Latest / The Mental Health Evolution / Ep 52: Follow the Money, Follow the Power with Joanne Frederick

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Ep 52: Follow the Money, Follow the Power with Joanne Frederick · The Mental Health Evolution

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) This podcast is part of the Frederick Podcast
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Network.
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Learn more at listenfrederick.com.
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Welcome to Mental Health Evolution, a podcast about
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what's changing in mental health and why it
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matters.
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I'm your host, Rachel Harrison, inviting you into
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honest conversations with people from all perspectives in
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the field, clinicians, tech founders, investors, insurance companies,
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and all the folks in between.
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Let's explore what's working, what's not, and what's
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next.
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Hey everyone, thank you for joining us today.
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My guest today, Joanne Frederick of Government Marketing
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Strategies is a wealth of information.
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In fact, I think we're going to need
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to have her back to talk about more,
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but Joanne really digs into some of what
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she sees in the themes in so many
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structures of government and insurance.
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We talk about CAQH and the DataSpring rebrand.
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We talk about a unified CMS credentialing system.
1:05
We talk about some changes happening with the
1:07
military and TRICARE opportunities and some of her
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ideas for what would cut costs and make
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everything a little easier for everyone in the
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system.
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So, I hope you get some creative ideas
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for this.
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I hope you get some learning and understanding.
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I certainly did.
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She talks in a way that is super
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easy to understand and get a sense of
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where she sees a lot of patterns in
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our industry.
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So take a listen.
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I know you'll enjoy it.
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All right.
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Welcome back to the Mental Health Evolution podcast.
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I'm Rachel Harrison, and today I am speaking
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with Joanne Frederick, founder and CEO of Government
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Market Strategies, known as GMS. Joanne has spent
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more than 30 years building and modernizing some
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of the largest government health care programs in
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the country, Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, and Veterans Health.
2:04
And she has helped her clients win contracts
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in excess of $25 billion in that time.
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What makes Joanne's perspective particularly valuable for our
2:14
audience is the lens that she brings.
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She has spent her career on the inside
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of systems that determine what actually reaches patients,
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the procurement decisions, the partnership structures, the operational
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design choices that most clinicians never see but
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feel every single day.
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She is a woman-owned small business founder,
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a Harvard Business School fellow, and someone who
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has been integral to nearly every major TRICARE
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procurement since 1992.
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We are going to talk today about something
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on a lot of our listeners' minds, what
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happens when the infrastructure of health care, the
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credentialing systems, the data platforms, the administrative backbone
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starts to be owned and operated by the
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very payers that clinicians depend on for reimbursement.
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We are going to hear from someone who
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has watched these structural decisions play out across
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decades of government contracting and has very clear
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ideas about what good oversight looks like and
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what it does not.
3:13
So we like to base, you know, a
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lot of our conversation on this podcast around
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articles.
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The first one here is Acuity News, and
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it's titled CAQH Rebrands as Data Spring Under
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Payer Ownership.
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Many of our listeners will remember that a
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few weeks ago, I did a solo episode
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about the CAQH rebrand to Data Spring.
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For those who missed it, here's the quick
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version.
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CAQH, the credentialing platform that nearly every insurance
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billing clinician uses to manage their provider information,
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converted from a non-profit in January 2026
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and became owned by a consortium of 12
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of the nation's largest plans.
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A UnitedHealth Group executive now chairs the board.
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The platform decides whether a clinician is enrolled,
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listed in insurance directories, and paid.
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This piece from Acuity News is the most
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thorough and independent analysis of that ownership shift
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and what it means structurally for providers.
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So now I want to bring in our
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guest.
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Joanna, thank you so much for being here.
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Thank you so much, Rachel, for having me.
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It's a pleasure.
4:23
So I am really curious to hear your
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perspective on this.
4:26
You have spent decades working inside government health
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care procurement.
4:30
You understand better than probably most anyone how
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the structure of ownership shapes the behavior of
4:37
a system.
