Tracy Byers: Focus on a problem you want to try to solve, be passionate about that problem and then put your whole heart into it. And if you can make progress on that one narrow way of improving patient care, helping people get better, faster — then that'll be a win and we'll, we'll get there in small bites.
John Parsons (ANNCR): You're listening to The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare, a podcast celebrating courage, perseverance, creativity, and vision in the pursuit of healthcare innovation. Join host Meg in conversation with some of the most inspiring and forward-thinking women working in healthcare today. Meg goes behind the scenes to uncover previously untold stories of struggle and success in a notoriously complex and highly regulated.
As the worlds of healthcare and technology continue to converge. And as women take on increasingly more important roles in both, these are timely tales that deserve to be told. And now here's your host, Meg Escobosa.
Meg Escobosa: Hello, everyone. And welcome to The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare. I'm your host, Meg Escobosa. We're joined today by Tracy Byers, who's the senior vice president and general manager of Enterprise Imaging at Change Healthcare, a fourteen-year-old healthcare technology company, focused on accelerating the transformation of the healthcare system through their healthcare platform, providing data and analytics driven solutions to improve clinical, financial administrative and patient engagement outcomes in the U S healthcare.
In January United Health Group’s, Optum Insight Unit agreed to acquire change in a deal valued at $13 billion since beginning her tenure. A change back in 2019, Tracy has been responsible for driving growth, expanding market share and advancing the company's position as a transformational leader in the imaging.
Tracy has over 25 years of experience in the healthcare technology industry, including executive leadership roles at IBM Watson health, Phillips healthcare, Agilent technologies, Hewlett Packard, and GE. She holds a bachelor of science degree in finance from Lehigh university and an MBA from Northeastern.
Welcome Tracy. We're so delighted to have you.
Tracy Byers: Thank you, Meg. I'm not sure I deserve all those accolades, but, uh, I'm really excited to be here and, and talk a little bit about, uh, about women in health care.
Meg Escobosa: That's awesome. Well, you, we are just so fortunate to have this opportunity to talk with you. You have worked for some of the best healthcare technology brands in the world and have driven growth in highly competitive markets.
You have a unique vantage point to share what it really takes to change the game in this industry. So we are really. I would love to hear, uh, what got you interested to work in healthcare to begin with? What were you hoping to accomplish?
Tracy Byers: I think it was a combination of influence from my parents.
Probably a pretty common thing to say, but my mom was a teacher. And one of the nicest people I know, and I think really taught me about caring about other people. And my dad, uh, had a metal machine shop as a hobby in our basement that probably would rival most. Professional machinists, metal machinists.
And that gave me a real appetite for how things work and combined with my mom's maybe more nurturing style. I think healthcare was sort of an interesting intersection of that. And when I started my career in health care at Hewlett Packard's medical products group, which was—it feels like a long time ago.
I was so excited to be in a business that was developing and delivering products that actually changed patients in people's lives. And so that's, I think, how I landed there.
Meg Escobosa: I so appreciate that. I love the idea that you had the access to the cool maker's studio, you know, kind of the original, the OG maker studio at home. That's very cool.
What innovation or accomplishment or impact in healthcare are you most proud?
Tracy Byers: Gosh, I have moments of pride that come from so many different teams that I worked on, but I think the thing that probably had the most impact was probably about mid career at Hewlett Packard, we designed and delivered the first home defibrillator
.
And this was a piece of equipment that the FDA regulates as a sophisticated piece of equipment that only medical professionals use to shock someone out of cardiac arrhythmia or distress, and to be able to create a product with a user interface that was easy enough for someone completely untrained. To successfully save a life was just incredible from a professional vantage point.
It required not just launching a product that had the best features or most competitive features, but it also was a challenge of category creation. There were no home defibrillators. There had never been an over the counter approval for a piece of medical equipment that sophisticated. And it was—it was just an amazing part of my journey to be with some incredibly passionate people that had started a small company in Seattle called Heartstream that Hewlett Packard ended up acquiring and just becoming incredibly passionate about.
Empowering people to save lives in everyday life. And today you see them on every airplane in every school. And so it's a great reminder, probably 20 or 25 years later in my career when I walk through a school and I see that Phillips HeartStart defibrillator, and it's really just an incredible thing.
Meg Escobosa: I remember that time.
I remember learning all about it and I was very fortunate to have some visibility into this project at the time. I'm just so curious. What was it like to create a category? I mean, that I know has many hurdles you're, you know, making the case for the need. Really.
