Season 3 Episode 2: Libby with an O: The Relias People Person Gets Personal

Sumner (00:02)

Reliably Well brings you thoughtful conversations from those who are shaping the future of healthcare, focusing not just on the technical side of the industry, but on the human element, the stories, the struggles and triumphs of individuals who are driving change.

Joe (00:20)

Join us for candid discussions that highlight both the challenges and rewards of working in a field where humanity and healthcare intersect.

Sumner (00:31)

Welcome to episode one of season three of the Reliably Well podcast.

Joe (00:38)

We’re trying this again.

Sumner (00:41)

So we’re excited to be with you for another season of Reliably Well. If this is your first time joining us, welcome. As you heard in the intro, the purpose of this is to tell people’s stories and to put the humanity back in healthcare. Season two was a joy, I feel like for both of us, Joe, to really hear the stories that some of our clinicians have. And I was just really struck at the courage that some people showed to

kind of lay it all out there. And it really was fun to get to hear from so many people that we get to work with.

Joe (01:17)

Yeah, I think it was, it’s very ⁓ refreshing to hear that side of people, the true humanity of individuals, the true openness, the rawness of people’s stories when they share that. And I think today, us sharing our side, us being the guests, I think as I kind of alluded to, this is episode 1.1 of season three, that’s because this is

a retake because it’s hard. It’s hard to do it and you don’t really realize how hard it is to be the guest until you’re the guest. So applause to all of our guests past and in the future when you’re the guest we realize now exactly how hard it is to be the guest and thank you for doing that. And yeah, when you do share those moments, it’s very revealing, it’s very refreshing ⁓ and it’s very rewarding to those people who hear those things.

that side of you understand that ⁓ other side of the coin, that other ⁓ person that you are and not just the clinician that’s in the moment that’s taking care of people with that person who’s ⁓ the human side of you, the mom, the dad, the person who was broken, the person who’s had to be healed themselves.

Sumner (02:40)

Yeah, and our kind of signature tagline for season two is every guest had to answer the question to prove they’re human. Kind of like you’re trying to check out on an online store and they want to make sure that you’re not a bot. So I think we’ve proven that we’re human, Joe, by having a retake of the podcast, right? So job well done on us. We do, in fact, have belly buttons. So I’ll start with you and I certainly will reciprocate, but would love to hear your story either.

personally or kind of how it pertains to getting involved in healthcare, but where does the story of the one and only Joe Johnsey begin?

Joe (03:18)

I don’t know that my story’s ⁓ that spectacular. I was sort of around healthcare a little bit. My mom was in the business of healthcare, comptroller count ⁓ at the local hospital for a long time. So I wound up at the hospital a lot after school, hanging out in her office and stuff like that. And I guess I thought that was healthcare for a while. And then when I was fairly young, my dad,

I got sick with cancer and then I saw really the reality of healthcare from the patient side of things and dealt with a lot of the ramifications of that. The biggest thing I probably remember from that was him saying, go into healthcare. That was his advice. So I was not gonna go into healthcare. I was gonna follow his recommendation and become an engineer.

until I realized I really did not like engineering that much. It just didn’t fit my personality. so, you know, life is the curves in the road that are more interesting than the straight portions of it. And college roommate that I had, that I bumped into on the interludes between co-op assignments, Keith Thorn, who’s a cardiologist down in Jackson, he too was in the chemical engineering pathway. He too did not enjoy the

the practical side of chemical engineering and asked me the question, Hey, do you know what’s got the highest acceptance rate in the medical school? had no earthy idea. And he said, chemical engineering. so started investigating it, got into studying for the MCAT, took it and did, did pretty good on it. And, the momentum just took off and had a job in an emergency room and just to kind of get some experience and be able to talk a little bit more about clinical things that I had done when, you get down to.

interviewing and the nurses that worked there said, what are you going to do when you graduate from medical school? What’s your career going to be? And I just said, well, I know one thing for sure that it won’t be emergency medicine. I’m not sure what specialty it’ll be, but I know it won’t be emergency medicine. And I know I won’t ever work in this hospital. And lo and behold, my first job out of residency was in the emergency room in that hospital.