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And when you look at what has happened
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with CAQH becoming Data Spring and becoming owned
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by the major payers, what do you see
4:45
that most clinicians might be missing?
4:48
Well, I think any kind of decision or
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action like this is not for nothing, right?
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There's a strategy and a meaning behind it.
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If we believe the better angels of our
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nature, that would be for the greater good
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to kind of streamline the process and make
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sure that folks can get through these kinds
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of systems more quickly and more efficiently.
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I don't think our past experience has necessarily
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proven that out as something we can rely
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on, those better angels of our nature.
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You know, a non-profit to for-profit
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conversion means that somebody sees there's money to
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be made out of this and there's margin
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opportunity.
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You know, entities, publicly traded entities don't do
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non-profit conversions for nothing.
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And there is a larger strategy behind this.
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I'm sure that's not entirely public and we
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don't know that, but rest assured that one
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can assume because of the nature of, you
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know, a for-profit enterprise and particularly one
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that's publicly traded, their mission is to return
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value to shareholders, period.
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That's what the street calls for.
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So anytime you see something like this, which
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in theory, you know, really one could say
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we should be a governmental function, right?
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All providers should go through a similar process.
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You know, there's upside and downside to that.
6:09
But the fact that now, you know, there's
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profit and margin to be made off of
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these transactions with which all providers rely on
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says to me that the cost is probably
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going to go up from a provider perspective.
6:21
And maybe with some efficiencies from a timeline
6:25
perspective, I would look for those.
6:28
But I think it's a slightly disturbing development.
6:33
Yeah, I think so, too, in the sense
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that really CAQH is a data clearinghouse, right?
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That's what it's always been.
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So that insurance providers can see quickly and
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assess whether providers should be able to be
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on a panel or stay on a panel,
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all of those details, where they're located, changes
6:53
in location, all those things.
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It makes sense that that was created for
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ease.
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So to me, it's also what is the
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maybe what is the potential risk for that
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being owned by insurance companies?
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Are there are there going to be more
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advantages toward, say, MSOs that are also owned
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by those insurance companies to credential people faster?
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Are there going to be rules and restrictions
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as far as who you have to be
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or should be or can't be credentialed with?
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There are just so many questions in my
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mind.
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I think those are all really valid questions,
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Rachel, and something that I would encourage the
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kind of community of physicians, et cetera, that
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are subject to this to pay attention to.
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There are sort of one of our challenges
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in health care in this country is that
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there are all these little pockets and all
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the pockets do something.
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Rarely are they coordinated.
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And layered on top of that is the
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challenge that we create policy on an incremental
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basis in this country.
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And you can see why that happened, right?
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We established Medicare and then we decided to
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tweak it and add policy on top.
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But over time, what's happened is all these
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incremental changes have gotten layered on top of
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one another.
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And no one, I would contend, really understands
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what some of these programs were meant to
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be or the underlying mechanism were meant to
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be, because it's too complex.
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You read legislation and policy and there are
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thousands of pages.
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And, you know, it's like, how do you
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dig through all of that?
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AI helps a lot.
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There's great ways to do that now.
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So I think more insight is coming for
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good or bad, depending on your perspective.
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But this change, you know, providers need to
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be credentialed in order to deliver service.
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Full stop, right?
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And that's an important part of how we
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deliver care.
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We want to make sure as consumers that
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when you see someone, they're qualified and they
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haven't been sanctioned and they've gotten all their
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licensure and all those kinds of things.
9:03
That's a super important part.
9:05
Of the way the health care system operates
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in the country and to have that under
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the control of one or a small number
9:13
of entities who have their own goals and
9:17
objectives is disturbing, frankly.
9:20
Yeah, it does seem like a conflict of
9:22
interest potentially.
9:24
Yeah, I think so.
9:25
I will have to keep an eye on
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it.
9:27
I think, you know, the best tool that
9:30
any of us have is shining a light,
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right?
