All right.

Thank you so much for indulging us.

Please continue to work on your post.

But will begin our Roundtable Signature Series Luncheon for today.

We shared so much together already.

And for the sake of time, I will be brief.

I will like to thank our title sponsor, that is State and Federal Communications for their continued support and commitment to Akron Roundtable.

We would also like to thank 50th anniversary sponsors, Huntington Bank and the Billow Funeral Homes.

We're grateful for a year long celebration.

With that, we will have questions at the end of the presentation today.

You'll note there are QR codes that you can scan with your mobile devices.

Or you can flag one of our staff members to write down on a note card your question, so that it can be asked at the end of the day.

We ask that you take a moment now to silence your electronic devices with respect to the speaker and the forum.

And lastly, before we begin, we would also like to acknowledge our program sponsor.

Thank you to Trailhead Community Health Foundation of Greater Akron.

Round of applause, please.

The next person coming to the stage needs no introduction, but for the few who do not know her, I'd like to invite Trailhead’s president and CEO, Tracy Carter, to introduce our speaker.

She's an Akronite, a phenomenal leader herself and one who approach a service with a clear purpose.

Let's receive her with a round of applause.

- Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you, Curtis, for that gracious introduction.

And congratulations to the entire Akron Roundtable Board of Trustees and Staff on 50 years of extraordinary, extraordinary leadership and creating space for this community to come together, listen deeply and learn from others with diverse perspectives and experiences that can help us approach both the challenges and opportunities facing our community.

It is especially meaningful to join you in that spirit today.

As president of Trailhead, I can say we are honored to be a part of this important conversation about health care, which touches every household within the sound of my voice.

For those who may not be aware, the Trailhead Foundation was created when Summa Health was purchased by the Health Insurance Transformation Corporation in October 2025.

Trailhead is separate and independent from Summa Health.

Our mission is to empower and support individuals and leading healthy lives through our fundraising and grantmaking efforts we will invest in health and wellness nonprofits across Summit, Medina, Portage, Stark, and Wayne counties.

My board also will serve as the public monitor to ensure HATCo fulfills its commitments under the State Purchase Agreement.

And speaking on my board, I would like for them to stand and be recognized at this moment in time.

So if the Trailhead Trustees can stand.

I greatly appreciate it.

Thank you.

Trailhead is one of many important players in the health wellness ecosystem, and we look forward to today's conversation with— Marty Hauser, who serves as chairman of our board of trustees, and Daryl Tol, the president of HATCo and interim president of Summa Health.

You will find additional information about each leader in your event program, but let me share a few highlights from each of their distinguished careers.

Marty has deep roots in Akron.

He grew up in Central Akron and earned a scholarship to attend Western Reserve Academy.

He went on to graduate from the University of Akron and remains a diehard Zip's fan.

After a successful career in banking, he joined Akron City Hospital, where his talent for strategy, business development, and operations led him to serving as the founding CEO of SummaCare.

Following his retirement from Suma Care in 2014, he worked with a private equity firm and now facilitates a national CEO Health Care Roundtable.

He continues to give his time and leadership to several nonprofit boards in this community.

And on a personal note, Marty and his beautiful wife Beth will celebrate their 50th— 50th anniversary, wedding anniversary in August.

So congratulations and happy 50th.

Now, Daryl, he brings more than three decades of regional and national health system leadership to our community.

He has a strong track record in redesigning systems to better meet the needs of patients and their families.

He recently served as, recently served as president of AdventHealth, one of the largest health systems in the United States, and on an annual basis took care of more than, well, several million patients.

As president of HATCo Summa, he leads a platform created by General Catalyst to help transform health systems into resilient, vibrant organizations working in partnership with leading technology companies to help people say well and to make quality care more affordable and accessible to all.

Daryl and his wife, Sarah.

They have been in our community for the past two years, and when he's not working in health care, when he needs a break, he enjoys spending time on the water, hiking in the mountains, cooking and traveling to immerse himself into different cultures.

And with that, I want to invite Marty and Daryl to the stage as they lead us into a conversation about the future of health care.

Thank you.

- I made Marty stay back for a minute.

He's going to ask the tough questions in a minute.

But it's amazing to see all of you.

I realize I was two years old when the Akron Roundtable was founded.

And I had a dream back then, that one day I would speak on Akron Roundtable 50th anniversary day.

