Future-Proofing Care: The Challenges We Face in Hospice and Palliative Care | Part Two

In Part Two of Future-Proofing Care: The Challenges We Face in Hospice and Palliative Care, Chris Comeaux and Cordt Kassner explore the accelerating forces reshaping hospice and palliative care—from shifting patient demographics to the rapid rise of AI and regulatory complexity. 

As the industry transitions to serving a more diverse, resource-variable baby boomer population, leaders are challenged to rethink how care is delivered, personalized, and sustained in an increasingly complex environment.  

The conversation dives into the tension between innovation and regulation, the transformative (yet imperfect) role of technology, and the growing mental health crisis impacting patients, families, and care teams alike.  With AI poised to revolutionize communication and care delivery—but infrastructure and human connection still critical—the episode emphasizes a central truth: technology must enhance, not replace, the heart of care.  

Ultimately, this episode offers a strategic roadmap for leaders navigating uncertainty.  Through the memorable framework “Grow, No, Flow, Sow, R&D,” the hosts provide actionable insight into building resilient, future-ready organizations—equipping healthcare and nonprofit leaders to move from feeling overwhelmed by change to actively shaping what comes next.  

Key Takeaways

• Demographic shifts—especially the rise of the baby boomer population—are redefining care expectations, financial realities, and caregiver availability.  
• Innovation is outpacing regulation, creating friction—but also opportunity for leaders to proactively shape policy.  
• AI and emerging technologies will dramatically transform care delivery, but must be used to enhance—not replace—human connection.  
• The mental health crisis is increasingly intersecting with hospice and palliative care, exposing systemic gaps and new responsibilities.  
• Organizational culture (“reculture”) is the critical enabler—or barrier—to successfully navigating rapid change.

Co-Host:
Cordt Kassner, PhD, Publisher of Hospice & Palliative Care Today & CEO and Founder of Hospice Analytics 

Host:
Chris Comeaux, President / CEO of Teleios, Author of The Anatomy of Leadership

The Anatomy of Leadership podcast explores the art and science of leadership through candid, insightful conversations with thought leaders, innovators, and change-makers from a variety of industries. Hosted by Chris Comeaux, each episode dives into the mindsets, habits, and strategies that empower leaders to thrive in complex, fast-changing environments. With topics ranging from organizational culture and emotional intelligence to navigating disruption and inspiring teams, the show blends real-world stories with practical takeaways. The goal is simple yet ambitious: to equip leaders at every level with the tools, perspectives, and inspiration they need to lead with vision, empathy, and impact.

https://www.teleioscn.org/anatomy-of-leadership

Transcript

Welcome And Why Part Two

Jeff Haffner 0:00

Welcome to TCN talks, and Anatomy of Leadership. We continue our conversation in part two of Future -Proofing Care: the Challenges We Face in Hospice and Palliative Care. And now, here's our hosts, Chris Comeaux and Court Kassner.

Baby Boomers And New Care Needs

Chris Comeaux 0:22

Yeah, I love that you're kind of poking on this. And so probably as we go to number four, we'll go. So now going to the next segment. Um, yeah, so the next one is, and we just alluded to it, is actually patient family demographic shifts. And it's really getting to, we've been poking on this, a sea change is in the process, moving from the customer of the greatest generation to the baby boom generation, and we'll include greater socioeconomic diversity also, which is a key point. As such, preferences, decision-making strategies, and communication styles are all very different. And again, if our our YouTube listeners are seeing, like, you've got some watermark behind on this. There actually is one of our great team members, he picked, um, I believe it's Barcelona, who apparently is a brilliantly designed city. It's like little cities within cities. And the reason why he pictured that as the watermark is it's like stepping back up to that 10,000-foot view level, but also seeing down to that micro level. It's a bit of both. So, how do we understand our customer, micro and macro, as we go forward into the future? And oh, by the way, there are other simultaneous societal shifts that are occurring, which are impacting our hospice and powder care organizations, like access to care, opioid addiction, housing challenges, less retirement funds available. Joan Tino was the first one I ever heard talk about this of the statistics of the baby boomers compared to the greatest generation of, like they're the first 401k generation. And there's a lot of um, I'll call it diversity. You could also say distribution of what's in people's 401ks. Well, why do we care? Because that's actually gonna create a lot of interesting diversity and what financial resources they have available to them. And oh, by the way, caregivers. Our whole model was built to empower the caregiver with the patient. We're gonna encounter more and more where there is no caregiver. And what are we gonna do about that as we go forward into the future? So this was another huge challenge. And the cool thing is this one spawned other things like the survey that we went and did as part of our visioneering of what do the baby boomers want? And we have a whole nother presentation that Tina Gentry has done to our network. In fact, Cordt, you were at the board meeting recently where we actually presented some of that data that came out of that.