9:32
And not letting things happen in the dark
9:35
or behind a curtain.
9:36
And I would encourage all the, you know,
9:38
providers in that community and your listeners to
9:41
start paying attention, you know, make sure they
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keep copies of their files, make sure they
9:45
keep track of the timeline when they go
9:48
for these these sort of credentialing actions, et
9:51
cetera, and pay attention and look for trends
9:54
and look for, you know, anomalies between one
9:57
payer or another.
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And are things happening differently?
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And I think it's the power of the
10:02
people and the power of the folks that
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are subject to these systems that can really
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begin to make a difference.
10:08
Yeah.
10:09
Yeah, that's an interesting thought.
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Let me go to our next article here.
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So this article is from Medallion and it's
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called Five Trends Shaping Payer Enrollment Medical Credentialing
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in 2026.
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This state of payer enrollment and medical credentialing
10:26
survey puts out real numbers on something our
10:29
listeners feel but can rarely quantify.
10:32
One in five hospitals report losing more than
10:35
one million dollars annually due to delayed provider
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activation.
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So credentialing.
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Credentialing delays are not just an administrative inconvenience.
10:44
They are a revenue problem, a capacity problem
10:47
and ultimately a patient access problem.
10:51
So based on this creating potential revenue loss,
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when you look at where these delays are
10:57
coming from structurally, what do you think is
11:00
actually driving this?
11:01
Is it a technology problem, a process problem,
11:04
or is this something deeper?
11:07
There's no excuse for it be if it
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is a technology problem, which I don't think
11:10
is the fundamental core.
11:11
But if it is, there's no excuse.
11:12
We can certainly build better technology today.
11:15
When you think about the way all the
11:17
different systems work, and as you said, you
11:18
know, I've worked across Medicare and Medicaid and
11:20
military health, TRICARE, Veterans Health, etc.
11:25
Each of those systems, plus commercial, credential independent
11:30
of one another.
11:32
So it puts such a burden on the
11:34
provider community because you essentially have to go
11:36
through this entire same exercise over.
11:38
I've never done a poll.
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I'd be fascinated to to hear, like, how
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many times in a year does a provider
11:44
or provider practice?
11:45
Do they have some kind of credentialing or
11:47
re-credentialing thing going on?
11:49
I bet it's a lot just because of
11:50
the nature of the different timings of all
11:52
the programs, etc.
11:53
That's silly.
11:54
I mean, to put it bluntly, we should
11:56
only have to do it once, right?
11:58
You're either credentialed or approved or you're not.
12:02
And if you are, that should apply to
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any payer in any program across the nation.
12:07
Oh, I love your thought.
12:09
This could make my life so much easier.
12:12
Well, as we talked about, you know, I'll
12:14
talk about the military health system and the
12:17
VA health care system right now.
12:19
So those have undergone typically their five to
12:22
seven year contracts and the federal government will
12:24
go out and buy services from a third
12:26
party administrator or a payer to help administer
12:29
those programs.
12:30
Essentially, when the beneficiary population, either TRICARE beneficiaries,
12:35
so active duty service members, family members or
12:37
veterans, which, again, are two completely separate systems,
12:41
when those folks can't get the care they
12:43
need in the bricks and mortar facilities that
12:46
either belong to the military health system or
12:48
the veteran system, they get referred out into
12:50
the community to see the providers that we
12:52
see.
12:53
Both of those systems have undergone kind of
12:56
a contract renewal recently or there's the VA
12:58
systems underway right now, actually, in a contract
13:01
renewal.
13:02
And the requirement of the contract from the
13:05
federal government is that when you turn over
13:08
those contracts, you have to recredential all the
13:11
providers in the contracts.
13:12
And these are hundreds of thousands of providers.
13:14
These are large, kind of large regional or
13:16
national contracts.
13:17
Why?
13:18
Why do we have to do that?
