Joanne Frederick Podcast Transcript
Joanne Frederick joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive podcast.
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Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Joanne Frederick. Joanne Frederick is the Founder of Government Market Strategies, or GMS, a leading force in government healthcare consulting.
Her expertise lies in strategic innovation, organizational design, and seamless deployment. She founded GMS to be a platform for designing forward-thinking strategies, building resilient organizations, and delivering results where others see only complexity. Well, good afternoon, Joanne. Welcome to the show.
Joanne Frederick: Thank you, Brian. Pleasure to be here with you.
Brian Thomas: Awesome. I appreciate it my friend, and appreciate you making the time. I know you’re in the Baltimore or north of Baltimore there in Maryland. I’m in Kansas City, so just an hour apart, but I know it’s hard to make calendars sync up. So, thank you so much. And Joanne, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna jump right into your first question.
You’ve built a career deeply rooted in federal healthcare and government contracting leading to the founding of government market strategies or GMS for short. What experiences shaped your path to becoming a leader in this space?
Joanne Frederick: Absolutely, Brian. So, with 30 years in public sector healthcare what’s really shaped my perspective is seeing the system from multiple angles, from a policy angle, procurement, delivery, but also as a caregiver, a family member and a patient.
Healthcare is one of those systems that rely, all of us rely on at some point. So, you see it very differently when it becomes personal. I came into this space in the late eighties during a period of major change. So early on I was watching how policy decisions translated or didn’t into real care for people, and over time, working across nearly every TRICARE procurement for military health, but also across Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ health patterns started to emerge.
One of the biggest things that I see in my work is that we tend to make policy incrementally. Each change on its own might make sense, but we rarely step back and ask how all of those changes add up over time, and then you end up with a system that’s incredibly complex and in some cases no longer aligned with what we were actually trying to achieve.
That experience has really shifted the way I think about this work. And it’s not about navigating the system or improving pieces of it, it’s really about stepping back and asking whether the overall design still makes sense in healthcare. And that’s driven me to focus on the harder questions. How do we simplify, how do we realign and ultimately how do we build something that actually works better for the people who rely on it?
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Really appreciate that. And you’ve seen a lot of changes over the years. By the way, I was in healthcare for many years myself.
Joanne Frederick: Ah
Brian Thomas: and I’ve seen a lot of changes, of course. In, in this space, federal healthcare as an example, you talked about that policy, procurement, delivery, caregiving, and all that.
We’re making incremental changes. And I would agree with you. Sometimes it feels like it’s, one step forward, two steps back,
Joanne Frederick: right?
Brian Thomas: But we’ve gotta make deliberate changes. And what you’re doing is some amazing work with GMS and I really appreciate your backstory here. So, thank you.
And Joanne, GMS focuses on strategic innovation. Organizational design and execution. How do you help organizations move from complex policy environments to real measurable outcomes?
Joanne Frederick: That’s a great question, Brian. Thank you. And I think a lot of that challenge sort of stems from that same dynamic. We layer policy and requirements.
Over time building up on one another. And they don’t always connect cleanly to outcomes. So, what we do at GMS is help organizations and just as importantly, government and policy makers step back and re-anchor on what actually matters. Not just the are we compliant question, but are we improving access?
Are we improving continuity of care and are we improving the quality of care? A big part of that is translating complexity into something operationally clear. Because when systems get too complex, they naturally create fragmentation, and that’s where performance starts to break down, and you really see the impact of that in the moments that test the system.
Like now we have increased deployments of our military. We all see the headlines about troop deploy troops deployed overseas. But what we don’t always think about is what happens at home. So, we have military families who were relying on a military physician for their healthcare, and suddenly that physician is deployed and now the family members left at home are trying to navigate a healthcare system that may already be strained or fragmented.
And that’s where these structural issues become very real. It’s not theoretical. It directly affects access to care and continuity for families. And ultimately that ties back to military readiness. So, my team and I spend a lot of time looking at the system as a whole, how policy, contracts, networks, and incentives all interact.
Because if you don’t consider all parts of the system together, you end up solving one problem while creating another. We also focus heavily on alignment, particularly incentives, because if the structure is misaligned, even strong organizations will deliver, struggle to deliver, and most acutely in those high stress moments.
