Carl Maronich (Host): Welcome to the Healthcare Executive Podcast, where we provide insightful commentary and developments in healthcare leadership. I'm your host, Carl Maronich. And with me today is Dr. Liz Kwo, President of Vanna Health, an author of Leadership RX: From Clinician to Executive and Beyond, a new book from ACHE Learn. Doctor, welcome to the podcast.

Liz Kwo, MD: Thank you so much, Carl. Nice to meet you.

Host: Nice to meet you as well. And we're going to be talking about clinician leadership and the new book. But before we get to that, maybe I can ask if you could talk a little bit about your career journey and how you landed in the digital health space.

Liz Kwo, MD: Absolutely. I'll start by saying my parents were the educators. They champion the foundation and the virtue of education and the pursuit of your dreams and goals. They instilled in me this idea that you can stack your career and your life with a lot of learning from medical school that I did—and in addition, business school.

And so, I went down this journey thinking how do I scale my ability to see patients more? And I thought technology, but you also have to understand payment models and how businesses work and where the money flows. And ultimately, it generated this idea of like becoming an entrepreneur and really training and understanding the idea that you can understand all the kind of players in the market, providers, patients, policy makers, pioneers, and especially, not only the payers, but also pharmacy, and how do you lay the foundation to get companies to do well in a market that really has important outcomes for patients.

So, that's what I've been doing for the last couple of years and probably the last two decades and, most recently, I've been at Vanna to support serious mental illness and behavioral health in a value-based care model.

Host: Wonderful. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the mentors you had and have supported your career and some of the best advice you got from those mentors.

Liz Kwo, MD: Absolutely. So, I've always felt that, in the bigger life of our journey, you develop your own platform and your belief in building, but you need to have people be stewards of your own journey. So, making sure that you let people know what you're looking for, what you want to do. And that's what started this idea each time I started a company. It's growing with pressure to put on yourself, but also selectively having my own board of directors. I've had my own personal and professional help from friends that can give me all sorts of different mentorship and background. And I myself have also been loving the way that I can teach and mentor younger entrepreneurs.

I would say another big thing was I've learned over the years, you're not just saying yes to ambition, you're redefining also what ambition looks like to each person in their own, especially as a clinician becoming an executive and then an entrepreneur and a board member in multiple aspects of life. I'm always eager to learn and, I think, humble enough to know what I don't know and be willing to ask for help and ask for advice, but also at some point, measuring success with how I'm also helping others.

Host: Yeah, what a great approach. Maybe you could for us describe the origins of your book Leadership Rx: From Clinician to Executive and Beyond, and how did you decide to write this book and about this topic?

Liz Kwo, MD: I just think a lot of clinicians are looking for ways to build their careers, stack their skillsets, learn about other things outside of a day-to-day nine-to-five job helping patients. And they want to do more, they want to impact more. And I think there's so many opportunities for clinicians to do that, whether it's starting companies, becoming a chief clinical officer of a certain role, thinking through can they invest? Do they want to invest on the professional side or are they trying to angel invest?

And there's so many different opportunities right now within the digital health space, especially when you're thinking about telemedicine, remote patient care, predictive analytics, leveraging AI. So, I just love this idea of helping other pioneers in healthcare think about their own careers. And therefore, I thought about writing a book that helped not only clinicians think about their brand and their execution around it, but also thinking about what our opportunities out there, how do you think about the landscape of it. Then, I wanted to give sort of practical advice on each step of the way. How do you think about it in a business world? Or how do you put together your own resume to manage, and then also to potentially still keep your nine to five job, but take the risks of doing these things on the side and to think bigger picture, to connect to a bigger community?

Host: Well, you're well positioned to kind of offer some thoughts on the challenges that clinicians face when they move into leadership roles, and conversely, what are some of the unique skills that clinicians can bring to those roles?

Liz Kwo, MD: Thank you. I'm grateful. I think I've had roles across being my own entrepreneur, being a CEO, also on a chief commercial officer side, thinking about how do you sell to consumers versus how do you sell to big plans or health systems. And I've been lucky enough, I think, to sit on a few very amazing public boards that are including Walmart Mexico in Central America and Kestra. These are med device companies and also retail companies that have just taught me a lot about governance. And especially as we're thinking about change and impact, I believe in this power lies within us to reshape our destiny, to reinvent our own skillsets and to redefine our own personal and professional identities.

So, I want to empower others to feel like they're the architect of their own narrative and the master of our fates. And ultimately, there's, I think, I'm quoting somebody, but the master of our own souls. So, I love this idea of trying to help people get there.

Host: With all that, all that you outlined, the skills that are involved in doing that, how do they help as clinicians move into the leadership roles?

Liz Kwo, MD: There are several things. I think one is just understanding the business side of things. How do you read a financial statement? How do you think about what you would want to operate? The other thing is what are your interests? Where do they lie? Are they more on the backend side of EMR, electronic medical records, thinking through predictive analytics, which we call the 3P sort of predictive, prescriptive and thinking through that using NLP? Or are you thinking more on I want to be at the patients bedside? What are devices that can do that and what are services that can do that? Or are you thinking more quality? I really care about how a hospital system runs their quality metrics. There are so many opportunities out there.