Can you describe a little bit more about that or any barriers that you might have faced or what you had to overcome to make it.
Tracy Byers: You know, it was one of those times…and one of the early times in my career where you have this kind of a secret crisis of confidence: I was part of the marketing team when this happened, but what happens - I think a lot and maybe more for women than other people - where you think, oh my gosh, you know, uh, I'm having a little bit of imposter syndrome and thinking maybe they're going to figure out I don't really know what I'm doing.
And it was a great experience for me to realize: it hadn't ever been done by anyone. And so it caused the whole team to kind of step back and say, okay, we're all pretty smart. And we really understand the defibrillator part of the market. And so we went to the American red cross and we went to the American Heart Association who really are experts in creating awareness around some of these health crisis.
And also talking to PR and marketing experts who may have created a category in some other market. And I think it was getting comfortable with being uncomfortable that you were kind of paving the way. And I think it had a big impact on us as a team. And it also had an impact on me personally, which is sometimes: you don't have the answers, but if you have an idea about how you're going to go find out the answers, you'll end up getting there.
Meg Escobosa: I love that. And I love just facing the imposter syndrome. I feel like that many of us deal with that. And hopefully those of us listening will appreciate that everyone kind of feels that way at some point in their career and just to move past it, do the best you can. So it sounds like you had a really phenomenal team.
And were there other elements that might have also contributed to the success? Do you think there was something just about the timing or the, any other elements that might've kind of contributed to the outcome?
Tracy Byers: I think there was a little bit of right timing in that people in general are becoming more and more empowered with their healthcare and the healthcare decisions.
And I think about so many—even drugs that have moved over the counter, sort of that underlying premise that you know your body best and that with a certain amount of education, you can make some good decisions about how to take care of your health. And I think also just the advancement of technology was, you know, probably around the time that, you know, iPhones were really becoming enormously successful. And the realization, you know, that you didn't need a one-hour video to train you how to use your iPhone. But the intent was to be able to be able to turn it on and make a phone call, no matter whether you were 10 or 70. And I think, you know, it was the combination of empowering people to, to execute, or I guess, to, you know, be able to provide health care to each other and the advancement of technology.
That was sort of an interesting collision at the time.
Meg Escobosa: Wow.
What would you say you have learned along the way about moving an organization to new ground or creating a new category from that experience or other experiences?
Tracy Byers: I think about some of the projects or initiatives that maybe haven't gone so well.
Because I think those are the places where there may be the most painful, but they're also the biggest learning opportunities. I had an opportunity to work with McKinsey Consulting [McKinsey & Company] on our really large transformation project at Phillips. And it was really focused on transforming both the marketing organization, but also the whole “go to market” organization in terms of sales.
How we positioned the board portfolio of Phillips healthcare. And, and I think that while I really love organizational design as an element of transformation, I think really listening to the people closest to the customer, um, and the parts of the organization that have the best perspective on reality…is maybe a learning I had and something that I've taken forward in any other transformation work—which sort of seems to be the buzzword in the last, you know, five or 10 years; everybody’s looking for transformational leaders.
But I'm not sure it's really a new, new idea. I think businesses always have to transform to stay successful, but, but I do think that transforming in and of itself is really hard and that at its core, it's around change management.
And I think too often you can design “perfect”, but you really need to engage with every level of the organization and make sure that you're listening along the way, because you have to assume that you don't get the design perfect at the beginning, and that you have to make course corrections in order for it to be successful.
And I think, you know, particularly with that big transformation project at Phillips, I think. If I had to go back, I would think about, you know, how to incorporate feedback and course correction in those projects throughout the entire implementation.
Meg Escobosa: Yeah, it's always fun to look back and think how you might do it differently.
Can you share any stories about where you have taken a risk that may have ultimately fallen flat that didn't work out and what you might have learned? I know you just described something. Is there anything else that you kind of experienced in a leadership role?
Tracy Byers: Gosh, that's such a great question. Okay.
So I spent a huge number of years of my career, I think 20 plus at Phillips, which was, you know, part—Agilent was acquired and ultimately Hewlett Packard—so really with the same group of people and the risk I took was leaving after so many years where I had established my credibility and my network. And I was really scared.
I was really scared, sort of, could I do this again? Could I join another really large company like IBM Watson Health. It was a really exciting endeavor that they were tackling, which was to apply artificial intelligence to the problem of all of the disparate healthcare data in the world and drive insights that could bring meaningful change to healthcare.