13:20
Now, one could argue that the VA or
13:23
the military health system wants to make sure
13:25
that the providers in the network are credentialed,
13:27
but they're already credentialed and they're delivering that
13:31
service today.
13:32
But that authorization isn't, it doesn't carry over
13:36
to the new contract.
13:38
So we add all this administrative cost and
13:41
burden, which we taxpayers pay, by the way,
13:43
on these federal contracts.
13:45
It puts a huge burden on the provider
13:48
community.
13:48
It puts a huge burden on the work
13:50
that has to get done to sort of
13:52
stand up and get these new contracts ready.
13:55
And again, it's incredibly expensive.
13:57
It's incredibly expensive for a payer to create
14:00
a provider network of, you know, a couple
14:03
hundred thousand providers.
14:05
By incredibly expensive, I mean sometimes north of
14:07
a hundred million dollars to go out and
14:10
recontract and recredential all of these providers.
14:13
There's no need.
14:14
It's absurd, frankly.
14:16
So one of the concepts that we're working
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on is GMS for specifically the military health
14:21
system.
14:22
But it can be, you know, shared across
14:25
the federal payers, et cetera, or even broader
14:28
is a concept we call FedMed, which is
14:30
one national federal provider network.
14:35
That's administered by, pick CMS, pick the military
14:37
health, it doesn't really matter.
14:38
So they're evergreen contracts.
14:41
You apply to the network.
14:43
If you're in that network, you're eligible to
14:45
see TRICARE patients, veterans or Medicare if we
14:48
want to extend it, et cetera.
14:50
And you credential once, you recredential on whatever
14:53
the regular interval is, which is a fair
14:55
thing to happen.
14:57
And we're done.
14:58
We're not paying hundreds of millions of dollars
15:00
every time as a taxpayer.
15:02
Again, you and I pay that.
15:04
To do essentially what's a paperwork exercise that
15:07
doesn't really add any value.
15:08
So it's that kind of thing back to
15:12
policy and incremental change and that nobody's gone,
15:15
OK, wait a minute.
15:16
Why are we really doing this?
15:18
What's the benefit?
15:19
And do we have to?
15:21
And too often, you know, in conversation with
15:24
government agencies, which I find myself infrequently, they
15:27
say, well, it's in the requirement.
15:29
We have to do it that way.
15:30
But no one has the courage to say
15:32
why.
15:33
And can we do it differently?
15:35
You know, where's the law?
15:37
Yeah, there's statute that says you have to
15:40
do this.
15:40
Yeah.
15:41
And oftentimes when you go looking for that
15:42
law, it doesn't exist.
15:44
And if it does exist, let's change it.
15:46
We can make new law here.
15:47
That's the ability to do that.
15:49
So that's what I see on the ground.
15:51
And we all pay that price.
15:53
It's frustrating.
15:54
Well, and I think when we are looking
15:55
as a nation at things like Medicaid cuts
15:59
and things like this, this idea is like
16:01
yours here, it can be a cost savings
16:04
and also an ease of labor, if you
16:07
will.
16:08
Savings for everybody involved is it's like a
16:12
win, win, win, right?
16:13
All across the board.
16:14
It really it is.
16:16
And recently, within the last maybe two weeks,
16:19
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS,
16:22
released a part of an initiative, so procurement
16:25
to buy services to reform the way provider
16:30
directories are done across the nation.
16:32
And this has been bubbling up for a
16:33
couple of years.
16:34
There's been some articles or some postings in
16:36
the Federal Register.
16:37
So provider directories are sort of another sort
16:42
of symptom of this same problem, right?
16:45
So providers, too, much like credentialing, have to
16:49
provide their information to all the different payers
16:51
that they participate with.
16:53
And those payers then surface those directories to
16:56
their customers, et cetera.
16:58
Well, provider data is notoriously bad.
17:00
Not for anyone's fault, but that we're maintaining
17:05
multiple sets of the same information.