So don’t ever speak boldly about what you will and won’t do because those curves that you drive on, they may wind up sending you in a direction that you didn’t predict. But emergency medicine just, of all the things that I bounced around, emergency medicine just sort of hit that personality, clicked with that personality that I had of being a little bit more unique and the lifestyle was certainly more of the thing that I thought fit better with what I

I wanted, and so it seemed to gel well for me. And that’s sort of the way things have been. This thing that you didn’t expect to happen, continue to happen and has led on down the pathway. You know, the tech that’s working in the emergency department that you really, you see techs come and go all the time and you never really anticipate that one of them is going to have an impact in your life. I’ve had some…

think I’ve had a little impact every once in while on a tech or a scribe that comes along and then they wind up going to medical school and they come back and tell you, know, really appreciate you telling me this or that that fired me up to keep on going and go into emergency medicine. But I never thought a tech would impact my life. And lo and behold, there was this tech and we had a job opening in the office and he was just so persistent, so persistent. want.

to get that job, can I get that job? And eventually I hired him and then the next thing you know, we’re starting a company together. And it’s just gonna be, we’re just gonna run the department there. And then you’re in 35 different hospitals in five different states and man, not, somebody had told me, hey, a few years from now, you’re gonna be in five different states and have 600 different people working. And I just said, no way.

Absolutely not. I’ll bet you a million dollars that won’t happen because that’s not the career I’m planning for. But the curves in your life, the influences that turn the trajectory that you’re on, that’s the story I think that I see in healthcare, in medicine, in judge-huts. It’s not the one that I had planned out.

Sumner (08:00)

Yeah. So I actually have kept my medical school personal statement. And so I’m going to read from the very first paragraph because my, tried to not go into medicine. I wanted to work full time at Alpine Camp for Boys and I studied sociology at Ole Miss. I love thinking about how people all, why do they behave the way that they do and how culture is really made.

But this is what I wrote in my medical school personal statement. My initial experience of shadowing a doctor was miserable. The doctor cursed at his assistant staff, complained about his job, and knew his patients only by their time slot of the day and not their name. In the same experience, I passed out watching my first surgery. Afterwards, I began to look for every reason not to be a doctor. I opened every possible door and all roads led back to the same place I promised myself I would never return.

My first experience with healthcare was not a, I certainly didn’t think that I would be doing what I was doing either. I was the oldest of three boys and spending a lot of my life trying to get other people’s approval and not really understanding what I truly wanted to do. I think I can honestly say at this point, and I think in my personal worldview and ethic, I believe that the Lord can work through things like this and they can still be good, but.

I think I went to medical school because other people wanted me to, and not necessarily because that’s what I deep down really wanted to be. But obviously I’m very thankful for that opportunity to go. None of my family is medical at all. We’re blue collar folk, and I’m very thankful for that and that type of work ethic that my family taught me. And in medical school, thought I was gonna do

The first radiation oncology, then I really thought I wanted to do gynoch with kind of a family friend, that that’s what he did and have a lot of respect for him still to this day. And then I met these guys, Zeb Henson, Ken Ball and Jerry Shepherd and was like, I want to grow up to be like those guys. They really cared about the patient’s story. They spent time and had curiosity about the patient’s work and family and just

the way that they approached the clinical encounter, ⁓ I really felt like, man, I guess I’m gonna do internal medicine because that’s what those guys do. When trained up in Charlottesville, Virginia, and that’s where I tell people that I came to life and had some amazing mentors, Brian Oudlaude and Monad Carney and Andy Wolf, I could go on and on about all these people that really pushed me that the most beautiful thing that we do in medicine is get to know people and their story. Yeah, we get to take care of them and…

diagnose them and make them feel better and hopefully decrease their morbidity. But we also get to learn about this wild and wonderful world that we live in and what makes people tick and get to meet really neat people along the way. And part of meeting neat people along the way is December of 2019, meeting you and Luke and kind of an opportunity came and I certainly didn’t expect that we would be where we are.

March of 2026 in December of 2019. But this idea of these seemingly random collisions may not be so random when you look back on your story and the opportunity to get to work with really thoughtful people. So I’m thankful for that. could go on and on, but I think we have a little more to get to in the episode. But I would be curious, ⁓ was there a particular thinking about you as the chief medical officer?

of a multi-state healthcare solutions company. Was there a particular moment or a person of influence that kind of drew you to the work that you’re doing today where you are a clinician, but you’re also a leader of people and an organization? Was there anything kind of a moment or a person or an interaction that ⁓ kind of drew you in that direction?

Joe (12:11)

I don’t think that there’s a moment that I can just say it’s, you know, I’m King Arthur and I drew the sword out of the stone and that’s when I got the feeling that I can do it. I think, you know, in leadership, in medicine, unfortunately, most of the time we find people who are clinically able and have some emotional intelligence.

and we give them the title of leader and we find out whether they can lead or not. And I think that, you know, I was given that title when other leaders before me had stepped down and I was put in that role and you sort of learn as you go from the situations that are there.

