Podcast: TriZetto’s Jeff Margolis


Jeff Margolis, founder, chairman and CEO of The TriZetto Group, has written a book, called “The Information Cure.” In it, Margolis discusses his vision for “integrated healthcare management,” the combination of information technology and process improvement on both the administrative and clinical sides of healthcare to change deeply ingrained behaviors.

We recorded this way back on Sept. 10, the day after President Obama pitched his healthcare bill to a joint session of Congress, and I unfortunately sat on this recording for more than four months. The legislation may have changed considerably since then—and may be headed for the trash heap anyway—but the problems plaguing healthcare in the U.S. persist. Thus, I present this podcast, still as fresh as the day it was made.

Podcast details: Interview with Jeff Margolis of The TriZetto Group. MP3, stereo, 64 kbps, 16.4 MB, running time 35:54

0:25 Integrated healthcare management
2:05 Health reform and quality of care
3:20 The book’s consumer focus
4:40 Collection of massive amounts of administrative data
5:25 Fragmentation of data
6:20 Payers managing “healthcare supply chain”
7:15 Using information to identify “value-based benefits”
8:00 Consumers and cost, prevention and chronic diseases
9:20 Physicians and “value-based reimbursement”
11:10 Slow diffusion of information in healthcare
12:05 Physicians clueless about what things cost patients
13:50 Price transparency to consumers
14:30 Real-time claims adjudication/eligibility checking
15:50 Thoughts on the stimulus
17:15 Avoiding “digital silos”
19:10 No single, right answer in health reform
20:30 Assembling “virtual supply chains,” like Amazon
21:30 EHRs in the big picture
22:20 Patient as the aggregator
24:15 Vision for new eligibility transactions
26:15 Data enabling physician cash flow
27:50 Role of personal health records
28:30 His definitions of EMR, EHR, PHR
30:10 Why EHR vendors are “overreaching”
31:05 Organizing principles of health information exchange
33:05 Patients vs. consumers
34:45 Takeaway message of the book