17:08
And frankly, if any of us had to
17:10
remember to update our address across 50 different
17:14
systems every time something changed, we would forget
17:17
one or two.
17:19
And then that data that goes into those
17:21
systems are sometimes shared more broadly and there's
17:23
no traceability to get back to the ground
17:26
truth.
17:26
So in some cases, like in the military
17:29
health system or the veteran health system, the
17:31
government comes down, big long arm of the
17:33
government and says, you contractor must ensure your
17:37
provider data is accurate at 90 percent.
17:42
Nobody, no one gets 90 percent accuracy across
17:45
their data right now, and if they do,
17:47
they're probably not telling you the truth.
17:49
So we sort of have two things happening.
17:51
We have, you know, we need to fix
17:53
this problem.
17:54
And it's a problem, right?
17:55
No one wants to call a provider to
17:57
find out their number is wrong or, God
17:59
forbid, arrive to someone's office and figure out
18:02
they've moved.
18:02
That's a terrible patient experience.
18:04
We don't want that.
18:05
But mandating accuracy beyond what the system can
18:10
deliver today is another exercise in cost and
18:14
wasted money.
18:15
What people have done in the past is
18:17
you add a bunch of people to a
18:19
call center that calls the provider's office once
18:22
a month or every other week or whatever
18:24
the case is and asks them, is your
18:26
data correct?
18:28
Hugely expensive for no real value.
18:31
I mean, the cost benefit analysis on that
18:33
is all kind of upside down, hugely expensive.
18:36
Remember, go back to a network that's a
18:38
couple hundred thousand providers and we're calling them
18:41
all once a month to make sure that
18:44
their data is accurate.
18:45
It's an absurd waste of money.
18:47
So back to the CMS contract, CMS has
18:50
got the right idea, which is one national
18:53
provider directory.
18:54
We collect the data once, we make sure
18:57
it's accurate once, and then we promulgate that
18:59
data to anybody who needs it.
19:01
That's sort of the same idea as the
19:03
credentialing.
19:05
And, you know, people get fearful because they're
19:07
like, oh, the government's going to take over
19:09
and centralize all this work.
19:10
The government itself doesn't actually do a lot
19:13
of this work.
19:13
They contract it out.
19:15
So a lot of what we do with
19:17
CMS is to make sure those contract requirements
19:20
actually align with the outcome that we want,
19:24
because all too often you end up with
19:26
a contract requirement, like make sure your provider
19:28
directory is 90 percent accurate, that ends up
19:31
costing hundreds of millions of dollars of additional
19:34
administrative costs and doesn't actually get you where
19:36
you need to go anyway.
19:37
So we try to do a lot of
19:39
work on what's the right outcome?
19:43
What's the right measure?
19:45
And then how do we write those requirements
19:47
such that we ultimately get the goal that
19:50
we want and not some other crazy unintended
19:52
consequence that costs us all time and money
19:54
and frustration?
19:55
So I think we should watch the CMS
19:58
contract because if it's done well, it has
20:02
potential to really be a good baseline on
20:05
which to build all of these other pieces,
20:07
including kind of a national credentialing arm that,
20:12
frankly, probably shouldn't belong to a for-profit
20:14
entity that has special interest in the system.
20:18
And that's, I think, a better future that
20:22
we could see coming out of these kinds
20:24
of initiatives.
20:25
Interesting.
20:25
And so I'm thinking about really we have
20:28
CAQH as the clearinghouse of data and credentialing
20:32
for commercial.
20:34
This CMS could be for government.
20:36
Does that include military?
20:38
Are we looking at multiple different systems or
20:41
is there a way to bring in all
20:42
of them?
20:44
Right, exactly.
20:46
But I do not believe there's a statute
20:47
that says the Veterans Administration or the Military
20:51
Health Administration has to have their own credentialing
20:54
system.
20:55
What it says is we have to make
20:57
sure the providers that deliver care to these
20:59
beneficiaries are credentialed first.