Cordt Kassner 2:47

You know, it's fascinating. When I when I think about this fourth challenge, I I put my social work ad on because it I immediately go to race and language. If we scan the communities we serve, are we representative not only racially, you know, from from that diversity perspective, but language. If if Spanish is spoken in your in your service area a lot, do you have providers that are bilingual that speak Spanish? And and how how do we balance that out and even look at it and recognize it? And that's that's probably that macro perspective of the demographic trends, but but it gets down to patient care, not just recognize, you know, we can talk about honoring veterans, which is amazing, a great program, because they have different experiences. Well, one could suppose that people of other races have different experiences than than I do, then you know so I I think there's a way to really build and hone on the personalization of the services that we're providing based on culture, based on race, based on language and and connecting with people. Was there a picture this group came up with?

Chris Comeaux 4:08

Yeah, so is the picture. Well, there's a picture, there's a quote on this one about how important demographics is to the future, but again, that that watermark I think was more profound, and you just illustrate it beautifully. That if you if you did uh uh almost like a Google Earth picture of Barcelona, you see kind of this broader layout of the city. But then if you zoom in, it's almost like little mini, like the buildings have got little mini courtyards. It creates like a like a city within a city, and it's exactly what you're poking on court that you have to understand your specific, yes, there's a broader baby boomer, but there's subcultures within that. And this also shows the beauty of where these challenges intersect it with each other. One of the technology solutions that we recently bumped into is by the push of a button through AI, you could take verbal communication and it flips it to whatever language that you need in the entire world. Brilliant. Um, and so again, all of these challenges as a Venn diagram fed each other. And again, you kind of took it to a beautiful place. You want to go to the next one?

Cordt Kassner 5:07

Yeah, so just a quick, quick summary. We're reviewing the landscape. You've talked about the first four of eight challenges: Competition, Reimbursement, Workforce, Patient and Family. And then there's four more to go: Regulatory and Political, Technology and Innovation, Speed of Change, and the Human Factor, right? Where do you want to go next?

Chris Comeaux 5:31

Yeah, so let's go to Regulatory and Political. Um, it says where politics and policy intersect. I love that kind of it put that in brackets. The picture on this one might be a little bit harder to explain to our YouTube folks, but I'll attempt to do that at the end. But it says during a predictably unpredictable year, that was the term that you and I used last year. I think we had Mark Cohen on with us when we launched 2025, but I'd say that's kind of carried over into 2026. Uh a little bit of a preview. None of us predicted a war in Iran in our predictions for this year. This is true. Yeah. So one small example. In a predictably unpredictable year, government change, dot, dot, dot, audits will continue, even increase, regulations will wax and wane. Well, innovation will accelerate, which is really poking on something that I feel like I can now articulate that always felt my career. But quite often, innovation is outpacing regulation. So there's a natural friction between the two of, well, if you're doing this innovative thing, it may actually be in violation of a regulation. So what do you do about it? So this is going to cause tension to current regulations, and in many cases, will even be contradictory. So, how do you navigate this maze and flip it from challenge to opportunity? Because regulations by nature are reactive, not proactive, and they have the tendency, and this is a big point, to disempowering staff. And I want to unpack that a little bit. There's something about regulations. I hope all of our listeners will reflect on this. Like you may be leading your organization on this huge initiative. John Maxwell says if you're leading and no one's following, you're just taking a walk. Hey, we've got, we're going into this new community, this new market. Come on, team, let's go. Let's go serve that community. Maybe 50% of your team is pulling in a direction and 50% aren't. But isn't it weird when you go, oh my God, we've got an audit, and everybody comes around that. It's like compliance makes people knee-jerk react in ways that we wish would apply to every initiative. Hey guys, let's go take that hill. Everybody goes take that hill. Hey guys, we got this compliance. We had an audit. Oh my God. And what happens is the pendulum never corrects exactly where you want it, it overcorrects, especially when there's compliance. And here's the key point. So the huge aha. It disempowers staff. We had this amazing attorney that was part of this future council, and he was listening to us, kind of, I could say it on hopefully our podcast, bitch moan and complain about some of these audits. And he goes, hey guys, every business has rules they have to play by. And we we actually marinated in that, I think, for about a couple of months, and we came back and said, You're 100% correct. But here's where it feels different and is very disempowering. Picture college football. Say we won the national championship four years ago, and the government just decided they don't like the rules that we played by, and they're going to reinterpret the rules, and now they're going to take our national championship away. It kind of feels that way with some of the audits. It's like it's so retrospective as opposed to prospective. Like, here's our nurses are doing documentation right now. This is where there's some really cool solutions that are coming online to try to change that paradigm. So that was so interesting. And that's where that disempowering thing, like we even got into the psychology and start challenging ourselves like, how do we allow some of these regulation compliance audits to taint the culture of our organizations and disempower us and get us away from the mission? And so that was pretty profound that came from there. This again, I won't get too far, but if our our our YouTube listeners court are looking, there's a picture of the Hunger Games. And that's all I'm gonna say about that. But if you're a Hunger Games fan, you automatically got why we said it in that way, because they kind of flipped the script of the whole maybe disempowering government, and they kind of flip the script in a way. That's what we're after with that one.