And this is the fulfillment, of that dream.

It's amazing to see all of you.

I am honored to be here and yes, I have spent a career in health care.

All not for-profit health care, 100 year plus organizations, assets to the community, organizations that must survive, that must empower and enable a healthy community.

And that's exactly why I'm here.

I wouldn't do otherwise.

I wouldn't be part of something that wasn't targeted at making that better.

One of the things that was interesting in my career is I had a front line seat to dysfunction every day.

Let's just say it, healthcare needs help in America.

There's an interesting American mentality.

Any of you ranchers?

Okay.

I wanted to make sure no one could fact check me in the room.

Someone once told me that there was a striking difference between ranching in America and ranching in Australia back at the origination of that industry in both countries.

In the US, ranching innovation involved the invention of barbed wire.

Why you ask?

No, it's probably obvious.

You had to contain your property.

You took that barbed wire.

I mean, kind of a cruel thing, right?

Metal spikes.

In order of that, your cattle would not leave your property and what you owned would remain yours.

Now, in Australia, it's fascinating.

A different approach in Australia.

The theory was if you build a watering hole, your cattle will stay close.

No barbed wire needed.

The barbed wire in the American culture makes me think of the templates that people constantly demand we think in.

I don't like it.

Templates destroy your IQ and mine.

They force you to think in a binary fashion.

Think about politics.

Think about religion.

Think about any topic.

Really?

I have to pick between two perspectives.

That's it.

There's not a continuum.

I'm not able to think about one way.

One way and another way or another way.

Templates are barbed wire.

Now healthcare is wrapped in barbed wire.

Wrapped in barbed wire.

By the way, you think in templates about us and me and about what HATCo’s about.

And you're probably wrong, but you use templates and it makes you unexcited about something we hope you get very excited about, and we'll talk more about that.

But more broadly, more broadly, the opportunity exists in health care to unwind the barbed wire and to reject the templates.

And if we aren't willing to say that opportunity exists, then we're keeping the ceiling very low on what can happen in this community.

And that's not fair.

That's not fair.

It's not fair to think that way.

It's not fair to keep the ceiling low.

No one is being served adequately by the health care system in this community despite the passion and energy and massive work effort of dedicated caring healthcare providers.

One of the problems in healthcare is that there's a certainty problem.

There's so much expertise and so much training that we are taught to be certain because, my goodness, if I go into my doctor, I want them to be sure.

If I'm talking to my nurse, I want him to be sure.

The problem is innovation requires uncertainty and curiosity, not certainty and blindness.

So we have interesting work to do to unwind the barbed wire and to take away the templates in healthcare because we're confronted by the certainty problem that exists.

Now, in whatever industry you're in, you know, this is true in your industry as well.

If you're going to innovate, you must be disappointed.

You can't glory in the dysfunction.

You can't be a vested interest.

If you're a vested interest, you will fight for the status quo and against improvement and change.

We want to ask questions and we don't know the answers.

There's a lot of humility in this work has to be because who knows how to build the perfect future.

Do you?

Do you know?

Come talk to me.

I need help.

I don't know.

but we can figure it out.

We can figure it out.

If we reject the templates in the boxes that you try to put me in, or I try to put you in, we can do this.

And we can do it with questions.

We can do it with curiosity.

Some of my questions.

One, why is the consumer experience of healthcare so crappy?

And does it have to be?

Why is it that the most lonely time, the most dangerous time in healthcare, 3 a.m.

alone in your bathroom at home.

That's the most dangerous time in healthcare.

Not when you're in a hospital.

3 a.m.

alone in your bathroom at home is dangerous and nobody is there for you.

I don't care which brand you favor.

They're not available to you at 3 a.m.

when you're alone in the bathroom at home.

Why?

Why is it... All of these fantastically trained, purpose driven people.

In many cases, very well compensated, are all burning out and miserable.

Why can't you go to dinner with a doctor friend and hear happy news about their career choice?

Why?

That's what we're protecting?

That's what these debates are about?

Why is that true?

How might it change?

Why do healthcare costs continue to grow in an uncontrolled fashion?

Even though we talk about it all the time and we worry we bring our hands, why hasn't anyone solved it?

You think about templates.

Templates put people against each other, right?

One templated way of thinking would be that... not for-profit healthcare is a noble and for-profit, healthcare is evil.

That'd be a template.

