Best of Managed Care Cast: Top 5 Episodes From the First Half of 2025

The most-listened-to Managed Care Cast podcasts for the first half of 2025 hit on many areas of interest to the managed care space: health equity, support for public health initiatives, navigating managed care policy, preventive health care, and patients with traditional Medicare coverage. The changemakers who joined us for these episodes all have a focus on bettering health care outcomes and overcoming the barriers to equitable care access that many continue to face, and they accomplish this through mental health initiatives, public health advocacy, community outreach, health care policy reforms, and targeted communications for preventive health.

1. Frameworks for Advancing Health Equity: Accessing Ketamine-Assisted Therapy

With 320 listens, this interview from January marked the 2025 relaunch of the Frameworks for Advancing Health Equity podcast series from the Center on Health Equity & Access. Editor Giuliana Grossi of The American Journal of Managed Care^® (AJMC^®) spoke with Jessica Tracy, head of growth and partnerships at Enthea, an organization striving to improve mental health by integrating psychedelic-assisted treatment services with existing benefits plans. The impetus for this episode was Tracy’s presentation, “Revolutionizing Mental Health with Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy,” at the Mental Health Summit of the Greater Philadelphia Business Coalition on Health. She spoke to how employers and unions can demonstrate their support for their employees’ mental health and facilitate access to innovative and evidence-based ketamine treatments.

2. Politics vs Science: The Future of US Public Health

In this interview with Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH, dean and Hunterdon Professor of Public Health & Health Equity, Rutgers School of Public Health, he addresses the January announcement from the White House that the US would withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO). “With the WHO in place, with all of this information coming in, even under the best of circumstances, we don’t get the information always,” he explains. “Now imagine no WHO. We’re completely operating in a black box.” Also discussed with AJMC senior editor Maggie Shaw were the debate surrounding accurate public health information and why leaders in public health need to always advocate for science and health. This episode of Managed Care Cast has 283 listens to date, making it AJMC’s No. 2 podcast for the year so far.

3. Navigating Sport-Related Neurospine Injuries, Surgery, and Managed Care

This conversation between Arthur L. Jenkins III, MD, FACS, CEO of Jenkins NeuroSpine, and Pearl Steinzor, AJMC associate editor, explores how advanced surgical care for sport-related neurospine injuries and managed care systems intersect. Together, they hit on 3 areas of vital importance in this space: navigating managed care policy in the context of sport-related rehabilitation, innovating surgical techniques to optimize patient outcomes, and the common neurospine injuries in recreational and professional sports. Jenkins is a board-certified neurosurgeon with a keen interest in researching rare conditions that include Bertolotti syndrome, cranio-cervical instability, and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, hypermobility type. His interview with Steinzor has 277 listens.

4. The Evolving Annual Wellness Visit

In 2011, when Medicare first introduced the annual wellness visit under the Affordable Care Act, Christopher Wheelock, MD, clinical transformation physician executive at Highmark Health, helped design how these visits should work, including patient questionnaires and clinic workflows. In this January episode with Laura Joszt, MA, vice president of content at AJMC, he explains what’s included in these visits, such as dementia screenings, mental health checks, and incontinence assessments; how Medicare services could expand in 2025 for plan beneficiaries; the need for communication about and preparation for wellness visits; and why these visits matter for patients, doctors, and insurers. Tune in for a practical guide to making the most of annual wellness visits, which has 247 listens in the 5 months since its release.

5. New Research Challenges Assumptions About Hospital-Physician Integration, Medicare Patient Mix

Associate editor Brooke McCormick spoke with the lead author of a study from the April 2025 issue of AJMC’s print journal, “Impact of Hospital-Physician Integration on Medicare Patient Mix.” The investigation behind this study used cross-sectional and difference-in-differences analyses to examine pre- and postemployment patient panels of primary care physicians who did and did not become hospital employees. Brady Post, PhD, and his team found that for patients enrolled in traditional Medicare, there was not a positive correlation between hospital employment of physicians and a higher number or higher proportion of complex patients treated by integrated physicians. This interview has garnered 236 listens since it went live in April.