Épisodes

  • Dead Batteries and Great Meals: Why the Details Define Care with Gary Blake

    Dead Batteries and Great Meals: Why the Details Define Care with Gary Blake
    Oct 26 2026

    How do you run 180 care communities and still notice the dead batteries in a resident's TV remote?

    Gary Blake, co-founder and CEO of Creative Solutions in Healthcare, joins Dan Brody in Texas to talk about the details that define great care, and the culture and technology that keep a large operator close to them.

    Gary started as an administrator in training in Weatherford, Texas in 1993. He opened his first building in Granbury with 77 residents in 181 beds, and today the company cares for about 12,000 patients.

    In this conversation he explains how his Voices of Care program lets frontline department heads rewrite company policy, why his team has been using AI to code invoices to the general ledger for over a year, and how AI-assisted admissions helps the company give hospitals an answer in about three minutes while taking only the patients its buildings are equipped to serve.

    He also covers the hiring questions that get past a rehearsed interview, why operators are custodians of patient records rather than owners of them, what makes Texas unique for operators, and the advice he gives anyone deciding what to do next.

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    Care, Code, and Capital explores the intersection of healthcare, technology, and finance: the delivery of care, the technology powering it, and the financial structures sustaining it.

    Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music, or read the full write-up at https://www.getmegadata.com/care-code-and-capital
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    56 min
  • AI, Advocacy, and the Fight for Care with JJ Rabinowich | Episode 8 of Care, Code, and Capital

    AI, Advocacy, and the Fight for Care with JJ Rabinowich | Episode 8 of Care, Code, and Capital
    Sep 23 2026

    JJ Rabinowich has spent his career at the intersection of policy, operations, and capital in long-term care, and he says the single biggest predictor of a hospital readmission isn't a resident's diagnosis. It's whether a family member's guilt shows up in the case file.

    In this episode of Care, Code, and Capital, Dan Brody sits down with JJ Rabinowich, Founder and Executive Director of the Ambassadors Group, to discuss the state of long-term care advocacy, how AI is actually being used inside skilled nursing operations, the legal gray areas nobody has solved yet, and what the silver tsunami means for the future of the industry.

    JJ's path into long-term care started in advocacy, running the West Coast office of a national organization before moving into state level lobbying in Chicago and eventually opening his own regulatory consulting practice. In January 2020, he helped found the Ambassadors Group to give skilled nursing operators a stronger, more unified voice in Washington, D.C., just months before COVID turned the organization into the industry's daily source of regulatory guidance.

    In this conversation, Dan and JJ discuss:

    • JJ Rabinowich's path from advocacy work to long-term care lobbying
    • Founding the Ambassadors Group and its January 2020 launch
    • Becoming the industry's information hub during COVID
    • Why families are a bigger factor in hospital readmissions than most operators realize
    • Using AI to prepare and stress test state survey plans of correction
    • The legal gray areas around AI, attorney client privilege, and HIPAA
    • Why evaluating new AI vendors has become a full time job for operators
    • The silver tsunami and the case for skilled nursing as a care model
    • Why states like Indiana are rethinking managed Medicaid
    • Advice for young operators on partnerships and capital

    JJ's take on what matters most in this industry:

    "Provide quality care. That's eighty percent of the battle."

    This episode is for skilled nursing operators, long-term care lobbyists and advocates, healthcare investors, and anyone trying to make sense of how AI regulation is catching up to healthcare.
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    1 h et 6 min
  • Scaling Care Without Losing the Human Touch | Episode 7 of Care, Code, and Capital

    Scaling Care Without Losing the Human Touch | Episode 7 of Care, Code, and Capital
    Aug 31 2026

    Ben Cohen has grown August Healthcare from three skilled nursing facilities to nearly ten, and he says the difference between a turnaround and a shutdown always comes down to people.

    In this episode of Care, Code, and Capital, Dan Brody sits down with Ben Cohen, Founder of August Healthcare, to discuss scaling a skilled nursing organization, turning around distressed facilities, using AI to speed up deal underwriting, and building a culture that keeps caregivers from burning out.

