Wendy Rubas runs compliance training a bit differently. As the incoming general counsel at VillageMD in 2017, she believed that when incidents occur, it's mostly because people don’t have the right information when they need it. She knew that training was part of the answer, but that it had to be concise, practical and easy to tune into. And so, the VillageMD Working Smarter podcast was born.
We spoke to Wendy to get the backstory – from producing podcast episodes using microphones bought from Amazon to learning that interviewing is a skill that she didn’t initially possess, Wendy reveals the tools she uses and her key learnings to maximise success in a changing health care environment.
Takeaways:
Create content that is relatable. Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes.
Encourage information sharing by allowing people to ask questions. Listen to others and engage with different parts of your organisation.
Make mistakes. You learn from errors and really stretch yourself.
Get information out to people proactively so that they have it when they need it.
Get feedback, and learn.
Focus on creating compliance heavy messages, but also consider fun or lighter topics as well.
Make sure information is accessible - it can prevent mishap from occurring and can act as intermediate steps to help train and remedy.
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Hi guys and welcome to InCounsel and our final interview for 2019 – the year is almost over, Can you believe it? Looking back on 2019 we've spoken to some incredible people who've been pushing the boundaries of legal service delivery. I'll tell you what, GCs and in-house legal teams are pushing hard in this space, and today's guest is no different.
Joining us on the line is Wendy Rubas who is the general counsel of VillageMD. VillageMD is a leading healthcare company based in Chicago. We asked Wendy to be on the show because she hosts VillageMD's Working Smarter podcast featuring concise compliance conversations that distils the avalanche of legal information down to the key points to help physicians navigate and succeed in value-based care.
Wendy, welcome to the show and thanks so much for dialling in.
Wendy Rubas: Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan, and we really enjoy your newsletters. So, it's a thrill to have a chance to talk with you. Thank you.
Thanks, Wendy. Totally made my day. Looking forward to hearing what you're doing on your podcast, but let's just dive in. First question: lawyers these days, I guess are no stranger to making podcasts – and I certainly can't say I've seen it all – but I think you are first general counsel, that I've come across at least, who has launched a podcast for their company like this. How did this idea come about?
I guess it originated in two ways. The first is my sort of mission in life or my driving purpose as a general counsel is to help prevent bad things from happening. I am a firm believer that most of the time when we have incidents or things that cause loss, it's just people not having the information they needed. I'm strident about trying to get information out to people proactively so that they'll have it right when they need it, where they need it. When I came to VillageMD, the challenge I had was we're a growth company and we work with physicians all over the country. Many of them are not employed by us.
It's almost easier to be in a compliance role with employed staff because you can mandate that they do certain training. In this role, I almost felt like I had to make it irresistible, attractive to people to listen. To do this, I really thought about it for quite a while, and we decided to try the podcast format, make it very concise, make it very practical, tactical and not terrible to listen to. That's really what we started off doing.
You talked earlier about the physicians or the people not necessarily being employees. I just want to talk about your audience. Can you unpack that a bit? What's the main target audience here for your content?
It sort of has grown from the beginning. We've gotten great feedback and so we've sort of grown. Originally, my target was we have affiliated physicians throughout the country, and the goal was just to get them bite sized pieces of information over the course of time with the belief that that will help them avoid a problem. As we've grown, we have a bigger workforce now of actual employees. So, that's certainly squarely within our target audience. What we found is that people who are not yet working with Village but maybe curious about Village or have an interest in VillageMD. Prospective physicians have also become part of our target. For example, we recently put just a podcast out about how things are going here. We call it State of the Village. We got a lot of feedback from people that are not yet working with us.
The core compliance messages, of course, those are really for our workforce and our affiliated physicians and their practices. What we've tried to do is sprinkle in some interesting and not so core compliance messages hoping that people will tune in to both, to the compliance heavy messages and then some of the other just fun, lighter topics.
It's great you've got a mix of compliance and fun and lighter topics as well as some topics that I guess promoting your brand a bit as well. Out of those formats or just overall, what's been your most popular episode?
Well, it's funny. Some of the more taboo subjects are the ones where it's hard to get really good information. In our country, we're going through this major #MeToo movement. Of course, #MeToo is having a moment in healthcare as it is in every type of industry. We just had a really candid conversation with our chief medical officer who's fantastic about what this looks and feels like for physicians. It's one of our first and one of our most popular episodes.
We've touched on the topic of vaccine hesitancy or patients who are reluctant to vaccinate and medical marijuana. Some of those are taboo. There's a lot of salacious information, but it's hard to get really good information. We've had success with those subjects as well.
You'd mentioned before you've been looping in other executives, doctors, physicians as guests on your podcasts. I'm just curious, how has that shaped your work relationships and their perceptions of you?
It's such a good question because it's been consistently surprising to me. When I did my first podcast, I didn't have a budget. I have a teenage son who helped me figure it out. I did it very low budget. I experimented with it, and I was really surprised. There's something about the format with dialogue where you're just talking about things that is very relatable, and people like it. What we've learned is that the more we have other people coming in and sharing or asking questions, the easier it is to listen to, rather than just having me. Like every lawyer, I can wax on about these laws, but having the dialogue and engaging different parts of our organisation, it's easier to listen to.