You could have fallen for that template yourself.

Meanwhile, your five favorite brands are for-profits.

I guarantee you, I challenge you unless you want to list your church.

Your five favorite brands are for-profits.

You can run a good company and be a for-profit.

Physicians versus administrators.

So much templated thinking there.

The way we think about the future has to be wide open.

Oh.

Here's one.

AI.

AI’s bad.

AI’s good.

Two templates.

Both wrong.

AI’s bad and AI's good.

Just like, by the way, the internet is horrible.

And the internet is wonderful, right?

Do you use the internet?

Anybody?

Yes.

And you could spiral into the darkest chasms of sin on the internet if you wanted to.

You shouldn't.

I don't recommend it.

Same thing will be true of AI.

AI is a gift.

It's transformational.

We're in a revolutionary moment, and it could be terrible.

Who will decide?

We will decide.

With intelligence and integrity.

And it will transform our lives.

And it will transform industries, even complex ones like healthcare.

How do we do it?

I don't know.

But we will do it.

It's going to be a very important moment and we're going to have fun together.

Another template, healthcare zero-sum.

Summa Health versus Cleveland Clinic versus Akron Children's versus Altman.

If we win, they lose.

Terrible.

That's, by the way, that's the rancher's mentality.

That's why all the barbed wire got strung up.

The community doesn't care, do you?

Do you really?

You shouldn't.

You should care about fantastic healthcare services at a high level and you should demand that your healthcare leaders work together to make it better.

We're excited about that.

I spent all morning with Chris at Akron Children's, spent a lot of time with Rob down at Altman recently.

It’s fantastic.

We got to work together.

There's a lot we need to do together.

Just like you work together.

I'm impressed by our leadership.

Mayor.

County Executive.

I'm impressed by the way we're thinking, boundaryless thinking.

I'm impressed by some of the connectivity and bandwidth that's being created across Summit County.

I think that's fantastic.

That starts powering up potential, and it shows a way of thinking.

I believe innovation is in the DNA of this community, and it is one of the reasons we're excited about being here, because just because we're (unintelligible) industries were also pre, some pretty fantastic stuff here.

Some is emerging and some will emerge soon and some will emerge in a while and it's all good.

But innovation is in the DNA here and I'm excited to be a new resident of this community.

Now I'm going to invite Marty Hauser up with reluctance.

No, with great energy and excitement.

Marty Hauser, please.

Please come on up.

- Thank you, Daryl.

Many of the people in this room have heard me say over the years that Akron is the hugging'est community you'll ever live in, and that's both physically and emotionally.

So, Daryl, here's your chance to be hugged by Akron and the surrounding community.

So welcome to Akron.

- Thank you.

- You've lived in Orlando.

You've lived in Napa Valley, and in fact, you and your wife just sold your house in Napa Valley to move to Akron, I assume for the winter weather and things like that.

- By the way, I highly recommend doing it in that order.

- Yeah.

There you go.

So, in the time you've been here, both before when the transaction was occurring and then after what occurred in your current role, what have you really learned about our area and what has impressed you about the great Akron area?

- First of all... Several, you know, it's all about moments.

It's about those moments of experience.

If you live in Orlando or you live in Napa, it's hard to get to know your neighbors.

It's impossible not to get to know your neighbors here in a really positive way.

I think we met all of them on the day we were moving in because they just came over.

And if that makes you feel hugged, it does.

It makes you feel a certain way and it's a very powerful thing when a community reacts to each other that way.

My folks grew up in the South and in the South, there's some fake niceness.

Can I say that?

The people are nice in a fake way.

Here, if we leave the trash cans out, the neighbors bring it in, not because they want something from you.

It's because they're just, they enjoy... bringing your trash in for you, and then you want to enjoy bringing their trash in for them.

Is your neighborhood like this?

It's like, okay, actually, in the South it would be a criticism of you if they brought it in.

It'd be like you left it out too long, let me put that, let me put that in.

I've noticed that the rootedness of the medical community is fantastic.

There are many physicians in this community whose parents or grandparents have practiced medicine in this community and have gone to school locally all the way up like you did and have gone through medical school and now practice here.

That's amazing.

I was sitting in a cardiology department meeting looking around, and I thought, these people like each other.

That’s actually not true everywhere.

There's a lot of reasons to argue and fight in medicine, and I've found that to be very true.