Cordt Kassner 9:29

You know, as you talk about this, it's from a strategic planning perspective, there's a degree that we look back and reflect on the past to figure out how we got to where we are today, and then planning for the future. And and as you're talking about this regular regulatory and political changes where we might be penalized today for something that happened four years ago, that it's it's really a timeline issue that we need to kind of stop and take a breath, and that that's okay, that's the speed of government, is it takes about five years to do for them to do anything. And when we realize that that's their case, then it it makes sense that we're really thinking about five years ago, today, and in the next five years. Because that's that's kind of the timeline we're working on. And we're in such an immediate gratification society that you know, I I want a reward today, I want a bonus today, that that I think from a leadership perspective, it's probably worth stepping back and looking at that. It's hard to say 10 years is macro, right? But yeah, it kind of is.

Chris Comeaux 10:44

That's the point of strategic planning, right? Is that um we use this metaphor all the time in the training that we do is that when an eagle flies, it is looking at the horizon while it's looking down for its food at the same time. That is a beautiful metaphor for leadership that you got to be scanning that horizon and thinking that way. And you actually alluded to, I know you're gonna ask me, well, what was one of the questions? Well, one of the questions is how can we first off get out of this disempowered state and then proactively shape what those future regulations look like to bring it in harmony with some of the innovations that we see? I that was such a cool flip of it sucks, we got this audit, the world sucks, and you know, those those audit, those government people, blah, blah, blah. To how do we partner with them? How do we go proactively to them and say, these are innovations we're seeing that can actually help us serve the mission better? And here might be some way this the regulations can be more in harmony with this. So I love how we start it from a very disempowered moaning, complaining about some of the regulatory stuff, and then flipping it to how we could shape the future.

Cordt Kassner 11:49

One one other quick thought with that, because I'm I keep thinking about Joan Teno, because we have a uh a podcast with her coming up soon. That when we're talking about influencing the future, participate. I beat this drum a lot, participate in the CMS technical expert panel. And I just encourage our listeners to do that, to look for those opportunities. I participated personally in three of those steps, and and one of them was led by Joan. And and so everybody flew into DC, and we had this meeting around the table, and and Joan was kind of facilitating walking through some of the hospice quality measures, and and what a great opportunity to influence and and to bring your bedside clinical care to Medicare. So just an opportunity. So that's five. What was the sick challenge?

