Health care data strategist Lee Ann McWhorter discusses her article "Why health care reform must start with ending monopolies." Lee Ann explains how monopolistic control by entities like GPOs, PBMs, EHR vendors, and MMIS platforms drives up costs, suppresses innovation, and undermines patient safety. She highlights how opaque contracts and data silos leave hospitals flying blind, why favoritism often trumps performance, and how COVID-19 revealed the dangers of centralized sourcing models. Lee Ann emphasizes that hospitals have the power to break this cycle by rejecting monopolistic contracts and investing in transparent, independent, and sustainable solutions. Listeners will learn why cost is not the true crisis—control is—and how restoring competition can protect patients and rebuild trust in the system.

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Ending monopolies is the first step toward true health care reform

The Podcast by KevinMD