And it was an incredibly lofty goal and I chose to take the leap and it was a huge leap of faith after so many years at Phillips. I now—sort of looking back—while that experience was really difficult and ultimately Watson health endeavor in health care, didn't turn out to be successful, my reflection is I learned more in those three years than I probably would have ever learned in that same three-year period had I stayed.
And so for me, it was a real affirmation. Number one, that my experience, my industry experience, I could pick up and take and apply to new problems, different problems. And be successful. And it also reminded me which Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM often said, “if you're not a little bit uncomfortable, then you're not learning.”
And I think that time at IBM was incredibly uncomfortable, but probably the greatest learning. And it ultimately led me to the path of change healthcare, which I've been just incredibly excited about having a company solely focused on healthcare IT; incredibly empowered by the leadership and the culture of the company and ultimately using what I learned, uh, at IBM as it relates to artificial intelligence and cloud computing and bringing that to Change and tackling a really great problem, which for us as in Imaging IT, and so.
I think for me, it is not being afraid of taking risks and getting uncomfortable in your career.
You know, and there are pioneers in healthcare data, like Judy Faulkner, who runs epic and Cerner and so many other companies, small and large. And when you think across that landscape, these are really difficult problems to solve.
You know, my takeaway is: Focus on a problem you want to try to solve, be passionate about that problem and then put your whole heart into it. And if you can make progress on that one narrow way of improving patient care, helping people get better, faster that that'll be a win and we'll we'll get there in small bites.
Meg Escobosa: Awesome. You brought up Judy Faulkner; I’m curious, who might some of your biggest influencers be or any mentors from your career that inspired you?
Tracy Byers: Gosh. Yeah. There's been so many people who have impacted me. I have to say I'm a, I'm a huge believer in the power of role modeling. I think it's sort of a core tenet of my leadership style.
I try to be as authentic as I can, because I think that when you really show. You know, the challenges of leadership, um, you're teaching everyone around you about the realities of, of facing that. I think early on, I had the opportunity to work in a small healthcare it business that was led by Steve Rusckowski, who now is the CEO of Quest Diagnostics.
And he's a super analytical guy, really smart. And he really taught me the power, the power of being a very calm leader. Particularly in the face of chaos. And when people are either really excited or really stressed and, you know, I've often been told that I appear far calmer than - I can assure you - I feel inside—sort of like a duck paddling underneath the water.
But I'd like to say, I learned a little bit of, uh, of that from Steve. I also had a number of roles, both at Hewlett Packard, Phillips, and IBM, where I worked closely with Debra Disanzo, who now is the head of Personal Health for Best Buy. And so I really, I had an opportunity to really work either for her closely with her through a major portion of her career growth and how she handled different situations. She was part of that home AED. She really led that acquisition for Hewlett Packard and ultimately that business. And that was exciting to be a part of. And even like I said, the incredibly daunting task at IBM with Watson Health.
So she's really taught me an awful lot about being a strong woman leader in, you know, really challenging tasks. And I think, you know, honestly, my current boss, at change healthcare is a guy by the name of Rod O’Riley. And rod is just a really well-respected in the industry, particularly in imaging informatics.
He was the head of strategy for McKesson before the role at Change. And I have to say he's probably 180 degrees different from me in terms of style and maybe even strengths. And he's a brilliant guy. Um, he's a Canadian, so that makes him super nice by reputation and reality, but he's one of the best coaches I've ever had.
And I've really come at this point in my career. You know, I ha I have enough experience that, you know, nine times out of 10, I can trust my gut in the decisions I'm making, because I've either experienced the same thing before or I have enough indicators. But I find that to have a person who you can really trust and be vulnerable with when you're questioning yourself, he's really been that. And he's really given me some really amazing advice.
And I feel really lucky that from the very beginning with Steve all the way to today, I continue to just have the chance to work for really some, some incredibly inspirational people.
Meg Escobosa: I love that. I'm so happy to hear that one thing that you brought up was just, you know, as a woman leader, I'm curious, do you feel like there are some distinct elements of being a woman or this is just, you know: As a podcast focused on women in healthcare, we obviously want to celebrate great women, but I, and I asked myself the question, how important is it that we are women versus, you know, how important is gender in this whole, uh, game called life?
No, uh, just in this, in the world of healthcare. It's an interesting question. I wonder if it's come up for you, obviously the era in which you have grown in your own work, women have gotten much more active. And I'm just curious if you have any thoughts about that. Um, is there something distinct about being a woman leader?