Chris Comeaux 12:44

That's a great plug. That's the one you participated in. Technology. And this is one where my YouTube watchers are like, man, this is some cool visuals. And this is one where hopefully everybody will go to YouTube for the future. And there's a picture which one of our team members, Raquel Braithwaite, says it. We finally, this is where beautiful uh use of AI. Go actually create a picture of tying a rock to the cloud. Because Court, you were part of first some of those first discussions. And man, we're talking about all these interesting applications of maybe robotics, automated driving cars. And then one of the wonderful participants said, Hey guys, this is all great. Some of the vision stuff, but you know, we can't even get reliable internet at the office at the location based on the community we serve. And so that created the visual of tying the rock to the cloud, um, which is a beautiful visual because you could have this great pie in the sky. In fact, this year I'll probably have heard more podcasts around some of the challenges. Yes, we could do this incredible stuff with AI, but do you realize that power is a great limitation? And if we don't do something about that, we're not gonna be able to do all this great stuff with AI and get to AGI. So I'll read where we got to, Cordt. You were a key influencer part of this. The velocity of technology changes, improvements, and new tools is accelerating at a furious pace and is going to reach a crescendo in the next five years. And all challenges represented challenge and opportunity, none more so than technology. So, how to stay on top of technology and how to choose where to build by our partner in order to tap and utilize technology as solutions. And this is one where I really want to highlight the sub point. And I bet you're gonna want to say something about it. And our vision, our visual YouTube folks can see a watermark that it looks like a robot and a human touching fingers, embracing the future through technology to enhance, not to replace the personal touch, the heart, and the art. That was in Cordt, you probably can remember. I could picture us in that meeting when one of our participants said that, like, okay, that's profound. That's that's a philosophical guidance that we need to go ahead and codify to help guide as we navigate this challenge into the future.

Cordt Kassner 14:59

It absolutely is. You know, I I reflect on because I'm old, what the world was like before the internet and what it's like after the internet, right? I mean, it's dramatically, hugely different. And I think we're gonna see the same scope of change with the implementation of AI. It's going to be that much different. AI is not icing on the cake, it's it's a new course meal of the course of the meal. It's a whole new thing, and and it's exciting that we're we're able to participate in these revolutionary changes. I I know the podcast won't be released for a couple of weeks, but today, this morning, yesterday, I guess, this morning's news was talking about launching the Artemis rocket. And so we're sending people to circle the moon. And when I think about this in the context of some of the news I've been seeing lately, that's because we're gonna put people back walking on the moon. That's because we want to develop, like Elon Musk is talking about developing solar farms on the moon to power stuff from space to eventually reach and colonize Mars, which is like outside of my scope of figuring that out.

Chris Comeaux 16:26

There's also a more current and practical reason, too, Cordt, that I did not know this. The actual efficiency of solar from the moon brings the actual cost of power for AI down to fractions. So it's actually an efficiency scalability of AI of why they like we may look up at the moon and go, Hey, can you see that thing on the moon? There's a data center up there because actually that data center is powering AI because it's a lot cheaper because of solar efficiency compared to solar on Earth.

Cordt Kassner 16:53

But doesn't it feel like in the 60s when you know when we first you know put the first step on the moon and it was like wow, this is a whole new world? That's kind of what today feels like, not only from the space exploration piece, but just where AI is gonna take us and where we can grow. And and I love what you had said that the whole purpose of the internet of AI is to enhance, not replace people. And and so obviously lots of questions for for the technology group and excited that that work group is has already started meeting this year to continue this work. So that's six, seven? What's what's your seventh point?

The Mental Health Quilt With Holes

Chris Comeaux 17:34

The seventh one is the one that was originally parked under patient-family demographics and uh give um Lynn Flanagan, the CEO of Encore, all the credit because she was um adamant in a good way that this is so meaty, it really deserves its own. So it's the mental health crisis, and then this is pretty deliberate patient-family staff. And again, for our YouTube folks, you may not totally get to make sense of it, but it looks like this weird quilt. And it looks like the quilt has holes on the left side, and then it looks like a full quilt on the right side. So, what that visual is poking on is there's not really a mental health care system in our country. It's a quilt that has a lot of holes in it. But the vision part is wouldn't it be great? And maybe some of our hospice and powder care programs may be part of filling up the holes of that patch quilt. And there's another cool visual below, and it shows these people traveling through an airport. Everybody's got luggage. One person has a whole lot more luggage, and it's a beautiful metaphor. You know, the stigma of mental health. Like now, especially the current generation, we're gonna have a podcast coming out, Cordt, about the multiple generations in the workplace. The millennials and the gen wise more readily accept the need for mental health, maybe counseling, etc. Whereas our generation, certainly the baby boomers, most certainly the greatest generation. Like, you know, we we don't do that. That's that's the crazy people that go get mental health. But the reality is every human being is carrying some luggage. Some people have a lot more luggage in their life. It might be past trauma, et cetera. So here's the problem summary executive statement. The mental health challenge is one that systemically impacts many of our organizations. Because some people may go, why do we care about the mental health thing? Because the mental health challenge is getting more and more, and it is washing up on the shores of hospice and bowed care much more frequently. And my guess is that statement just resonated with people because we're seeing it. Just listen in our IDG meetings. A challenging vortex is created because of the mental health challenges that absorbs it, sucks many people into it. Almost picture like a like a tornado of sorts, and sometimes it sucks our teams in. There's no true mental health care system, it's more of a patch quilt. And there's no adequate reimbursement to incentivize solutions or systemic solutions. And what is the true measure of quality to know if we're even making progress? And oh, by the way, the challenge is accelerating. So this is, and this is one cord where it was so cool. We recruited some national experts that are sitting in some really influential places, which is awesome. But also, I felt like I was sitting in the hospice group in 1979. In other words, we're still in the early, early days of will we really have a mental health care system in the United States? And you know, we could really geek out on this. We did have a past podcast. We're probably going to do a couple in the future of just lay menting, like how we found ourselves here in the mental health care situation. There was a Supreme Court case I never knew about, and I think it was based in Alabama that actually closed the results. Were eventually a lot of the mental institutions got closed down. And then a lot of the mental folks that were dealing with mental health problems have ended up on our streets. Like a lot of the homeless population, and this is not stigma or being negatory about it. It's just like, I didn't know that was the catalyst. And they didn't fix the problem. They literally just shoved it out into our communities, and then it's playing out in lots of interesting ways. You know, let the court system, the our criminal system, is overwhelmed because of this challenge because no one's actually dealt with it. And now more and more it's showing up in our hospice team, our palliative care teams, etc.