The way government is accessible and, I mean, I wish the mayor would stop calling me.

You know, it'd be— No.

The accessibility, no it’s fantastic, the accessibility of our leaders and the ability to make decisions together and weigh... weigh the reality and how to build a great community and the aspiration to do that exists here, like I've not seen, I've not seen anywhere.

That's amazing.

- Thank you.

So we're going to come to your role as the CEO, president, CEO of HATCo in a second.

But, just a question that a number of people have asked in the community.

Your title is president CEO of HATCo and acting president and CEO of Summa Health System.

- Right.

- The word acting implies temporary, perhaps.

Right?

- Yeah.

- So I assume, if you can share, you know, that you're searching for a CEO, but since you bought a house and your wife has moved here, that would imply that this is going to be the permanent headquarters of HATCo.

So is that true?

- That is true.

So, yes, I run the parent company of Summa Health.

I'm an experienced health system leader, and so I'm actually enjoying being an acting CEO at Summa and many of the Summa team are here today.

Amazing people.

We're working hard together.

And that has allowed us to be very deliberate in a CEO search process.

So we are looking for, you can imagine how hard this search will be.

Okay.

I don't really care that you've run a bunch of systems.

What's your mindset about transformation?

How satisfied are you with the way those systems used to operate?

Do you want to be an emperor?

Because that won't work.

Humility will be required.

And by the way, you're going to work as part of something big, a big change.

You're going to be part of something, not ‘the’ something, right?

And sometimes when people want that CEO job, they want to be ‘the’ something.

So, we're being very careful.

We're putting people through— You wouldn't want to do it.

I don't want to do it, a battery of assessments and tests so we can tell if they're— They seem nice, but maybe they're a serial killer, things like that.

And then, we will have some community interviews of finalists, but we're not to that point.

We've been working really hard at it.

As for me and HATCo, yes, Akron, Summit County will be the headquarters of the Health Insurance Transformation Company and our goal is not to own and run a fantastic health system in this region, our goal is to change American healthcare.

And that emanates out of Akron, Ohio.

So I'm very, very excited.

- Thank you.

So, we talked about your time at AdventHealth.

Those of us in healthcare know Advent is a national leader, big national leader.

And then you went to One Mind, which is a smaller organization focused on transforming mental health in our nation.

And in fact, there's a connection because I don't know if anybody from P&G foundations here, Rick Keller and the folks at One Mind are working together nationally to try to make some changes.

So can you just share a little bit about that transition from Advent?

Big system to One Mind.

Small transformational organization to now a for-profit entity and ultimately to Akron, Ohio.

- It's amazing how these things happen.

They're, I guess serendipity would be a good term.

So, in late 2020, Covid, leading through Covid.

I thought we were almost done with Covid, which was silly now that I look back, it was a while before we were done with Covid.

But I spent time in my basement thinking about the future of my career and there were a couple of paths.

One would be to stay at Advent and ultimately lead a traditional health system.

And another would be to shift and make an impact and call it a midlife crisis, or whatever you might call it, it was a purpose crisis.

Is this satisfying?

Is this where I want to be?

I had spoken at my son's college, one of their assemblies, and they invited me because I, was a business leader, but I decided to talk about my own struggle during college with anxiety disorder and some of my early career struggle with an anxiety disorder.

And I asked my son his permission if I could talk about that in front of thousands of his classmates.

And he said, said, why would I mind?

Which... I would have minded if my dad did that?

So I thought that was a fantastic response, but I talked about it.

Kids lined up down the aisle.

I thought, I've got to talk more about this.

I went back to work, talked about it, interviewed (unknown) at Lake Noonan Impact Forum about the postpartum depression.

A guy saw that, the guy who founded One Mind, Garen Staglin, he called me and said, would you ever put purpose over profit?

Now I'm in the basement with five columns, and one of them was not for-profit leadership.

And he called me out of the blue and we took a leap.

We did that, Sarah and I, we moved to Napa.

He owns a vineyard there so a lot of suffering.

Difficult time.

Looking at it.

Vineyards from my little office.

It was wild.

And then I'm here because of another phone call because... I ran something called Project Fulcrum during my time leading at Advent, which was about healthcare transformation and Hemant Teneja, who runs General Catalyst saw some materials about that and asked me if I would think about joining and leading this effort.

So, these things lined up in interesting ways.