    Ben got his start in healthcare in 2009 in the durable medical equipment industry, later building and selling his own respiratory company. In 2021, right as the post-COVID staffing crisis was setting in, he started August Healthcare with three facilities in Virginia. The company has since grown to nine facilities, with a tenth in the process of being certified.

    In this conversation, Dan and Ben discuss:

    • How August Healthcare grew from three facilities to nearly ten in a tight deal market
    • Why turning around a distressed facility starts with rebuilding the team, not the building
    • How AI has cut skilled nursing deal underwriting from days down to hours
    • How "distinguished care" and traditions like the annual August Summit build culture across facilities
    • Why nursing school enrollment is dropping as the aging population keeps growing
    • Why technology can support caregiving, but should never replace it
    • How renovating facilities into more residential, welcoming spaces improves care and recruiting

    Ben's take on what makes any of it work:

    "Company culture is really everything."

    This episode is for skilled nursing operators, healthcare investors, long-term care executives, and anyone building or scaling a care organization through culture and technology.
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    1 h et 10 min
  • Grit, Recovery, and AI Trailblazing in Healthcare | Episode 6 of Care, Code, and Capital

    Grit, Recovery, and AI Trailblazing in Healthcare | Episode 6 of Care, Code, and Capital
    Jun 22 2026

    AI is already changing healthcare, and Nick DeStefane believes operators who do not adapt will fall behind.

    In this episode of Care, Code, and Capital, Dan Brody sits down with Nick DeStefane, CEO of American Medical Administrators, to discuss AI in healthcare, skilled nursing innovation, business growth, and the future of long-term care.

    Nick grew up in the nursing home industry and now leads AMA, an organization operating 60+ skilled nursing facilities, supporting approximately 6,000 employees, running outpatient clinics across 14 states, and expanding into hospitals.

    In this conversation, Dan and Nick discuss:

    • How AI can reduce documentation gaps in skilled nursing
    • Why automation can help protect reimbursements and improve accuracy
    • How bedside data can help teams identify patient risk earlier
    • Why healthcare fragmentation is one of the biggest challenges in long-term care
    • How AMA is building a more connected continuum of care
    • Why healthcare operators need to think differently about technology, growth, and patient outcomes

    Nick’s perspective is clear:

    “AI is the future of everything. Forget healthcare, everything.”

    This episode is for healthcare operators, skilled nursing leaders, long-term care executives, healthcare technology teams, and anyone interested in how AI is shaping the next era of care delivery.
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    51 min
  • The AI Revolution in Skilled Nursing | Episode 5 of Care, Code, and Capital

    The AI Revolution in Skilled Nursing | Episode 5 of Care, Code, and Capital
    May 26 2026


    Shalom Reinman didn't set out to build a healthcare technology company.

    He set out to find a job. His brother talked him out of his entrepreneurial ideas and into a billing role at a nursing home. $23,000 a year. 2008. He figured he'd learn the business.


    He learned more than that.


    He taught himself accounting. He fixed a company-wide billing glitch on a Sunday because it needed fixing. He mastered IBM business intelligence systems. He built Excel workbooks so sophisticated they started to break. And when they did, he pushed to hire a programmer — to a boss who asked him, straight-faced: "How is a programmer going to help me fix a boiler?"

    Two years later, that same boss was asking job applicants what they knew about a data warehouse.


    Shalom eventually built one of the most advanced analytics platforms in long-term care from inside a nursing home company. When the opportunity came to take it to the broader industry, he left and started Megadata.

    Today, Megadata has 80-plus integrations, a Series A from Blueprint Equity, and data warehouse customers who are building AI-powered workflows on top of their data — without writing a single line of code.

    In the newest episode of Care, Code, and Capital, Dan Brody sits down with Shalom to talk about what 18 years on the inside of long-term care data actually taught him:

    • Why the user interface of healthcare technology is about to look nothing like it does today
    • How Megadata's team used oxygen saturation data to detect Covid outbreaks before anyone in the building knew they had one — and how that story ended up on ABC Nightline
    • What the combination of a data warehouse, 80-plus integrations, and tools like Claude actually unlocks for a nursing home operator
    • Why the operators moving on AI now are the ones who will set the pace — and what happens to those who don't

    One line that stuck with us: "The humans who use AI most effectively are going to be the most valuable people in the room. The ones who avoid it — they get left in the dust."