“... in my role, I tend to deal with physicians when we’re dealing with a problem or when we’re doing a transaction. I don’t have a lot of occasions to just sit down with a physician and learn about them and then ask them about their life.”
It also then it serves a second purpose of making people aware of some of the fantastic people that we have at Village. I've done some interviews with physicians and more of them will be coming out in the next several months. It's dawned on me that I really don't ... in my role, I tend to deal with physicians when we're dealing with a problem or when we're doing a transaction. I don't have a lot of occasions to just sit down with a physician and learn about them and then ask them about their life. I was talking to our CEO Tim Barry, who's also incredible, and I said to him, "I think this is like restoring my faith in humanity." Just the opportunity to talk to people outside of a crisis has been actually very great for me.
That sounds like such an amazing benefit that a lot of in house counsel or even executives broadly would rarely get that opportunity. That's very insightful. You mentioned earlier your teenage son produces ... well helps you with the podcasts. What tools do you guys use? How long does the process take? What's involved?
Well, it's funny because he had a YouTube channel as a child for a long time. I found myself overly invested in it. I finally realised like, "Okay, maybe this is something I should try." Yes, he helped me. I mean he bought some equipment on Amazon. Really. It was basically a couple of microphones. There's this mysterious red box, which I don't understand. It's very DIY and we've learned over time. We've learned how to get better audio. You learn from errors. I think one of the first ones we recorded, it didn't record. We had nothing ... We sort of like trial and error learn. I have a fantastic legal operations manager who thankfully is very adept at this type of thing and she's done a great job.
The hardest part about it is it actually takes a fair bit of production time in terms of reaching out to people, scheduling interviews, and then, post-production editing. That burns up quite a bit of time too, especially because we're so committed to being concise. You really have to prepare. We'll do two or three takes just to try to get it under 10 minutes is our goal, which we don't make it all the time. The post production time, that tends to be a barrier. We made a commitment to send one out every other week and we've met that commitment. Now, we have a rhythm. There's so many subjects that I want to cover in order to really cover the basics of healthcare compliance. We have a big year plan for next year.
Oh, that's great. You mentioned really your legal operations manager. Is that your co-host as well?
She is. She's my co-host, Janessa. She's not in every podcast, but whenever we don't have another guest, she's there. There are some that she's just had to do without me. We've gotten busy, and then she does a lot of the production and post production. It's a funny thing. We've got an intern. One of my goals was to make this visual, because I'm a firm believer that you'll remember a picture more than you'll remember a memo, which is sad because as lawyers we love memos and so do I. So, I ended up getting an intern from a local art school just to help me making these pictures can just burn time.
She's fantastic. She ended up working with us full time. We do use a designer every time we put out a podcast, the podcast is really just a teaser. We have a bunch of resources and tools and tips and things that we want to make available to our VillageMD community. She creates all of those. You can watch along the video if you want to. She does all of those as well. That's been one of my goals for a long time is just to condense our advice into pictures.
It certainly is a learning experience along the way producing all this stuff. What would you say for anyone looking to do something similar, what would be the big lesson or any tips to share before they get started?
I think like anything in innovation, there's a fair bit of humility required. You have to find your own way. We've made mistakes and we've had errors and things, but I have just a clear vision of what I want this to be and to do for us. We just continually try to come back to that and that sort of fuels us. Anytime you try something new like this, you learn a lot about yourself. I've actually learned that interviewing is a skill that I don't necessarily possess. I'm used to recommending and giving advice and so there's lots of areas I've had to really stretch.
Just to carry on with that, what do you think has been the greatest benefit to you?
“I think the biggest benefit for me is it feeds this need that I have this burning desire to try to get information to people before they had tripped over something.”
On the one hand, as I said, it's given me the opportunity to get to know some of the people in our community here at Village, which I may not have done. I think the biggest benefit for me is it feeds this need that I have to try to ... I have this burning desire to try to get information to people before they had tripped over something. In healthcare, there's so many regulations, and once an incident happens, then everything is much harder. It's more sensitive. I think it just feels like a relief for me actually to be able to send this information out. Then another benefit is if we do end up with somebody that had a problem or made a misstep, so many times we're stuck between doing nothing and taking an aggressive action, like fire someone. This gives us a set of intermediate steps so we can say, "Okay, here's something for you to go listen to and watch to help train and remedy." So, that's actually been a great benefit as well.
That's great. In terms of time and keeping things succinct, I do want to wrap with the final question. I think it's an appropriate one for this interview. What would be your favourite personal podcast, Wendy?
It's such a good question. I think we've done a couple about new programmes in our healthcare system and one of them in particular is really exciting for us at Village. I had a couple of really smart experts tell us about the new CMS direct contracting programme. That was very popular and I think one of my favourites because I felt like we were first to market with that information and something that our folks are listening to over and over again. That's probably my favourite.
That's awesome. I guess that does bring us to time. We'll need to leave it there. Wendy, thank you so much for sharing your podcast journey with us.
It was my pleasure, David, and thank you for all the work that you're doing for the in-house counsel of the world to help spread information about innovation and change. We all desperately need it.
Thank you. Appreciate that, Wendy. Listeners, thank you for tuning in. If you'd like to check out VillageMD's Working Smarter podcast by Wendy Rubas, you can find it on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That's a wrap actually for InCounsel this year in terms of interviews. Have a fantastic holiday season and we'll see you back in 2020.
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