21:01
But oftentimes, you know, people make a leap
21:04
to, oh, in order to make sure their
21:06
credential, we have to build our own system
21:07
to do it.
21:08
No, you don't.
21:09
Go use the force.
21:10
Yeah.
21:11
So let's, again, back to how do we
21:13
write requirements to make sure we're getting the
21:16
right outcome for the least amount of burden,
21:19
administrative costs, hassle, etc.
21:21
And that's not traditionally how government has written
21:24
contracts and requirements.
21:26
Mm hmm.
21:27
Do you see a lot of openness to
21:29
this way of thinking or is it sort
21:32
of an uphill discussion?
21:34
You know, there's moments of hope and moments
21:36
of gloom at the same time.
21:38
So I do think that what we all
21:40
recognize is health care has to change, right?
21:42
The system is not working for patients.
21:44
We're spending, you know, way too much money.
21:50
I was talking about the quarterly earnings of
21:53
a publicly traded health entity yesterday, and they've
21:55
got $3 billion in net profit in the
21:58
quarter.
21:59
Net profit in the quarter.
22:01
That's crazy.
22:03
Meantime, you know, at the same time, we
22:05
have all this administrative costs, premiums are going
22:08
through the roof, people can't afford care, you
22:10
know, there's, they're delaying treatment, they can't afford
22:13
the medications.
22:14
Like, it's just, it's not sustainable.
22:15
Something has to do.
22:17
So the optimist in me says, yes, there
22:21
is openness to these kinds of things.
22:23
And I think it's these conversations that open
22:26
the aperture on that openness, right?
22:28
We're not trying to say that uncredentialed providers
22:33
should treat veterans or military or anyone, frankly,
22:36
that's not the point.
22:38
But when the work that is mandated or
22:41
by contract has to happen, doesn't help us
22:44
get to the outcome and costs, money, time,
22:47
energy, effort, stop, right?
22:49
Let's just have courage.
22:50
Just have a little bit of courage to
22:52
stop and say, all right, let's, let's think
22:54
about doing this differently.
22:56
What are our options?
22:57
And let's design that.
22:58
And that's the stuff that gets me out
22:59
of bed in the morning.
23:00
I can tell.
23:01
I love your passion for this because I
23:03
feel like so many providers and organizations can
23:08
feel like it's, you get really stuck in
23:10
the weeds on these things, right?
23:11
It can be really challenging to navigate.
23:14
I could tell you so many providers who
23:17
don't take Medicaid or Medicare or work with
23:21
military, not because they don't have the passion
23:24
to do so, but because the administrative burden
23:27
is such a challenge.
23:30
It is a huge challenge and it's, it
23:32
is unnecessarily so, right?
23:35
Lull of these sort of bespoke, unique requirements
23:38
that make the system work differently than it's
23:41
designed to work.
23:43
It doesn't make any sense.
23:44
I mean, you providers who have, you know,
23:46
significant administrative staff, whose sole job it is
23:50
to navigate their way through all these different
23:53
systems.
23:53
And that really has nothing to do with
23:56
that patient relationship in an office.
23:59
It's this huge kind of industrial complex we've
24:02
created around the administration of healthcare, which I
24:05
frankly think is ridiculous and it's time for
24:08
it to go away.
24:09
I love it.
24:10
I love it.
24:10
So what would you see as a better
24:14
or some streamlined approaches to this?
24:17
What's next?
24:18
Yeah, I think, you know, as I hearken
24:21
back to the purpose of insurance, the purpose
24:25
of insurance is to protect you from a
24:27
catastrophic issue.
24:28
Car insurance does not put gas in your
24:31
car, although I say that out loud in
24:33
fear that someone's car insurance company is going
24:35
to swoop in and say, we're going to
24:36
pay for your gas.
24:37
It doesn't pay for your oil changes.
24:39
It doesn't pay to change your windshield wipers.
24:42
It doesn't pay for the car wash.