    Worth your time, whether you're an operator, a technologist, or anyone trying to understand where healthcare data is actually going.
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    1 h et 4 min
  • Building the "Disney World of Healthcare" with Marc Halpert

    Building the "Disney World of Healthcare" with Marc Halpert
    May 11 2026
    This is not a story about a nursing home operator. It's a story about someone who fell in love with taking care of people — and built 63 facilities because of it.What does it take to lead one of the most innovative long-term care organizations in the country? For most people in this industry, the answer involves capital, connections, and a clear roadmap. Marc Halpert had a phone call, a flight to Minnesota, and a decision he almost said no to three times.He said yes. And then he built something that someone eventually called the Disney World of healthcare.In Episode 5 of Care, Code, and Capital, Dan Brody sits down with Marc Halpert — CEO and co-founder of Monarch Healthcare Management — for a conversation that covers the director of nursing who ran across a room and hugged him, the moment he stood on stage in front of his entire company and couldn't hold it together, and why Monarch was the first nursing home in the United States to deploy automated robots before anyone else was even talking about it.This is not a highlight reel. It's the full picture.‍How Marc Got InMarc will tell you the foundation was built before he ever ran anything.He started in healthcare as an admissions coordinator, working his way through a psychiatric facility on the South Side of Chicago before anyone handed him a title worth talking about. What followed was a decade of intentional groundwork inside a multi-facility company. He stripped and waxed floors. He worked as a dietary aide, passing trays when his cooking didn't pass muster. He went through administrator training, ran an 84-bed mom-and-pop nursing home, and started building a real understanding of what great care could look like when someone actually cared enough to build it.Every department. Every role. Not as an executive observer — as someone who had to actually do the job."In 2005, if you wanted to make money in healthcare, you were told to become an administrator. But I never really thought about the money. I just wanted to do better than what I was seeing."By the time Marc was ready to build something of his own, he didn't just understand how to run a facility. He understood what it felt like to be every person inside one.The Phone Call That Started EverythingEleven years ago, Marc got a call from a friend about an opportunity in Minnesota. He said no twice. The third time, he said yes — because someone told him you can't say no a third time.He flew to New Prague, Minnesota, walked into the first facility, and fell in love."My entire company knows the love story of how I came to Monarch. Every single person."What he inherited was four nursing homes, three assisted living facilities, a small corporate office, and 18 employees. The care was good. The staff was warm. The census was fine. The problem was simpler and more stubborn than any of that: complacency. A status quo that nobody had ever thought to challenge.Marc thought to challenge it on day one.The name came from Josh's wife, who discovered the Monarch butterfly is the state insect of Minnesota. The logo came from a design firm that kept returning with one consistent element across every rendition: orange. A Tough Mudder race that summer produced t-shirts that said "Bleed Orange." One by one, staff members started showing up in orange shirts, orange watches, orange kicks — and something started to feel like something real."It transfers this concept of branding because you're not just you — you're part of a family."The First Nursing Home in America to Use RobotsInnovation made it into Monarch's mission statement a few years ago. Not as a talking point — as a commitment. Because Marc had already seen enough of the future to know where long-term care was going, and he wasn't interested in waiting to be surprised by it.Monarch was the first nursing home in the United States of America to deploy automated robots in a resident care setting. The program launched in partnership with the University of Minnesota Duluth. The robots came in, interacted with staff and residents, and delivered on some of what they were supposed to — and not all of it.Marc will tell you it didn't fully work. He'll also tell you it was one of the best decisions he ever made."When I saw the demo for the first time, I said — wow. This is the future. It's going to go somewhere."His take on AI follows the same logic. He's been using it in his day-to-day work and will tell you with a laugh that he still doesn't fully understand how it works. What he knows is that it opened up a new world. His staff knows more about it than he does. He surrounds himself with people specifically because of that."I'm excited. The future is going to bring us something."What he's clear about — even with all of that optimism — is where the line is."Is a machine going to take care of a resident? No. No human needs to take care of human. That's not going anywhere."The Hug That Changed a BuildingMarc tells a story about walking into a ...
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    47 min
  • "Delusional" Enough to Build Something Real with Efriam Weinfeld

