s so much more efficient and effective. And she was saying, we’re saving this much PM, PM per member per month. And she went and got that validated. man, what a lesson to like slow down to go fast and also really spend time understanding what the problem is before you get into solutioning mode.
Kandice
my God. Well, you you’re bringing up a really good point about, you know, when we are in the thick of it in healthcare, you know, we’re healthcare professionals, we’re nurses, we’re doctors, we’re technologists or lab assistants, and we’re moving up into leadership. And then we’re like tasked with running organizations and buying products and improving service.
And that skill of actual data collection of just understanding how do I measure things? I know what it feels like for a patient to not be able to navigate our system. And I know it’s bad and I know we need to make it better, but bad and better don’t get people all moving in the same direction. Bad and better don’t change your operations. You have to be specific. You have to define bad and better. You have to measure bad and better.
in multiple different ways, in multiple different perspectives. And I think that, you know, that’s really what Kara was able to do for this specific problem is not just identify the problem, but be able to articulate the problem with, with measures that ⁓ help to define and quantify what we were seeing, but also layered on the story of like the patient journey. What I always say, a data without a story is
not valid, it’s not helpful, but a story without data is also not helpful. It really has to be the combination of both. And that’s where deep understanding comes from. ⁓ And it takes time. That’s what takes so much time. Developing a measure takes time, then taking that and articulating the measure takes time, and then matching it with the story and then convincing people. But when you have deep understanding, I think she even mentioned this. She’s like,
The understanding was the hard part. The solutions were the easy part. Once we understood, once we laid it all out, the solutions just started coming because we didn’t have to try to fit our solution into a problem. We understood the problems and the solutions just magically appeared.
Angela
It’s so true. think the other lesson that I took from, from Kara is, you know, think back 25 years in healthcare, like think back where we were in healthcare 25 years ago. ⁓ and then think all the way to today and the AI revolution that we’re, we’re in today. ⁓ she kept a company relevant from 25 years ago through
today, which is just, it’s an entirely different healthcare system that you’re even working in. It’s entirely different data that we have available. And I just think that that was such a ⁓ lesson in like, when she started, they didn’t even have organized electronic health data.
Kandice
Like where were they getting the data? Like what are we even, what were they even looking at? You know, like.
Angela
or manually
collecting the data of data points. And now we’ve got like organized data sets and they’ve evolved their company to use AI and use all of the latest and greatest, but like that’s hard to do. And when we’re talking to all of these folks on the podcast and the healthcare executives, like that’s really success and chaos. Man, think about trying to manage to an outcome when you’re sitting outside of the healthcare system, you’re limited on the amount of data that you get.
but you’re still controlling that much in results. And it’s just, man, it is incredible to see what they’ve been able to do.
Kandice
But you know, I keep going back to it. Each one of these leaders that we’ve spoken to is like, it’s the vision of where we’re going. It’s understanding how every little action, every little thing that we do gets us closer to the vision of what we have for this organization and that the vision is the organization. It’s not all the details because the details will continue to change. Even the environment that the details live in continue to change. But if you can stay true to your
true North, what that is, get everybody to participate in that. I think John said it best, then have a curiosity about the world around you, continue to investigate, continue to understand, continue to measure and tell the story of the patients. And I mean, that feels such a winning combination as evidenced by Kara.
Angela
Yeah.
Yeah, I think what’s too really cool to kind of watch as we speak to these different leaders, like there’s a certain humility, often be admitting that like you don’t know it all, but you’re here for it anyway. And, and I love that. I feel like Kara is a lifetime learner and she is just applied, applied, applied. Anytime you see somebody who’s like,
Kandice
Mmm.
Angela
Well, I started out as an attorney and then I decided to start a healthcare company and then I decided to write a book. then I, and it’s like, you know, all of these leaders in my mind have like recreated themselves so many different times in so many different ways. It’s so inspiring to, to listen to and watch, but there’s definitely an authenticity to everyone that we’ve spoken to.
Kandice
And that was so true with Rufor Cara. I can’t wait to see what goes on, what happens with her book and how we’re able to spread her story and the story of this organization. think it’s really going to inspire a lot of up and coming leaders as how to be within their organizations.
Angela
Yeah.
All right, you guys, thank you for listening. ⁓ No one alone is the name of Kara’s book. Go get it. It’s on Amazon. I read it on Kindle, but you can order a paper copy, hardback copy as well. But really good book, especially for health care leaders, business leaders, trying to learn and understand here how she was able to build from really bootstrap to billion. ⁓
Kandice
you
Angela
All right, good to see you, Candice.
Kandice
See you later, bye.