And lastly, we bring discipline around measurement. It’s not just tracking activity for tracking sake but really focusing on what’s changing for patients and families. Candidly. Lastly, I’ll say part of our role is being willing to say; this may be working as designed, but the design itself may need to change.
And that’s where meaningful system level progress starts. We can’t keep solving only pieces of the system and expect the whole thing to work well.
Brian Thomas: That’s great. I appreciate you saying that. We can’t just, fix it one piece at a time. Sometimes you can do that. But there’s so much to do here.
And what I thought was interesting when you talked, in the name of compliance, right? We continue over the years to layer policy requirements. And, but it still leaves much to ask for as far as quality of care, and I think we still miss the mark there again, in the name of compliance and, and data and reporting.
Right, but you did talk a lot about how especially with military, overseas and, and the caregivers or family at home. There’s a lot of healthcare structure issues that still need to be addressed, and I just really appreciate what you’re doing in this space. Like I said, healthcare is near and dear to my heart.
Joanne Frederick: Thank you, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Joanne, healthcare delivery is evolving rapidly with technology, data, and new care models. How is GMS helping clients adapt to these shifts while maintaining compliance and operational excellence?
Joanne Frederick: Absolutely. I think at GMS, the team, we recognize that a lot of what our clients are dealing with today is a result of that accumulated complexity.
So, our approach is really to help them operate effectively within the current system while also preparing for where things are going. So you can’t really separate compliance from strategy, in my mind it, it has to be integrated. And we also help clients avoid getting trapped in purely a reactive posture where they’re just responding to the next requirement layered on top.
So working across the full lifecycle, for which I am very grateful from strategy and procurement all the way through implementation. Because when you work through that end-to-end process, you really see how all of these requirements play out operationally. And increasingly we’re helping clients rethink core areas like network adequacy and access to healthcare in rural areas and continuity of care.
Those are areas where traditional models that have been shaped over years of incremental change just aren’t delivering the outcomes they need to. So our role is really helping clients not only manage the complexity, but start to unwind it in a way that actually improves performance.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Again, just appreciate what you’re doing to help clients manage that complexity.
You talked about you and your team working on fixing this, as you call it, accumulated complexity, layers over the years. And you also talked about compliance and strategy. You need to work hand in hand, and I thought that was something that I certainly take away from there.
So, thank you. And Joanne, as I, we look ahead, this is the last question into the future. How do you see federal healthcare programs like TRICARE evolving over the next decade? And what role will strategic consulting firms like yours, GMS play in shaping that future?
Joanne Frederick: Absolutely. And I think we’re reaching a point where the system can’t just keep evolving incrementally.
And the, the adage of you have to break something in before you can really fix it, I think is becoming unfortunately in some ways true, but the approach. Is part of what created the complexity that we’re dealing with today. So, I think the next phase has to be more intentional, really stepping back and rethinking how these programs are structured.
The TRICARE program included, there needs to be a stronger push towards outcomes, real access, real con, continuity of care, better patient experience, and not just compliance or activity. But to get there, you can’t just start adding new requirements on top of the existing system. You have to address the underlying design, how incentives are aligned, how networks are structured, how accountability is defined, and that’s where firms like GMS comes in.
We’re in ongoing conversation to help the military look at different ways. To restructure the current system so we can provide better experience for patients. And in the midst of that kind of investigation and looking at the way things work now is thinking about what comes next, how do we take the deck of cards, shuffle them and produce them in a better way that more clearly align incentives, simplify the delivery, and improve outcomes in a more meaningful way.
Again, the future isn’t about adding more complexity, it’s about stepping back and having the courage to recognize that often, sometimes making things more simple is actually what makes the system work better.
Brian Thomas: I like that. Take the complexity out of it. And really that’s all you need to do and a lot of times is step back and look at that process whether it’s a process improvement. program or, or something else.
You need to simplify things and in the end, that makes things much more smoother. Of course. But I liked how you did talk about going forward there needs to be more of an intentional push to fix the, these federal healthcare programs. We just at a point. We just can’t continue to layer or fix things incrementally and I totally agree with you.
Joanne Frederick: Now’s the time.
Brian Thomas: Now’s the time. Let’s do it.
Joanne Frederick: Let’s do it.
Brian Thomas: Joanne, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Joanne Frederick: Oh, thank you, Brian. I appreciate the invitation and the opportunity to speak with you.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Joanne Frederick Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