    "Delusional" Enough to Build Something Real with Efriam Weinfeld
    Apr 27 2026
    This is not a polished success story. It's the real one.What does it take to build a healthcare company from nothing in the aftermath of a once-in-a-century pandemic? For most people, the answer would be: probably more than you have.Efraim had less than most. No pre-built portfolio. No safety net. Two facilities that nobody else wanted to touch. And a name for his new company rooted in the Hebrew word for "to ascend" -- because even before the first resident walked through the door, he had already decided this thing was going to rise.In Episode 3 of Care, Code, and Capital, Dan Brody sits down with Efraim, founder and CEO of Aliya Healthcare, for one of the most honest, wide-ranging conversations we've had on this show. They go from Efraim's earliest days as a 20-year-old pharmacy tech figuring out the industry, all the way to navigating million-dollar losses, crisis-level self-doubt, and the moment everything turned around because a pipe burst in a building across town.‍How Efraim Got InHe'll tell you himself: nepotism got him in the door. But what he does with that admission is more interesting than the admission itself.Efraim came back from Israel with no particular plan, enrolled in a pharmacy tech job, and set his sights on working his way up the honest way. That lasted about a year -- until the owner's son walked in on day one and landed a $70K salary and a floor manager title without ever having seen the inside of a pharmacy. That was the moment Efraim picked up the phone and called his family in long-term care."Pride does not pay the bills," he says.What happened next was the education that shaped everything. Because he was always the "extra person," Efraim got cycled through every department every time someone quit or got fired. HR, admissions, operations, finance. Not as an executive observer, but as someone who had to actually do the job, sometimes before he understood what the job was.He calls it "baptism by fire." Dan draws a parallel to Zappos, which intentionally rotated employees through unrelated departments to build total operational understanding. The difference for Efraim is that his wasn't intentional. It was chaos. And he wouldn't trade it."I'm thankful for the chaotic style in which I learned. I don't know if I would have learned any other way."‍What Covid Actually Taught HimAsk any long-term care operator what they learned from Covid and most will give you a policy answer. Efraim gives you a human one."No matter what the policy, procedure, or process is -- nothing beats showing up. Just actually being in the building. Being with people. Showing that you care."During Covid, the gap between organizations that made it and organizations that didn't often came down to this. Leaders who stayed behind closed corporate doors saw their teams lose morale, their operations unravel, and their residents suffer for it. Leaders who got into the trenches -- even when they couldn't do everything the clinical staff could do -- changed how their people felt about coming to work every single day.That lesson became the foundation for everything Efraim built next.‍The Birth of AliyaPost-Covid, Efraim found himself at a crossroads with his family's business. Succession planning got complicated. Family dynamics made the next chapter hard to see clearly. And the entire industry felt like it was still trudging through something heavy and unresolved.So he left, and he started over.The timing was fortuitous in one specific way: Manor Care (by then operating as ProMedica) was divesting its Illinois portfolio. Out of the available properties, Efraim and his partner Michael Erlich took the two that nobody else wanted. The runts of the litter. The ones with the worst reputations, the most ground to make up.He named the company Aliya -- a Hebrew word meaning "to ascend, to rise up." The logo is a phoenix. Rising from the ashes. The color is purple, a regal and calming choice that would go on to become a rallying point for staff, residents, and eventually a Chicago Bulls sponsorship that landed a recovering patient courtside at a Bulls game.The brand wasn't just aesthetic. It was a declaration of intent."It's not just a name. I think there's a lot of value in that. People can rally behind it. There's something to believe in."‍The Zero-Budget PhilosophyOne of the most counterintuitive things Efraim shares in this episode is his acquisition approach. He doesn't tour buildings before he buys them.It sounds reckless until he explains the reasoning.He does look at the market data: proximity, acuity mix, competitive landscape, reputation signals. But he deliberately avoids forming detailed operational impressions of a property before taking it over. His phrase for this approach is "zero budgeting" -- meaning he isn't inheriting the old identity of a building. He isn't looking at a facility that's been "a dialysis building" or "a short-term rehab building" and assuming that's what it will always be.He goes in ...
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    49 min
  • The Art of Calculated Risk and Intentional Scaling with Abe Gutnicki