Tracy Byers: It's a great question. And of course I've been asked the question so many times throughout my career and I maybe don't have necessarily the most traditional answer. I guess what I would say is, um, I feel like particularly being in healthcare and I, you know, I know this, um, it could, could be, could be controversial, but, uh, but I'll say it, and I think women oftentimes tend to be nurturing.
And I think when you think about healthcare, the most successful people, men and women that I've worked with in the healthcare industry have this really interesting passion for helping people. So it's not unique to women. But I, I do think that having this real deep passion for helping people combined with being part of innovation and being part of just the technology that's required in order to really help, uh, advance healthcare probably needs a little bit of a combination.
So I guess many women, I think have I have seen that in, in the healthcare industry and space. And I think that that passion is what really drives them. I will say, I feel like I've been really lucky in my career where I haven't really, I haven't felt like my gender has been a barrier. You know, it's been sort of a non-issue.
You know, I'll never forget. One of the conversations my mom having not been in the corporate world often said, well, but don't you think women are smarter than men? And I said, mom, if I actually thought that I wouldn't be successful, because for me, I'm just a big believer in the power of collaboration.
And, and I just think every person —you know, gender, religion, culture, everything—just brings a different perspective. And when you can create a team that has deep trust and respect, then you can really harness the power of those diverse perspectives. Some of the most successful teams I've been a part of are a mixture of talents and genders and everything.
And so I really, I seek that in yhe teams I build and the teams I'm part of. And I, I do spend quite a bit of my time really trying to nurture and mentor and support up-and-coming women in, in the company and even in the industry, sort of outside of the company, because I do think there just continues to be a disparity in pay and the number of women that sit on healthcare, public boards, and so I do think that we have more progress to go evidently and I'm sort of fearless and passionate about continuing to drive that for myself and for all of the women that I work with because I do, I do think there's no real good explanation as to why that gap exists. So, so let's, let's fix it.
Meg Escobosa: Yeah. I so love that.
I was thinking about, you know, what might you say to the next generation? What advice do you have for people who may be having imposter syndrome anxious about taking on that next leadership role or going for it? Um, do you have any advice that you want.
Tracy Byers: Yeah, it's probably, it manifests itself probably best with my 28 year old daughter.
And she is in sales for a small software SAAS company. And she's incredibly driven. And we talk about imposter syndrome a lot because, you know, she wanted to move from a sales development rep to being a sales person and said, “oh my gosh, I have no idea how to do sales and I, they wouldn't possibly give me the chance.”
And I just keep reminding her of all the times that I was in a situation where I didn't really know how to do it. And more often than not people just want someone who's passionate and going to really work hard and learn. And that's like 80% of it. So I've really encouraged her to take those risks. And I always sort of reminder what's the worst thing that can happen.
Right. All right. So maybe, maybe you find out that it's not everything you thought it was going to be, or that you didn't exactly have the skills that would take. But she's been super successful. So sometimes I think, okay, you can beat, you know, I, I keep wanting her to be the next CEO of some big company and, uh, and I'll just keep cheering her on.
But, uh, I just, that's why I think it's super important to be authentic as a leader because, you know, I try to share with my team, [when] I’m not sure what the right decision is and define that balance of being confident and leading the team and yet also being transparent about the things that are challenging along the way.
So…
Meg Escobosa: Yeah, I, well, I was just thinking about the innovation. I mean, you described, um, even with the case of building the market or creating the market for the AED, there's a lot we don't know—you’re creating something. Nobody. The insight or knowledge about how things are going to what you should do.
So that is sort of a theme actually in innovation, you have to figure out how to figure it out, learn, figure out what you don't know, figure out what you need to know. So I actually think that's kind of a, um, almost like, uh, words to live by for an innovative leader.
Anyone who wants to work in innovation has to be comfortable with that on some level.
Tracy Byers: Yeah. You've really, you have to, you, you really have to get comfortable with taking risks. Our CEO, Neil de Crescenzo of Change Health. It was really great about just championing the mindset of innovation and taking risks and really fostering a culture that says, yes, I want you to take risks and yes, some of them may not work out.
You have to be thoughtful, make sure you've done a well thought out, you know, sort of business case, but I've been incredibly inspired and excited of the work we're doing at Change because we're taking, uh, an, a piece of software that essentially is, you know, between 10 and 20 years old and rewriting the solution to be cloud-native in a public cloud setting like Netflix and sort of unprecedented.