I thought I'd be at One Mind longer, but I’m very glad to be here.

- We're glad you're here.

So let me— I've got a couple questions I want to get to.

But I want to focus on the General Catalyst question because I said to somebody early on that 95% of the people in this room want to hear one answer to one question, what's this for-profit thing and what's going to happen to my hospital?

So let's take just a second if we could, you know, there's been a lot of talk, many people are skeptical and concerned about this concept of private equity and or venture capital getting into communities, taking over their hospitals, turning them for-profit.

So could you talk about the connection between HATCo and General Catalyst?

And by the way, General Catalyst is a venture capital company, not a private equity company, correct?

- Yeah.

Very important differences here that are important to understand.

So, if you are in a private equity entity, you acquire companies and you, putting it nicely, retool them and then you try to sell them for a profit after a short period of time.

And some of that retooling can be very harmful and has been very harmful historically.

That could be loading a lot of debt onto them.

That could be eliminating a lot of services, closing stores and locations, etc.

the toolkit is very, it's cold.

It's a cold, calculated toolkit to drive to the return that the private equity firms are seeking.

And I would say some firms are more vicious than others, regardless we’re not private equity.

Venture capital firm invests money in startup companies.

That's not what private equity does.

And venture capital companies goal is that those companies survive forever.

That's different from destruction, that's creation.

And the whole mentality of venture capital is creation.

Now, some of these companies fail on their own, but there's a lot of fighting to try to keep them from failing.

But they don't fail because you add a lot of debt or you create all of these tools to exit quickly.

Importantly, though, venture has never been a hospital.

This is the first.

You have no template, no template allowed.

It's never happened.

You can't go Google it or ask your Claude AI, you know, about the last venture firm that my (unintelligible) and this is the first time this has ever happened.

So there are fair questions.

Where will it lead?

What is the motivation?

I will say, by our fruits you will know us.

So I'll say our intentions.

Our intentions are important.

And then you will see our fruits and you should judge based on our fruits.

Otherwise you’re just using a template.

Our intentions are to— General Catalyst is a management company thst owns HATCo.

There are no shareholders.

There are no limited partners.

There's no pressure from shareholders, period.

This is long term because healthcare transformation takes a long time.

When Hemant recruited me, he said, I want you to retire here.

This is a long game.

So there's no sell soon in a few years, this is the long game.

What Hemant realized was that investing in small startups is not transforming healthcare.

It's just creating more fragmentation because these little companies go in and it's like a new steering wheel for your car and a new way you can roll the window down, but the car is still the same car.

We want to change the car.

We want to work on the whole car.

So the nice thing is we think about that big picture change.

That's what transforms industries.

How do we retool the whole car, now we can start architecting.

How do we take a new steering wheel and a new door lock and better wheels and a new engine style, and create a car that functions.

That's our job.

And that will take a while, and it will build towards something that, that we think will, many health systems around the country will eventually say, that's how we want to run too.

- Thank you.

So, I know there's probably a million questions, so I'm going to ask one more question before we bring Pam up.

And that question relates to the fact that we, Akronites are very proud of our history as being, you know, nationally recognized as a center of innovation, transformation, the rubber companies.

The mayor talked the other night about the polymer cluster.

We know that in healthcare, Dr.

Bob, in the AA Movement transformed how we look at alcoholism and mental health.

If you look, you just said long term.

If you look ten years out, what would you and you're, you're kind of dream see as the two most transformational successes resulting from your time here in this transaction.

- Every industry that has truly transformed has first transformed around the customer.

And healthcare doesn't even think about customers in the way most businesses do.

By the way, calls you a patient even though you don't feel like a patient unless you're sick, right?

You shouldn't have to feel like a patient in order to interact with the health system.

That should be a continuous interaction.

So one of the most exciting things for me is eliminating the blind spots and creating always on connectivity and navigation for consumers and healthcare, similar to what we can achieve in banking and retail and travel and other experiences that we're used to now.

That's very, very exciting.

Now, that's number one.

And I don’t believe it will take many, many years to develop that, but it is a top priority.

If you connect that to what the clinical team can do.

The second critical thing is we have to change the math around the idea of doctor and nurse shortages.

Let me just state a fact.

This is a fact that someday you'll know is true... How’s that?

We can't prove it today, but someday you will know this is true.

No matter what, we will never be able to train enough human beings and nursing and medical practice to overcome the shortage.

