Becker's ASC Review

31 HEALTHCARE NEWS 31 For Mark Cuban, minimalism is the best healthcare disruptor By Molly Gamble B illionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban has made his ambition to improve healthcare known since the launch of his generic pharmacy in January 2021. His preferred methods to do so may not resemble those of other healthcare executives. Mr. Cuban, known for owning the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and starring on ABC's Shark Tank, co-founded Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. in May 2020 with Alex Oshmyansky, MD, PhD. e online pharmacy launched eight months later and today offers people more than 1,000 of the most highly utilized and/or high-cost generic medications. e drugs are sold with a 15 percent markup for price, a $3 pharmacy fee to pay the pharmacists it works with and a $5 fee for shipping. e company is also opening an $11 million Dallas manufacturing plant with robotics, which will allow it to be nimble in manufacturing simple drugs hospitals need but are in shortage, turning around numerous injectables daily to boost hospitals' supply. Behind these initiatives into a highly regulated industry is an entrepreneur who prefers unconventional ways of working. For one, healthcare stakeholders with hopes to partner or work with him and Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. should be aware that it takes rather high stakes to secure a meeting with the investor. Negotiation expert and author Chris Voss asked Mr. Cuban during a recent conversation on Fireside what bad habit he hates seeing people do that kills time and brainpower. Mr. Cuban had a one-word and eight-word answer at the same time. "Meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings." "People over-meet and over-call. You kill so much time. I try to only do meetings if I have to come to a conclusion or there's no other way. Same with phone calls. Every meeting is, 'Who got the donuts? What do you got going on? How are the kids?' If it were up to me, if I had to have a meeting — and I tried this early on in my career, and wasn't established enough to get away with it — I'd take away all the chairs from the meeting room. It's amazing how quickly meetings get over with if no one has a chair or some place to sit." While the practice may be unconventional, the sentiment may be shared among workers and executives. In a 2017 poll of 182 senior managers from a range of industries, 62 percent said meetings miss opportunities to bring the team closer together, 64 percent said meetings come at the expense of deep thinking, 65 percent said meetings keep them from completing their own work, and 71 percent said meetings are unproductive and inefficient, according to Harvard Business Review. e pandemic and rise of remote work increased meeting cadence for many. More recently, 2023 data from Microso examining the activity of millions of workers who use its applications found the 25 percent most active users spent an average of 7.5 hours per week logging meetings. To get things done, Mr. Cuban said he tends to push things toward email. "I can respond to those in the middle of the night or I can respond to those on my schedule as opposed to having to arrange everything around all the meetings I'd otherwise have. I'm not a big fan of meetings at all." e minimalist approach to meetings is aligned with Mr. Cuban's other simple but strategic ways of working. For instance, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. started with a cold email. He has completely States take on 'doctor' title debate By Mariah Taylor S everal states are taking on the debate of whether to prevent nonphysicians from using the doctor title, but nurse practitioners with doctorates are pushing back, The Washington Post reported Aug. 20. Many states are contending with the question of how much independence to allow advanced practitioners, including what they can call themselves. In 2022, Indiana and Georgia attempted to pass laws that would prevented nurses from using terms such as "doctor" even if they had a doctorate degree. A 2023 Florida bill — that was vetoed in June by Gov. Ron DeSantis — would have prevented nonphysicians from using titles such as "doctor," "physician," "medical resident" and "hospitalist." Recently, California ordered a nurse practitioner to pay nearly $20,000 for advertising herself as "Doctor Sarah," which led to a lawsuit from several nurses challenging the law. The longstanding debate has become more relevant as the physician shortage continues. In 1994, only five states allowed nurse practitioners full practice authority. Today, 27 states and the District of Columbia no longer required physicians to oversee nurse practitioners. According to the article, legislators are becoming tired of the decadeslong debate. "They told us: 'We're tired of hearing this. Can you all just stop bickering?' We're not bickering," Carmen Kavali, MD, a Georgia-based plastic surgeon, told the Post. "We're trying to protect patients here." The debate circles many of the same arguments: Physicians worry that nurse practitioners don't have the experience to properly treat patients which could lead to adverse outcomes, and nurse practitioners meanwhile point to "50 years of research" on providing similar outcomes to physicians. n

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