And I certainly would not have represented myself as any kind of Cloud SAAS expert. So another great example of, okay, so I don't exactly know how to do this, but I'm going to surround myself with people who know more about it than I do. And together we'll figure this out. And that I think has led to a belief that we see in the market, which is another point of major innovation, which just means growth and significant change.
And it's really exciting. People who have been in the imaging part of the business…or in imaging part of, uh, the market, you know, have experienced sort of single digit growth over the last 10 years. And sometimes that can feed into complacency and kind of a slower response mindset. And you think back to when radiologists went from film, where they were taking that x-ray and putting it up on a light box and looking at, uh, your broken bones to now being able to look at a computer screen.
That was, that was a huge innovation 20 years ago. And now we think that that same level of innovation is going to happen when we take these solutions to the cloud. Amazing. It's just super exciting. And, and, uh, it gets me up every morning and I learned more about scalability and performance of the cloud than I ever thought.
I'd never know. And I can, I can school my children on not on latency of a Uh, video download now. So it's been, been a great, great journey though.
Meg Escobosa: So could you talk a little bit more about what is the next big thing next big problem you're trying to tackle?
Tracy Byers: That is really the big one we're tackling right now.
So we, we think this is a three to five-year journey for our customers, you know, in the midst of COVID, it's been really amazing to pivot to helping our hospital customers, because our primary customers are radiology practices and hospital systems that need these systems. But trying to talk to them about new innovation when their ICU's are overwhelmed with COVID over the past year and a half really caused us to change our whole mindset and think, okay, what do they need in order to do their jobs better?
And so in our business that was about helping them read remotely and could radiologists not go to the hospital and not get themselves exposed to COVID and be able to do their jobs remotely. And so it's, it's been, I think, good for us to be able to take sort of the innovations that we're working on and kind of quickly pivot and redirect them to help, uh, our customers.
But I think the bigger goal is still there, which is to move all of these solutions to the cloud. Take advantage of all of the advancements. I think it's just, you know, one of the big challenges that, uh, so many industries face, but particularly healthcare is the infrastructure so old that they're exposed to a number of info-sec or, you know, malware attacks and—where hospitals are literally shut down because—not, not even able to take new patients because they've been hacked by some sort of malware.
I think so many hospitals are strapped for cash and working to try to drive productivity and efficiency. It's great to be able to take innovation and technology and try to help them solve those problems and get themselves better protected and get patients' information better protected.
So there's a lot to do in this space. I can probably, I could bore you for hours, but there's a lot to do. And it certainly, uh, it's certainly exciting to be, to be working on innovation, innovative solutions.
Meg Escobosa: So well, you know, I wonder about the barriers that you're facing. And it sounds like you were able to very quickly adapt in this past year to address customers' needs to enable them to gain access to your technology.
I'm just curious, what do you envision are some of the bigger challenges that you face in achieving that goal?
Tracy Byers: I think the, the biggest challenges, our ability for our health systems to invest in new technology right now, it feels like there are parts of the healthcare industry like pharma and the payer side of the market that are quite profitable.
If you look at some of the largest payers, you see reported earnings, continuing to be incredibly profitable. The same thing with the big pharma, um, companies. And then you see other parts of the industry, like health systems, particularly in the United States. And it's certainly different outside of the US with so many socialized medicine structures.
And you're seeing hospitals really being pushed, some going out of business and really finding it challenging to continue to invest in advanced technology that will help them drive. Improved productivity and efficiency and all of the things they need. So I do think that there's an opportunity to look at: How do you take the insights from payers and the profitability that's sitting in that part of the market and balance that with the providers?
I guess the exciting thing is I think there's lots of room for continued improvement with payers and providers working together.
Meg Escobosa: Wow. Thank you Tracy. Before we let you go, uh, I'd love to ask you to finish three statements. Here's the first: Innovation means…
Tracy Byers: applying new ideas to old problems.
Meg Escobosa: The most exciting innovations in the healthcare industry are…
Tracy Byers: the simple ones.
Meg Escobosa: The most essential ingredients to healthcare innovation are…
Tracy Byers: having clear focus on patients and people and a passion for changing people's lives.
Meg Escobosa: Awesome. It has been a real pleasure to hear your experience and learn from you today, Tracy. Thank you for being on our show. And to our audience: Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time with another installment of The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare.
John Parsons (ANNCR): Thank you for listening to The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare. This podcast was produced, engineered, edited, and scored by Calvin Marty. Please take a moment to subscribe via your favorite streaming service. The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare is a production of the Krinsky Company, a growth strategy and healthcare innovation consultancy.
Visit us on the web at https://thekrinskyco.com.