And the weeks of wait times and the lack of access to key specialties and subspecialties, the lack of access to primary care, the fact there aren't enough nurses.

There are fantastic programs in this community.

We will never train enough people.

So the people who exist need better tools.

They need to waste less time doing wasteful work and spend more time doing the work of their heart and passion.

And if we do that well, if you imagine in a few years a physician can do one and a half times the work, at a felt effort of .8 or .9.

It feels less, like less work, but I'm doing more.

The leverage that has to be created involves technology.

It involves artificial intelligence.

It involves better tools for physicians, for nurses, for other team members.

Now, when you pair those tools with that consumer thing I started with, those two alone will change everything about how it feels to experience healthcare in this community.

I'm very excited about this.

- Great vision.

I'm going to ask Pam Hickson-Stevenson to come up.

While she’s coming up, one last very quick question.

It's my understanding you're a Miami Dolphins football fan.

- I'm so proud— - So we have something in common we both support.

Really, you know, difficult underdogs.

Does this mean since you like underdogs are going to become a Browns fan?

- Yeah.

For sure.

I mean, I... I see... The Browns seem so dolphin-ish to me that it's easy.

It's easy for me.

You all know this right?

At the beginning of the season that all hope you feel, you know this.

And then after a few games, that sense of the loss of hope and then that search for the team that will be your second place passion for that particular season, which leads you to like people that really have no business liking like Josh Allen, right?

Or something like, because you realize you can't really stick with your team after they've proven they can't do it.

That's how I feel about the Dolphins, not about the Browns, they’re fantastic.

- I'm beginning to doubt everything you just said.

- That's fair.

That's fair.

- Hello, I'm Pam Hickson-Stevenson, member of the Akron Roundtable board.

Those of you who are used to using Asker to ask questions may have noticed that it is not functioning.

And we apologize for that.

I leaned over to one of my table mates and said it's always the technology.

And we have an option, however, the good old analog, paper index card.

There are cards at each of the tables.

If you have questions.

I see someone is raising hand already.

Thank you.

Please jot the question down on the index card.

Roundtable staff and board members I think will collect those from you and bring them up to me.

Fortunately, I have a few questions to ask already, but before I ask the first one, I would like to take a personal moment to say that, I have been a consumer of and patient at Summa for nearly 20 years now, and I have never seen better customer service in any organization.

I would put Summa up against Disney and Nordstrom and all of those places, and I want to... And I want to say to you mostly jokingly, but a little bit seriously, please don't mess that up.

- That's fair.

Yeah.

- It's fantastic.

I know it's baked into the culture, starting with orientation, and I hope that continues because it's fantastic.

- Very important.

- All right.

So my first question for you is from one of my table mates.

I won't call any of you out.

How do you plan to overcome a perception that Summas’ innovation is not about patient experience, but about money, and appreciate the explanation about venture capital versus private equity, but how can you bridge that gap?

I really think, we're so used to our leaders saying things that are not true or that don't come to pass, that I think it's hard for us to listen to any words and give us a lot of value.

So I would deemphasize my ability today to say something that would change your mind.

All I would say is we are making a commitment and we will be very transparent about that work, and you will see it come to pass, and some of it will go really well, and some of it won't go very well.

And we'll learn from that, which is part of innovation.

But we will ask for some tolerance and some feedback on that quickly as it happens, because, many of the changes we'll work on will be, the first of their kind.

And so you'll see it happen.

You'll see some of it go really well, I hope, I mean, I know because some already is going very well and some things aren't going as well and I think that's normal.

Great question.

- Thank you.

All right.

Asker is working now.

So you can submit your questions— - Hackers tried to shut it down but you overcame.

- You can submit your questions via the QR code.

But I will remind you, or tell you for the first time, if you've never been here before, that we typically have far more many questions for more questions than we can actually ask so we'll move on.

Another question, one of our audience members says, I appreciate your remarks about barbed wire and templates being problematic for healthcare.

Have you come across a payer, public or private, who is willing to incentivize your system to remove the barriers and templates so you may have better patient experiences and outcomes?

- Yes, SummaCare.

Thanks, Bill, I— One of the, one of the reasons that we actually look deeply at five health systems around the country.

And one of the reasons that we chose this area, there were a number, was that there was a payer and a provider working together so that we could innovate from payment through provision of healthcare services.