    The Art of Calculated Risk and Intentional Scaling with Abe Gutnicki
    Apr 13 2026
    ‍What does it take to build a 30-lawyer boutique firm from scratch, starting with three clients and a handshake? In this episode of Care Code Capital, host Dan Brody sits down with Abe Gutnicki, founding partner of Gutnicki LLP, to trace one of the more quietly remarkable careers in healthcare law. Abe's story isn't a straight line — it winds through big law layoffs, a pivot to bankruptcy work he never wanted, a calculated leap into solo practice, and a slow but deliberate expansion into one of the most specialized corners of the healthcare industry: skilled nursing facility transactions.What makes Abe's perspective worth an hour of your time isn't just the resume. It's the philosophy underneath it. He's thought carefully about risk, optionality, relationships, and what it actually means to build something that lasts. And he's unusually willing to say the quiet parts out loud.‍From LA Law to Long-Term CareAbe Gutnicki didn't grow up dreaming of nursing home transactions. He grew up dreaming of courtrooms — the suits, the closing arguments, the drama. LA Law was the inspiration, which he'll tell you with a straight face before breaking into a grin. He went to Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, won moot court competitions, and set his sights on litigation.Reality, as it tends to do, had other plans. His first job out of law school landed him in a conference room the size of a closet, surrounded floor-to-ceiling with documents, searching for a proverbial needle in a haystack. That's litigation in the real world. Meanwhile, the corporate associates down the hall were negotiating deals for dot-com startups flush with VC money. Abe asked to switch. They let him.Within six months he was closing deals. Within fifteen months, the dot-com bust had arrived — and with it, his layoff notice, alongside ten other first-year associates. The firm, in its own way, was trying to do him a favor: they told him that because he was already building a client base, he'd land on his feet easier than the others. He wasn't sure whether to thank them or argue.What followed was a stint doing the bankruptcy work he'd specifically said he didn't want to do, while quietly cultivating a relationship with a young operator in the nursing home space — someone from his community whose parents were already in the business and who wanted to do his own deals. Abe brought that client into his firm. As a second-year associate, he billed over $75,000 on that relationship alone. The firm wasn't thrilled. They had a slot they needed filled with bankruptcy work. They let him go.He landed at Ross and Hardy, a midsize Chicago firm with a hundred-year history and an entrepreneurial identity. That firm eventually merged into McGuire Woods. By that point, Abe knew he didn't want another large firm. He knew he had enough clients. He sat down, calculated what he could realistically bill, decided he could feed his family, and went out on his own in late 2003.‍The Leap That Didn't Feel Like a LeapDan asks the question every entrepreneur gets asked: what was going through your mind when you made that jump? Wasn't it terrifying?Abe's answer is more interesting than the usual "you just have to take the leap" response. For him, it wasn't a leap. It was a logical next step — because he'd done the work to make sure the stepping stone was firm before he put his weight on it."I've always been a big believer in trying to keep options open as much as possible," he explains, "and not making decisions where you're heading down a path until you're forced to. If you can push that fork a little bit further down the road, and stay on the path where you have optionality — that's the path that makes more sense."This is a thread that runs through everything Abe does. He didn't leave his firm without clients. He didn't pursue real estate investments without a law practice as a safety net. He didn't expand into banking relationships without his core operator clients already stable. Every move has a floor underneath it.He also offers a counterintuitive reframe on job security. Having been laid off at a prestigious firm through no fault of his own — along with ten colleagues who had done nothing wrong — he stopped believing in the myth of the safe employer. "As safe as it might feel working in a large setting, you're not really safe. This assumed safety — it just feels better because you're getting a paycheck and you have a 401k. But it's really not." If the clients walk or the business softens, it doesn't matter whether you're a solo practitioner or one of 500 employees. You're subject to the same uncertainty. The difference is that as a solo, you have more control.‍Building the Book: Relationships as StrategyBy 2006, Abe had his first associate. By 2011 or 2012, he was firmly established as a boutique firm doing nursing home transactional work. The question becomes: how did that happen? The honest answer is relationships, but Abe's ...
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    45 min