Marcus Osborne: Senior VP of Walmart Health (Raise the Line)

Hi, I'm Sh Ghani. Thanks for checking out the raise line interview series in which me and my cohost doctor Rishi Desai and registered nurse, Janna Amil, explore how to strengthen our healthcare system with some amazing leaders in medicine, technology, education and government and they have some great advice for people starting careers in healthcare as well.

I hope you will watch these highlights and then go listen to the full podcast interview wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm should be in today and raise line.

I'm really happy to be joined by Marcus Osborne. Marcus serves as senior vice president of Walmart Health where he is focused on furthering Walmart's goal of providing quality healthcare that is both affordable and accessible.

So you have a pretty interesting background that I've come to know uh having spoken to you before, but for our audience, which is primarily current and future healthcare professionals.

Do you mind giving them a bit of uh your, your own CD in your own words? Uh Yeah, I'll give you a short one.

So I, I'm, I grew up in Kentucky. I um went to, went to undergrad in Kentucky, uh a little school in Kentucky called Transylvania that people mistake for a school in Romania.

I actually, uh, thought I was gonna go to law school. And so I went to DCI became a in, I was a White House intern.

Um, but then that, uh, allowed me the opportunity to II, uh, through the course of the work I did in the White House actually, um, left the White House and went in the management consulting, um, strategy consulting.

Um, II did a bit, uh, a little bit of a stent as well. Clinton Foundation working on the HIV and AIDS work globally, um, which was, um, also kind of an interesting stent and then, uh, went to H BS and at H BS, uh, watched all my, all my peers and section mates, um, going, this was, this was in the heyday, um, um, and of 05 to 07 and, and, um, watched all my peers going into these things called hedge funds and private equity and, and going back into management consulting with big firms and, um, I couldn't quite figure it out because no disrespect to all these groups, but none of them produce or do anything.

Right. They all, they all thrive off the back end of, uh, groups who do actually produce, you know.

And so for me, I'm like, well, II think I'm gonna go, go the exact opposite. So instead of going to San Francisco and, or instead of going to New York or, you know, Hong Kong or London or wherever it was.

I said, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to Bentonville, Arkansas. And uh as like what happened when I had the opportunity to come to, to Walmart, um we approached um um about, well, what areas do you wanna go, you know, what area would you like to be interested in?

I was, there were actually two opportunities put in front of me. And the irony of irony is neither one of them.

I was not invited to go work in retail. Uh I said, hey, I welcome to be involved.

I work for Walmart, the largest retailer in the world. And they said, well, we really would rather you, we, we, we have our biggest need in health care or financial services.

And I said, well, I definitely can't do financial services cause I just badmouthed a bunch of people in the section about going to the financial services industry.

So I guess healthcare it is. And so lo and behold, I, I've, I've had, you know, more than 13 years now at Walmart, you know, if you were to give advice to our audience, which is mostly current and future healthcare professionals, a couple million of them all around the world, you know, what advice would you give them about meeting the challenges um of the COVID pandemic and beyond?

Uh And then is there anything else you want to share with that audience at the end of the day, the health care is about the individual, it's about the consumer.

Um, we have somehow convinced ourselves that, that there are multiple interests that matter, that the, that the interests of the providers and the health systems, the interest of the payers and health insurers, the interest of the manufacturers, Pharma and device manufacturer that somehow their interests are, are equal to and, and pure to, to those of the individuals and consumers and families.

And I, and I think that's just fundamentally wrong and not only is it wrong? I think when you use that as a basis to design solutions, you create bad solutions that ultimately don't work.

So my challenge, I think to everybody is forget the rest of those groups. How I if you're trying to solve for a challenge you, that's the question.

How does, how does the solution that I've created? How well does it address the consumer of the individual's needs?

And that I, that I will tell you that if you, you do that, I, what I have seen over and over and when you look, II, can I have seen the solution, the solutions that come out that do that um do appear to be much more successful and they sustain.

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