And we have the vehicle to do that here and the teams to do that here and there's already been innovation here that I think is great.

(unintelligible) plan that we have a lot of smaller businesses to get coverage has been a great innovation, but there are a lot of opportunities for us to work on.

The interesting thing is that other payers, sometimes we call them the (unknown) right?

The blue crosses in the United (unintelligible) Those payers are very interested in what we're doing, too.

Half fearful, half interested, you know, and they're, they're, talking to us about could we test this or could we test that?

And we want to be a place that does that.

So I think we'll see a lot of ways that over time we can deal with the trust gap.

You know, thousands of people on healthcare on both sides fight each other and become annoying to you because providers and payers don't trust each other.

So if we can eliminate that trust problem, I think we can make significant changes.

- All right.

I definitely have more questions than I can squeeze in.

Next one, with the change in use of developing technology, won't the insurance healthcare interface need to be reinvented?

- Yes.

- Can you elaborate on that a little, please?

- So if you... the way things work today, you... when you try to keep it simple, you may get a referral for something, then you need something called a preauthorization before you can move forward.

So then you get your preauthorization, you try to move forward, but you can't schedule the appointment yet because there are additional steps that you have to take and all of that that's around getting paid.

And so it's... What if?

Because there's a contract in place for payment and you have one with your payer, your employer does, and we have it with the payer.

A computer can read all those contracts and say, yeah, this is right.

And that could be instantaneous.

You don't need all that.

That interface, the way that you interact with your health system and your payer should really be one experience, not multiple experiences.

You shouldn't have to fight with your payer on one side and the health system on the other.

You should know what things are going to cost.

You should understand the trajectory of your billing, and the credit card companies already send you a bill with non unemployed people on it that you shopped at once a month with no credit term.

Alright, you get it.

Healthcare flings off a new bill every time you touch a part of the system, and you may go to one interaction you may get seven bills from seven different incorporated entities.

And I can tell you, an expert inside of healthcare doesn't know when the first bill is going to come in when the last bill is going to come or what the total bill is going to be, let alone anybody else.

So the interface, the planning tools and the capabilities all have to be rebuilt.

It'll be one of the stickiest challenges.

There's no doubt - From HATCo’s perspective, why Summa?

- This is really important.

I mentioned the payer provider.

There are strategies in healthcare where you could pick a really easy market and make... My boss used to say, call it a dumb monkey market.

A dumb monkey could run a health system there.

Akron is not a dumb monkey market.

It's a real American market.

It's wildly diverse.

Has a large percentage of government payment, has a significant set of resources and human energy that makes it a great place to be.

But, oh, by the way, those of you who own businesses, being in a zero to low growth marketis tough.

Right?

It's obvious that that's tough.

It's not Phoenix or Orlando.

Orlando grows a thousand people a week.

You can run a business in Orlando with your eyes closed.

That's not true in Akron.

So when we transform our healthcare entity, all five markets we narrowed to had to be hard enough that the industry would pay attention.

And that makes sense.

Does that makes sense?

I mean, people want to dismiss a change they find uncomfortable.

So how do you make it as hard as possible for people to ignore the change that happen?

And there are people running healthcare systems in markets like this all over the country that need help.

They’ll lose their system, these systems will close.

Rural markets, urban markets that are struggling, and we need solutions for those kinds of markets.

So we found just what we need and humans had a lot to do with it.

The board and the leadership at Summa is very special.

The community support, the government leaders, all very supportive as well.

But, those are important characteristics.

- You mentioned the need to bridge the gap with the nurse and doctor and medical professional shortage through innovation.

And so this question is, how is Summa including the clinicians in the process rather than outside disciplines?

- Yeah.

Our definition of genius is that it cannot be contained in one mind.

Genius is the collection of diverse viewpoints and backgrounds that create tension.

And in that tension, genius emerges.

So as you think about healthcare, because you have to have 20 something tech people in sweatpants to think differently about something, you can't just have a bunch of 50 something doctors in the room, right?

But, when you take the 50 something doctors and the 20 something tech people in sweatpants, there’s some pretty magical stuff that happens.

It's amazing.

I've gone to learn a lot through this process.

That's genius.

And that's what we're doing.

We created a group called the Transformation Advisors of Summa and we asked people to write essays to become part of the Transformation Advisors.