24:43
In healthcare, we've inserted an insurance company between
24:47
all of those sort of transactions of daily
24:50
maintenance, right?
24:52
You want to go see your primary care
24:53
provider.
24:54
Well, you know, how many visits are you
24:56
allowed a year and what's your co-pay?
24:58
And gosh forbid you need to be referred
25:00
to something, you know, some sort of specialist
25:03
or lab work.
25:04
Do we need that?
25:06
Do we really need that?
25:08
And you look back to when I was
25:10
there, right?
25:10
Managed care in the nineties, when managed care
25:13
sort of came along, it held a promise
25:16
that we were going to create a system
25:19
that would take better care of people.
25:21
We would make sure they'd get their preventive
25:23
care, et cetera, et cetera.
25:26
And now it's become this beast, I think,
25:29
that has, you know, outgrown its usefulness and
25:33
is, um, again, so expensive and so costly
25:36
and administratively burdensome to everyone in the system.
25:39
Like I don't know anyone that enjoys the
25:42
healthcare system as it runs today.
25:44
So again, back to courage.
25:46
Why?
25:47
Right.
25:47
Great example.
25:48
I have a dog.
25:49
My dog has insurance, pet insurance through Nationwide
25:52
Insurance.
25:53
He had a little issue.
25:55
I called him in an appointment.
25:56
I got in the next day.
25:58
I took him in.
25:59
They ran a couple of tests.
26:01
They gave me a bill.
26:02
I uploaded the bill to Nationwide Pet Insurance
26:04
and I had a check in the mail
26:06
for 85% of it in a week.
26:10
Like that's a glorious experience.
26:14
And yet we don't treat people that well.
26:17
We make them fight and, you know, debate
26:21
and argue and chase authorizations, et cetera, et
26:23
cetera, to do something as simple as a,
26:25
you know, a transaction.
26:27
So not necessarily, uh, you know, a popular
26:30
fix among some, certainly not from the insurance
26:33
company's perspective or the payer's perspective.
26:36
But that's one option.
26:37
Go back, direct primary care and sort of
26:40
get all this, you know, barrier, administrative barrier
26:44
out of the middle of these transactions and
26:47
go back to health insurance's catastrophic.
26:50
So that's one idea.
26:52
Yeah, that's a good idea.
26:53
We are about out of time at this
26:56
point, but I would love to just see
26:58
if you have something that you would like
27:00
to leave our listeners with.
27:02
Is there one either thought or idea or
27:07
action step that you would encourage our listeners
27:10
to look at regarding all of these payer
27:13
and data dynamics that we've talked about today?
27:18
Absolutely.
27:20
And I think that is share, share with
27:22
your community, share with your patients, share with
27:25
their family members.
27:25
We, again, must continue to shine a light
27:29
on the troublesome nature of our healthcare system
27:34
in this country and why it needs to
27:37
change.
27:38
And we might talk about, you know, with
27:40
our friends or family, there's the hassle of
27:42
getting a transaction or doing something, et cetera.
27:45
But I think those conversations are important.
27:47
You know, look for the heroes, right?
27:49
That people with courage, willing to stand up
27:51
and say, okay, hold on.
27:53
This doesn't make any sense anymore.
27:55
And let's look at something different and support
27:58
them because they're going to need all the
28:00
help they can get.
28:01
Yes, that is very true.
28:03
All right.
28:04
Well, awesome.
28:05
Thank you so much, Joanne Frederick, for being
28:08
here.
28:09
I think we will definitely have your information
28:12
and your organization in the show notes for
28:14
people to reach out to you.
28:16
And it's just been very enlightening to hear
28:19
some of your ideas.
28:20
Delightful conversation, Rachel.
28:21
Thank you so much for having me.
28:23
I really appreciate it.
28:23
Of course.
28:24
And we will be back next week with
28:27
more episodes on the changing landscape in the
28:30
mental health industry on the Mental Health Evolution
28:33
podcast.
28:34
Bye for now.
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