Can you continue to do it? And you get that confidence built in you from going through, you know, get forged in fire, really. And so as Luke and I often say, we probably are much better at doing what we do.

today because of what we went through in 2014 and 15 and the challenges that we faced and seeing how not to do things and all that sort of stuff that we dealt with then, man, it stank. And if you ask me, want to go learn this way? No way. No way do I want to do that. But I think the, you know,

when you look back on it and you see some of that stuff and you understand some of those lessons that you learn and you see how those things can impact people and relationships and it takes so little to tarnish something forever and never get it back. it makes you, it teaches you in a way that there’s not an education out there, a certificate on a wall.

a program that you’re gonna go into. I spent some money for a certificate on my wall and spent a lot of time getting those degrees as well, but there is just something that that shoe leather, that those calluses cannot replace. And so I think that ⁓ that’s part of it. I think that then the people who come to you, ⁓

just like we had yesterday, the people who gave you the vote of confidence early on in 2017, and then they come back in 2026 and they, in front of a bunch of folks who don’t know you, say these people are honest folks to work with. so, know, finances have to work out and all that sort of stuff, but as far as if they give you their word, you can trust that, because I got nearly a decade of working with them and I know that. I know these are good folks and I know they’ll do what they’re supposed to do.

when they say they’re gonna do it. So I think that that sort of stuff, when you get those things time after time after time from the people that you work with, that’s the sort of stuff that gives you, that fuels you up again and again and again to say, well, we did it before, I think we can do it again when we try, when put our full effort into it. So I think that those are the things when people come back and say, you know,

I appreciate what it is that you’re doing. Thank you for doing this and for how you’re leading in this effort for backing me up, for helping me through that challenging time. Those are the things. So it’s not one, it’s this conglomeration of a lot of those incidents that I won’t necessarily be able to call them out and enumerate them one after another. But those partnerships that we’ve had that again, they don’t

They don’t feel like they’re transactional. They feel, as Elwin Crawford says, they feel like they’re cousins. They feel like they’re somebody that you have conversations with, you have relationships with, and things just, they’re much easier to deal with than some transactional relationship that happens over ⁓ an email or over maybe a phone call. There’s something that really transpires. Those things are what

make me feel confident in how and influence me as a leader and make me feel like I know what it is that I’m doing as a leader because I don’t know how you really become a leader otherwise than getting in there and doing it and figuring out, you can.

Sumner (17:15)

Yeah, just kind of the, what I hear kind of as a theme as you’re talking is that really what it boils down to is these relationships with other human beings, right? That this is, yeah, there are a lot of widgets in healthcare that we can manipulate and processes and operational efficiencies. And yeah, we need to understand kind of where the puck’s going from a quality perspective. But at the end of the day,

This is a relationships deal. Clinicians have relationships with their patients and we have relationships with other people that are trying to take care of patients and that this trust that is built but can be broken is really what kind of gives, like those are the moments when somebody gives you that trust. Those are the influential times where a relationship is forged and trust is made that does continue to draw you to the work you’re doing.

Joe (18:15)

Yeah, we’re both book people and that’s the first book that Libbo referenced me to was Leadership is Relationship. And I don’t remember all the details of it. don’t have this, you know, dictionarily referenceable quotation like you have at the, you know, recall ability. But that just that title, that’s the essence of what you’re saying. And I think it is so true to what you’re saying that

You can’t get somebody to change their work on their length of stay or work on their case mix index. If before you start talking in those terms, you have a relationship with them from which to have that discussion based upon. So they trust that you’re not coming at them with some data hammer to slam over them, but you’re coming at them from a standpoint of, look, I’m your friend. I’m trying to sit here and show you the path.

to which you become excellent. You become the kind of clinician, the kind of father, the kind of person that you wanna be. I’m not just trying to nitpick you because here’s a factoid that you didn’t get right. I just want you to be better because I have in my heart your best interest at heart. And so once you establish that connection with people, then…

We can work on all the other stuff, but if we don’t have that thing first, forget about making any progress with your sepsis.

