The Healer Revolution
The Carhop Problem: What Sonic and McDonald’s Are Teaching Healthcare About Dismantling Your Own Advantage
Years ago, as a proud recipient of the Michael Hutton Memorial Scholarship, I attended an annual recognition dinner hosted by Oklahoma City University. Seated at the table were Troy and Dollie Smith — the couple who, in 1953, turned a Shawnee, Oklahoma root beer stand called Top Hat into what became Sonic Drive-In — along…
The Ladder Is Broken: What a Millionaire Cashier Teaches Healthcare About Keeping Its Healers
Tony Barzar spent almost forty years as a cashier at Costco. He recently retired with more than a million dollars in his 401(k) — and he never once held a supervisor title. According to a Wall Street Journal profile this month, he’s one of many thousands of hourly Costco workers to reach that milestone. When…
AI Won’t Save Healthcare’s Soul
AI Won’t Save Healthcare’s Soul. Physicians Like This One Might. About four years ago, we recruited two brothers to Norman Regional Health System: Dr. Krishna Vedala and Dr. Raghuveer Vedala. Young physicians, deeply committed to their patients and their profession, never afraid to pursue excellence and innovation — and exactly the kind of people who…
The Tortoise Wins Twice: What SGA’s Back-to-Back MVP Confirms About Building Cultures That Last
On the second MVP, the tortoise statue, and what healthcare leaders should be learning from Oklahoma City. Yesterday, the NBA announced that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (SGA) won the 2025-26 Most ValuablePlayer award. He received 83 of 100 first-place votes, with Nikola Jokić finishing second and VictorWembanyama third. It’s his second consecutive MVP, making him the 14th…
Trust, Not Technology, Will Decide the Future of Healthcare AI
By Richie Splitt | April 2026 AI is already doing remarkable things in healthcare. It flags a deteriorating patient hours before a clinician sees the signs. It detects a fracture or nodule on a radiology scan that a fatigued eye might miss. It gives a physician three hours back in their week by handling documentation.…
The Healer Revolution: A Call to Restore the Soul of Healthcare
Healthcare does not lack talent.It does not lack intelligence.It does not lack dedication. What it increasingly lacks is cultural alignment around its deepest identity. The Healer Revolution begins with a simple but profound conviction:Every person in healthcare is already a healer. They have simply forgotten. From physicians to security officers.From environmental services to executive leadership.From…
The 2026 Healthcare Crisis Isn’t About Wages—It’s About the Soul of Healing
Right now, nearly 46,000 nurses are on strike across America. In New York City, 15,000 nurses have entered their third week on the picket lines at Mount Sinai, Montefiore, and NewYork-Presbyterian. Yesterday, 31,000 more walked off the job at Kaiser Permanente facilities across California and Hawaii. This is the largest simultaneous healthcare labor action in…
Common Sense at 250
250 years ago today, a penniless pamphleteer changed the world with one dangerous idea: Name what everyone feels, but no one dares say. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense hit Philadelphia on January 10, 1776. It sold 120,000 copies in three months — in a nation of 2.5 million. Adjusted for population, that is 16 million copies in three…
Forget your resolution. You need a revolution.
Today, millions of Americans woke up to healthcare premiums that doubled overnight. The ACA enhanced tax credits expired at midnight — and with them, the illusion that our system is sustainable. This is entropy in action. In physics, entropy is the universe’s inexorable pull toward disorder. In healthcare, it’s the 114% premium spikes, the 55%…
Healthcare’s Hardest Prescription
Eight days until Christmas. Permission granted to actually rest. There’s something beautifully ironic about healthcare workers — the very people who tell others to rest, hydrate, and take care of themselves — being the worst at following their own advice. So here’s my simple message as we close out this year: You don’t have to…