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In this episode, Dr. Stephen K. Klasko, former CEO of Jefferson Health, Executive in Residence at General Catalyst, Board Chair at DocGo, Teleflex, and one of healthcare's most provocative voices, challenges the industry to rethink its fundamental assumptions and move toward a more sustainable, patient-centered future. He argues that despite years of discussion around value-based care and digital transformation, true disruption has been limited because stakeholders remain unwilling to fundamentally change existing business models.

Dr. Klasko argues that the healthcare system is broken, fragmented, expensive, and inequitable and that true disruption, like what Uber did to taxis or Amazon to retail, will demand that some players fail. He makes the case that the annual physical visit is a farce, and that continuous health narratives powered by wearables and AI companions are the future of proactive, personalized care.

On the tech-provider collaboration front, Dr. Klasko identifies - founder ego, misaligned incentives, and EHR-era skepticism as the biggest barriers. He advocates for co-developing solutions, sharing equity, and building genuine partnerships. Dr. Klasko’s message to healthcare leaders is unambiguous: stop turning things around 360 degrees and start making real, uncomfortable changes. Take a listen.

This guest appearance was facilitated through conversations initiated at Health Tech Summit by Cornell Tech.  

Dr. Stephen K. Klasko's professional history has been about not just disrupting healthcare but demolishing its sacred cows and rebuilding from scratch. As president and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health, he orchestrated a 567% revenue growth from $1.5 billion to $10 billion in nine years, while pulling off a merger of a 200-year-old health science university with a design school to reimagine "the human design experience in healthcare" starting at home. In a single year, he was named the #2 most influential person in healthcare and Fast Company's "Top 25 most creative people in business." He co-authored "Unhealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance" with Hemant Taneja of General Catalyst—a battle cry against an industry he believes is fundamentally broken.

Now leading that change through his work at General Catalyst and DocGo, Klasko has spent his career proving that the biggest threat to healthcare innovation isn't technology, it's the traditionalists defending a dying system. Where others see academic medicine and Silicon Valley as opposing forces, he has built his legacy proving that they're the only combination powerful enough to save healthcare from itself.

As a DJ and doctor, he looks forward to 2026, when we, as the dreamers and designers of healthcare, can do an "ERAS tour"—Empathy, Radical collaboration, Access, and Swift care—and, as Sia sang, find the "courage to change."