Sumner (19:47)

That’s right. Just it’s you know thinking about particular moments or influence. I think that my answer to this question would be And I’ve told you and Luke this at different times But I’ll be pretty explicit here when you meet people in your work that give you the opportunity because of who you are there that that is a moment or influence of like you know what like

maybe I can do this, right? And that’s what I so appreciate about you and Luke and others that work for us is that you’re not asking me to be this ideal fictitious individual in a role. You’re wanting me to be me and do the work that’s required in the job, right? And I think that my encouragement, hopefully to anybody that is listening to this, that when you find people that believe in you,

for all your warts and all your good stuff, right? The whole you and trust you with an opportunity, go take it, you know? Because if somebody’s asking you to do something and they want you to be something that maybe you’re not, or they’re wanting you to, you know, check all these boxes that you have to check, that would kind of make me a little wary, but the specific…

moment or kind of influence that I feel like I look back is like I have confidence is like can Joe see me for who I am, the good and the bad, you know, and they they they want me to be me and do the job that’s there. And so I think that those types of relationships and trust, I think, are invaluable to anybody irrespective of its health care or the automotive industry or whatever. That it’s people, its relationships and allowing you to be the person that you are.

I do feel like we’re in this moment in healthcare that whether you do a Google search or ask the AI engine to talk about incidences of burnout or whatever, that there’s a lot of, you could quickly talk about the negative in healthcare insurance companies and how we pay for everything and how do we deal with all the challenges and those are all valid, fair, complicated questions.

I’d be curious to hear you talk about what part of your work gives you the most energy or hope. Easy to focus on the negative, but we’re going to be glass half full on this Friday.

Joe (22:15)

Yeah, I

mean, I do think that there’s there. I think that technology is finally giving us some hope that things are getting better, getting easier for us. I think that the complexity of medicine has has made it more and more challenging the work that we do. But I really do feel like finally we’re seeing some things that are making it ⁓ easier to get our arms around stuff. I know everybody’s

fearful, AI is going to replace me, AI is going to replace me. I don’t see that doom and gloom of AI, but I do think it’s going to make it where some of those really easy to overlook things are going to get harder for us to miss. That’s where I see the hope. I think it’s going to make it where we can do some of those easier, more routine tasks are going to get done so we can focus on.

the relationship side of medicine so that we can make sure that we can be engaged with the individual. We can hear that story instead of being focused on, I get the past surgical history right? Did I get the past, you know, did I get all of these detail pieces down in the note that I need? We can let the technology take care of some of those drudgery things that we’ve been forced to.

focus on the computer screen instead of focusing on a person. to me, I feel like there’s some hope out there that technology is going to release us from some of the burdens that we’ve had and be able to get back to the thing that we wanted to do, which was take care of people. That’s what I look forward to and some of the things that we’re starting to see now. ⁓ And also help to remind us of some of those things that we’re forgetting and we’re never diagnosing because we…

We just never thought of them and helped to remind us of some of those things. So to me, I look forward to the burgeoning technology that we’ve got out there to help us get back to the things that we wanted to do. Yeah, make us better.

Sumner (24:17)

I wholeheartedly agree with that and instead of double clicking on that, I’ll kind of answer it a different way that I think you’ll also wholeheartedly agree with if I could speak for you. What I feel I get is in this moment, it gives me the most energy. We probably have, I don’t know, 70, 80 different people that have a leadership title in our organization. That’s probably a fair estimation, whether a lead APC or medical director.

⁓ associate or assistant medical director. What lately has given me the most energy is seeing people that I truly believe that some of our job at Relias Healthcare in the corporate office is we work for our leaders and our clinicians. I work for our hospital medicine medical directors to make their job better. And call it an inverted org chart, call it you want to, but the…

Watching some of our leaders step into really complicated situations or positions and to see them flourish and to be able to bring their whole person to the job to make decisions on behalf of their group that is driving quality outcomes, is helping operational efficiency in the hospital, but it’s really taking care of patients and families, that is incredibly energizing.

to see people flourish in his or her leadership position in our organization. And so it’s helping leaders lead well in their own way to where it’s not that this is the relias Joe Johnsey way that we must lead, right? No, it’s you’re your own person. You have your own skills. We’re gonna get you to try to have our infrastructure support you, but you’re gonna lead the way that…

you need to lead. And that is a highly relational gig. And I’m hopeful that in this season, we get to hear from some of those leaders who have flourished and gotten to bring their whole selves to the great work and hard work that they’re doing. To kind of transition a little bit to the podcast in general, we both have shared offline that season one of the podcast, I know that I can speak for myself. I didn’t really know what I was doing, right?

And maybe I still don’t really know what I’m doing, but we were kind of we kind of tried to talk about health care. That’s right. We were but we were trying to talk about health care topics and it became kind of hard to you’re kind of retreading old water and but season two really was a gift. It kind of almost felt like therapy getting to end your week. We typically will record on a Friday and you hear these.

