Out of Patients EP447: Taco Thursday Meets Broken Healthcare: Dr. Sarah Matt
Dr. Sarah Matt heard a human cough at 4am in a dairy barn and thought she was about to die. It was a sheep. That moment killed her plan to become a vet and pushed her into medicine, then surgery, then straight into the machine that runs healthcare.
She trained in burns, where people show up shattered and time decides everything. Then she walked away. Not out of burnout. Out of math. One doctor can only see so many patients. The system does the rest. So she went to Oracle, built cloud infrastructure, scaled care across millions, and watched expensive ideas collapse the second real doctors had to use them.
I wanted her on because she has lived on both sides of the lie. She knows how decisions get made and who eats the consequences. Her book calls it out plain. People build products for buyers, not users. CFO buys it. Doctor uses it. Patient pays for it when it fails.
We get into tacos, roller derby, broken legs, and why she calls herself a great once a week doctor. That line stayed with me. So did this one. Everyone has a healthcare access story and most of them suck.
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Producer
Matthew Zachary invented healthcare podcasting before podcasting was a thing. In 2007, fresh off building Stupid Cancer, he grabbed a mic, launched The Stupid Cancer Show and started broadcasting patient stories on internet talk radio when everyone else was still writing blogs.
17 years and 400+ episodes later, Out of Patients is still the most unfiltered healthcare show anywhere.
Matthew doesn't do softball interviews. Brain cancer at 21 taught him that time is finite and bullshit is expensive. He gets guests to say things they'd never tell Congress. CEOs admit what's broken. Patients name what actually hurts. Scientists explain what industry doesn't want you to know. The conversations other shows won't touch because of sponsor concerns or political correctness.
What makes him different: He's been on both sides of the mic. Featured in documentaries, testified before Congress, keynoted hundreds of conferences.
But he's also been the guy puking from radiation, fighting insurance denials, and watching friends die from paperwork.
That dual perspective creates interviews you won't hear anywhere else. He knows which questions make power squirm because he's asked them from hospital beds and boardrooms both.
No pre-approved questions. No PR handlers. No seven-minute segments. Just real conversations with people brave enough to tell the truth about healthcare. After 17 years, Matthew's still the guy Mark Cuban reposts when he wants to understand what patients actually think. Read More
Out of Patients EP445: Fatal to Relentless: Kathy Giusti