So, one is differentiating what your skill sets are. Second is what your intentions are, what your interests are. I think the third is also what level you come into an organization or where you're looking at your network. So, building the network is key. And in the book I talk a lot about not only thinking about your careers, but stacking your skillsets. So, is it policy plus commission? Is it business plus commission? Is it contracting, because you understand how a payer works or you understand how a health system works? And thinking through all of these things in a digestible manner that allows people to have a roadmap, at least to discover.

Host: Doctor, maybe I could ask you to identify some of the changes that have occurred in healthcare and the healthcare landscape that have created different opportunities for clinicians to kind of move into leadership roles.

Liz Kwo, MD: Absolutely. So, first thing is that there are just a ton of opportunities out there right now in biotech. A lot of people that are basic science researchers are building their own businesses around the space, as we think about leveraging AI to do drug discovery, that's just a huge opportunity within itself in addition to applying analytics. So, a lot of people are leveraging data to assess and verify. We talked about improving patient outcomes through the piece of prediction and prescriptive.

There's also all this interesting work on sort of contracting and how you're thinking about value-based care models or payment models. And I think there's a big space in how people are leveraging that. And then, on top of that, within the digital health landscape, you know, especially as we're thinking about this crisis of there's a burnout. It hampers our effect to help patients. And so, how do we help clinicians step up into more leadership roles on the non-traditional sort of healthcare path?

And I think the space that I am also very interested in is on not only telehealth and technology and remote patient care, but consumer-driven healthcare. People are now paying for sleep studies and Aura rings and things that are allowing them to improve their own quality of life. So, how do you encourage your own patients to do that? There's multifaceted ways to build these careers.

Host: Doctor, you mentioned something I want to ask about, and that is burnout can be a big problem. What advice would you have about trying to prevent burnout?

Liz Kwo, MD: Oh, I feel like there's so many. One is we talked about the board of advisors and people that you can pick up the phone. The New York Times wrote about this with like the seven-minute phone call to call a friend. And even if they're not able to pick up, it's just knowing that they're there. The one is just physical exercise. And, you know, as much as we think about our mind and controlling the mind share, it's also exercise to help escape stress.

And then, I meditate a lot. I think about emotional exercises also to stress test myself. I sort of have a stoic mentality of the worst thing that could happen and I would be okay with it; and learning how to manage through some of these stresses throughout life. And then, also just, as we've talked about too, it's thinking through what you need in terms of, you know, we're all very privileged if you can be a clinician. So, what do you need together with other peers that are supportive in the same space. Other wellness strategies of thinking about taking time off, thinking about part-time work. There are ways to, I think, engineer structurally what leads to a lot of burnout. So, how do you reduce that in a way that allows people to have that time is important.

Host: Great suggestions, great thoughts there. What advice do you have for clinicians who are preparing to take on leadership roles?

Liz Kwo, MD: There's a few things. I think when they take on leadership roles, is really to understand what your remit is and how you get there. And sometimes, it's not on your own. It's learning, it's listening to stakeholders, it's figuring out. Also, as we talked about, like making sure you understand the business model of whatever organization you're in, understanding your financial situation within the company where growth levers are. It's also really aligning with the right key stakeholders, champions that help within your growth path and establishing also just a very nice cadence for how you communicate, how you think about your role and thinking about the value add to the company.

I think these are all callouts I write in the book because these are things that people, I think, know they should inherently do, but may not have a checklist for understanding what to do. So, it's not only the why, but it's the how and then the what following that, as you've tried to think about your career.

Host: Finally, Doctor, maybe you could describe some of the key takeaways, which you've just mentioned some for leaders from the book.

Liz Kwo, MD: Absolutely. So, I've talked about several of them in my book, and part of it is taking stock of what you have, using professional smart assessments, evaluating how well-suited you are for one task versus another. A chief medical officer of a biotech is very different from someone who is, you know, a healthcare company that's tech-enabled versus one that is completely service-oriented in the home, out of the home, out of the hospital.

So, taking stock of what you're good at, what you know you want to do. And then, thinking about also some of the—we talked about leadership role assessments. So, there's critical thinking assessments, personality profilers and strengths that people can take for tests. The other thing is really building—we talked about a board of advisors, but as you're thinking through this, it's from earlier what we mentioned. It's letting people know what you want. Because, I think, the universe can't sort of help you if you don't kind of establish yourself in "These are the skill sets I've had. I've done deep thinking. I want this next role to be an opportunity and putting that out there."

So, career paths, I think, are long. And I've always also had an attitude of meeting people. Even if they don't necessarily make sense to meet now, I still take the time because networks, you never know. There's six degrees of separation. So, you may have talked to somebody six months ago and they come back to you with an offer, and having this sort of open-mindedness is really key.

Host: Dr. Liz Kwo, President of Vanna Health and author of Leadership Rx: From Clinician to Executive and Beyond, the new book from ACHE Learn. Some great thoughts about clinician leadership. We appreciate your time today.

Liz Kwo, MD: Thank you very much for the time. And I hope everyone gets to take a look at the book.

Host: Yeah, absolutely. For more information, visit healthcareexecutive.org. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it on your social channels and check out the entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. I'm your host, Carl Maronich. And this is the Healthcare Executive Podcast. Thanks for listening.