Joe (26:40)

On the job training for both sides.

Sumner (27:02)

amazing stories from people that we get to work alongside. And it felt so, it just felt good. There’s just no other way to kind of say it. I mean, it it felt good. It felt very human. Why does this conversation, as we kind of enter another season of the podcast, why does the conversation around humanity and healthcare feel so important to you right now?

Joe (27:26)

I feel like it’s important because there is this conflict. I feel personally when we’re seeing the interaction between patients and clinicians, that’s why I see that. We see the challenges so often, the trust that’s degraded.

I think it’s because the human side of the clinician is missing too much. think too often we as clinicians feel like we need to put on the white coat and leave our humanity behind. And I think what I saw from people like Josh and James and others that when they carry in their humanity into the interaction, they become the better clinician. They bring that

that sympathy with the patient that’s there. And that doesn’t make them worse. That doesn’t make them lose their objectivity, but that makes them be the advocate that they need to be. And the patients feel that. They understand that. They know the honesty that that clinician’s bringing. And so I think it’s helpful for us and if any of our patients see this great, hear this great.

But I think for our other clinicians to see that it’s okay to share vulnerability with a patient that doesn’t weaken us, that doesn’t make us unobjective. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think a patient wants to hear our sad story where they’ve got a broken leg. But I think it’s okay to help identify with them. I think it’s okay for us to let them know we understand and we want help.

I think it’s okay to be human when we’re in that interaction. I think that’s what patients need today more than they need the stoic doctor of a generation or two ago, who was what that was what patients needed in our parents or our grandparents generation. But today they need someone who’s more empathetic to what’s going on. And so that’s what I think we showed a little bit was these are great clinicians and this is what part of what makes them.

Sumner (29:49)

That’s right. Yeah, and just even better human beings than they are clinicians. I would say that if you… There was a news story that was shared ⁓ in our group chat this morning about a group of docs that were being replaced by a different group of clinicians and just kind of some of the pain in their story. You know, obviously I am replaceable. Everybody is theoretically replaceable. But I feel like this conversation around humanity and healthcare

particularly from our clinicians’ perspective, is that ⁓ I feel like that some of our clinicians don’t feel like that they are human, that they’re just a widget, and that they need to see patients faster, and they need to document better, and they need to move quicker, and they need to discharge more, and all these things that they’re getting pressure, and there’s a reasonable and understandable why behind the pressure.

I’m not saying that that’s wrong, but I do think that it’s very easy for the clinician to feel like, man, nobody cares about me. Nobody cares that I’m a single mom or that this hard providence has popped up in my life or I’ve got to get off the shift and I got to go take care of my mom who has Alzheimer’s and I’m really exhausted or I’m kind of anxious about my oldest child. They really want to go to this college, but they may not get in or my son who’s in this great

ball player has this injury and it’s time for, I mean, all of these things that are going, that should impact them, that people just don’t care and that they just hear all the time, do better, do better. It’s all stick, no carrot, right? And I think that just highlighting that every single person that works for us and everyone who is a clinician, irrespective of who signs their paycheck, they have a story and it matters.

that truthfully telling that story will allow them to, they will find more joy in the process of caring for other human beings and understanding that other human being’s story outside of the pathophysiology that’s at play. And I think that that could be one of the secrets to kind of redeeming this vocation, you know, that I forget the author, but that vocation is a responsibility and that responsibility

is the total response of the whole person to the job that’s at hand. And you can’t bring, you can’t really call this a vocation if you can’t bring your whole person into the responsibility that you have. And I just want our people and every clinician who might listen to this, that your story matters and what’s going on outside of work is arguably more important than the work. And that there are people out there that care about it and hopefully it’s an encouragement to other folks.

I think we can close with this. ⁓ As we alluded to earlier, our kind of prompt at the end of every episode of season two was to prove you’re human. We got some good laughs ⁓ out of that season and also some pearls of wisdom, but we’re gonna change it up with season three. And our signature question that we’ll both answer is what does being well mean to you right now? And the little wrinkle at the end is gonna be, has that changed over time?

So what does being well mean to you right now, Joe? And how has that changed over time? Yeah.