We wanted people with the right mindset, not just, you know, sometimes there are people with a control orientation who just want to control the process so that their vested interest isn't disrupted.

Right?

So instead, we said, write an essay, talk about your view of the future of healthcare.

And if it was like, you don't touch my stuff, then you're not in the Transformation Advisors.

And so we were selected.

We did pick people who had inspiring essays, Who have a vision for the future.

It includes doctors, nurses, environmental services workers, SummaCare team members.

It involves a very broad group, and we meet monthly with that group and we build our strategy together and it's a lot of fun.

- Great.

Health outcomes often come from outside the four walls of a hospital.

What are your plans to partner with community services to sustainably bridge the gap in healthcare?

- Yeah, that's very key.

It's an interesting... somewhat disorganized marketplace of solutions often in communities.

And I can speak better for other communities than this one.

What I see in this community is passion and leaders who are driving for impact.

That's a great foundation.

And we want to work with those community capabilities.

And I've actually met and toured and spoken with the leaders of many of those organizations already.

There are things that worry me about things that the lack of diversification of revenue streams for those entities.

They're all going to the same very few, including us, organizations to fund them and they have no sustainable impact model.

That worries me.

I've seen that become a problem before in communities and I think it probably is already.

I’m sure, Tracy, the path to your goal will be significantly (unintelligible), right?

By funding requests that may not be sustainable.

So how do we take it?

You know, I had an experience in my last year.

Someone ran a bus that had food on it, and they could drive around and you could shop in a food desert, and that's fantastic.

Someone else ran a in place grocery store in the same community of impact.

Both came into what we used to call our Community Health Impact Council, and they asked for funding, both.

Same day, different presentations.

One asked for 250, one asked for 350.

Whatever.

So our response was you both go meet.

And if you can come up with a joint proposal in which your two organizations can work together, you’ve just asked us for 250 plus 350, 600.

We will give you 750.

Who thinks they came back with a joint proposal?

Wrong.

Wrong.

So I will call this out.

If organizations have barbed wire in their small impact non-for-profit world because somehow they feel threatened by being part of a large, coordinated effort, we will not work with them.

That is throwing money in a fire.

And it's unacceptable in this community.

There’s too much need in this community for people to be working that way, and we won't be part of it.

Up to you to be a part of it, but we need to see a change there.

I didn't expect that's where I get the applause, but.

- I wanted to let the audience know I've reached the end of the time.

And I have one last question.

I saw the volume of questions about health insurance, and I think the Akron Roundtable board needs to look at setting up a luncheon where the topic of health insurance is discussed sometime next year.

So, I think that would be a very good one.

So I don't remember if this was announced, but we typically have students from schools who come in, and I believe this question, since it says Garfield at the bottom of the card, comes from one of our students.

And I'm going to paraphrase it a little bit, beyond the kindness of neighbors, what do you think is one of the greatest things about living in this area now for a couple of years?

And what do you think could make the Akron area greater or better?

- The ability to get outside is imperative bit during part of the year.

But when it is not impaired, the outdoor activities, the trail systems, the ability to get out and do things with people and on your own.

It's one of the best connected outdoor activity trail system in the— I mean, it's fantastic.

It's better than anywhere I've lived.

I hope you take advantage of that when finding what to do.

Really good.

I won’t say what can be improved, because it's times up.

- We appreciate all of you sticking with us today the celebration at the beginning and having going over time today here at the end.

But we are incredibly grateful for Daryl Tol and his willingness to participate in the Akron Roundtable Signature Series Luncheon.

And we are grateful for moderator, Marty Hauser, if we would celebrate them with a round of applause, please.

With that, I would like to acknowledge our award sponsor, that is Gardens Wealth Management.

We will be presenting both to Daryl and Marty with a contemplative sun made by local artist Don Drumm and a specially commissioned 50th anniversary contemplative sun in celebration of your participation today.

Thank you so much, gentlemen.

Moving on.

Next month, we will be featuring renowned chef Vinnie Cimino at our Signature Series Luncheon.

Please note the date change, we will be gathering on Tuesday, June 23rd here at Quaker Stations.

Cimino is an Akronite and also a three time James Beard Award nominee.

I can personally vouch for his Cordelia's restaurant on fourth Street, downtown Cleveland, and also look forward to patronizing his new open fire restaurant, Rosy, in Cleveland's Hingetown.

We are excited.