EP235: The Right Providers Will Maximize Health Care Value. So Who Are the Right Providers? With Suzanne Clough, MD, CMO at ArmadaHealth

The Right Providers Maximize Health Care Value — So Who Are They? With Suzanne Clough, MD (EP235) Why Cutting the Bottom 10% of Practices Delivers Outsized Returns. Episode 235. Roughly 70% of back surgeries are unnecessary, and medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the US — which makes getting patients to the right doctor a matter of real consequence, not just convenience. In this episode, Stacey Richter talks with Suzanne Clough, MD, chief medical officer at ArmadaHealth and cofounder of Welldoc, about how to actually measure physician quality in a sea of dirty, non-interoperable data, and how ArmadaHealth aims to be a GPS getting patients to the right doctor faster. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ✅ Why simply cutting out the bottom-performing 10% of practices in a network can deliver outsized returns on both cost and quality ✅ Why measuring physician quality is so hard given dirty data, poor interoperability, and outcomes data that rarely captures what actually matters to patients ✅ How ArmadaHealth is trying to function as a GPS for health care, helping patients get to the right doctor more quickly ✅ Suzanne Clough's background cofounding Welldoc, the first FDA-approved digital health platform WHY THIS MATTERS Getting patients to the right doctor isn't just about convenience — with unnecessary back surgeries and medical errors at the rates they are, it's a matter of avoiding real harm. Suzanne Clough's work points to a practical lever payers already have: identifying and steering away from the lowest-performing slice of their network, even before solving the harder problem of comprehensive quality measurement. === LINKS === 🔗 Show Notes with all mentioned links: Episode Page ✉️ Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to the free weekly newsletter 🫙 Support the podcast with a small donation to the Tip Jar 🎤 Listen on Apple Podcasts 🎤 Listen on Spotify 📺 Subscribe to our YouTube channel === CONNECT WITH THE RHV TEAM === ✭ LinkedIn ✭ Threads ✭ Bluesky ✭ X