Joe (33:17)

⁓ This is the main reason we have episode 1.1. I wish we were proven we were human then defining this. This is a hard question. And I’ll answer the first part first and then I’ll say my whole, yeah, this certainly changed over time. That being well when I was younger had a lot more statistical importance or statistical

weight ⁓ to it. You know, did I do this? Did I do that? Can I do this? Did you know, in, in work, was I there? Am I, am I the, where do I rank on the productivity and those sorts of things were, and was it the absence of things? Is it the absence of burnout, you know, or whatever our term de jour is for the negative thing that we feel in, in work. And one thing that

then I think it’s a general truth. You know, it’s like proverbs. They’re not absolute truths, but they’re general truths, right? Generally, the patients in the emergency room that do the best are the ones that have people in the waiting room. And so generally, I’m doing well when I’m connected with my family and with my friends and with my church and with my God. And I am not well.

when those connections are frayed, when I have let those accountable things overwhelm those connections. So that to me is, I think my definition, how connected ⁓ am I to those people in my life, to my God. That I think is how I would define being well today.

Sumner (35:10)

Man, that’s a good word. Yeah, I would say there was certainly a point in time and the temptation is still there to define wellness as things that I have done. Or if I am not well, I need to do more. I need to do more meditation. I need to sweep more. I need to exercise more. I need to sweep right. Like I need to do, do, do, do, do.

and that if I do more than I will be well. And I think there’s danger in your, you know, the stereotype is that in healthcare, it’s a bunch of type A people. And so the temptation is, well, just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. And then I’m gonna fill my tank back up. And then when it gets low, I’ll go do those things again. And you kind of ride this roller coaster. I think that over time, ⁓ it’s a similar answer, maybe parallel or adjacent, is this perspective. My friend Jim asked me, ⁓

I had some anxiety about stuff that was going on at work and he stopped me in the middle of my sentence and he said, is that your job or is that your personality? Is that really what your job is asking of you or is that just how the way that you’re wired, your personality is causing you to be anxious about this? And I think that that perspective of kind of trying to do work on myself, I’m going back to the do more thing here. The temptation’s always there, right?

But it’s to pause and actually do less and have perspective. And Wendell Berry is one of my favorite writers. And if I leave in the thick of the night and I’m no longer working, I’ve gone to be a farmer somewhere with our friend Sam Peters. But his book, Jabber Crowe, has this quote, and it’s sitting right behind the screen. And I think this sums up the perspective that when I feel like I’m well,

I’m reminded of this and it kind of just like takes the air out of the balloon for me personally. And it says that, often I’ve not known where I was going until I was already there. I’ve had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. It’s certainly true for me.

Often I’ve received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. And yet for a long time looking back, I’ve been unable to shake off the feeling that I’ve been wed. Make of that what you will. And it’s that perspective of life is much bigger than me and the problems that I have and that there is a good creator who wants to be my friend that I need to be reminded of, that I’m loved not because of what I do or how good I am at it.

And that I think is what it means to be well to me right now. Even though I will fight the temptation probably today to do more stuff to feel better, right?

Joe (38:02)

I think we’re always going to be in that back and forth between those definitions. I think we’re always in a pendulum fight there on those kinds of things of trying to quantify and trying to live in a moment and ⁓ a feeling there on those things because you can’t get away from checking the pulse. You can’t get away from

from checking some quantifiables. But I think perspective gives us more of that realization that there’s only so much that data can provide. You see the guy who smoked cigarettes for 50 years and he’s, you know, 85 years old and it looks like he’s never gonna quit. And you say, you know what? Data and science can tell you a lot, but they don’t tell you everything. So, you know, living, fretting over the numbers maybe doesn’t.

tell us everything that the perspective on the whole person tells us as well.

Sumner (39:05)

Yeah. So that’ll wrap ⁓ episode 1.1 of season three. We’re excited for what’s to come this season and the stories that you’ll get to hear from people that we’re privileged to know or to work alongside. Joe, as always, this is fun. We’ll catch you next time. Absolutely.

Joe (39:26)

Thank you for joining us on Reliably Well, where we explore the intersection of healthcare and humanity. We hope these conversations inspire you to see the people behind the policies, the passion behind the practice, and the purpose that drives innovation in healthcare.

Sumner (39:42)

If you

enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, rate, and review our podcast. Your support helps us to continue sharing these important stories. For more insights and updates about what we’re up to at Relias, visit us at ReliasHealthcare.com and follow us on your favorite podcasting platform.

Joe (40:03)

If you have any stories that help to demonstrate the humanity in healthcare, please let us know at reliablywell at reliahshealthcare.com.

Sumner (40:14)

We look forward to hearing from you and telling your story. Until next time, stay well, stay inspired, and keep bringing humanity to healthcare.