Cordt Kassner 21:16

You know, when I think about this, I I listen to what you're what you're talking about. I remember years ago, I was looking at going to medical school, and I thought to myself, you know, where do I want to be? You want to be a family practice doc. Like that that was my goal at one one point in my life. And the reason was because there was a family practice doc who who created this chart and he he had little boxes, you know, a hundred boxes on in a table, and he filled in about 85 of them. And he said, That's what family practice is. That's what primary care, internal medicine, family practice, that's what that's what we we do. And in healthcare, about 10 or 15 percent is all the specialists. And we tend to gravitate, even with mental health crisis, to the specialists. And I'm excited because now we're seeing, I am seeing today more psychiatrists, practicing palliative care and hazardous than I ever have seen before. And the expertise, the specialty care they're bringing to the mental health challenges are amazing. And I love that. But when I think about well, what's the what's the primary care approach to the mental health crisis? I think we can just sum it up in community. Like we could be a little nicer to each other, and that would go about 85% of the way down the road of helping people land where they best fit, right? You know, Jim Collins, find the right seat on the right bus. And everybody can do that. And there's a role for the specialist to be plugged in. What real quickly, what kind of questions did this group come up with for the future?

Chris Comeaux 22:58

Yeah, one big one you're alluding to. So we've it's basically what are the right models that we either build by our partner was one of the gist of one of the questions. Well, interestingly, one of our TCN members has launched their own behavioral-based program, behavioral health program. We've also identified an interesting collaboration pathway, and then another model that could be an interesting revenue diversification plus meeting a huge need. So that question is already spawning solutions, and then our team is working to kind of help almost create like toolkits to help people navigate that.

Cordt Kassner 23:33

Wow. Outstanding. I'd love to hear that. So the the eighth challenge is speed of change, resiliency, and re-culture. Tell us about that.

Speed Of Change And Reculture

Chris Comeaux 23:42

And that's such a unique one. Um, the analogy, so Cordt, I was a football player. Most people look at me, would not go, yeah, we can totally get that. Um, and so in football practice now, we didn't have something fancy like this. They actually have like a parachute on the football player, and they're running down the field, and that parachute is holding them back, it's creating drag. Well, we we actually have in highlight on this challenge, it says the lack thereof equals drag. In other words, all these other challenges, your ability as an organization to navigate, to rise, to thrive amidst these challenges is either going to be enabled by or prevented by how you navigate re-culture. So, in other words, the culture of your organization, even your board of directors, is either going to enable, enable, or perhaps inhibit how we navigate these huge challenges. Um, you have a couple of several cool visuals, our YouTube listeners are seeing it, but it alludes to how important the mission, vision, and values of the culture is. Um, there's a metronome picture because the pace of dealing with this, because if you don't create a pace in your organization and it's just like, ah, sky's falling crazy, crazy, we're gonna burn everybody out, even our boards. And then the the watermark picture is a picture of permaculture. One of the incredible participants apparently was a he does permaculture in his own garden. And it's like creating this very healthy ecosystem where things complement one another that creates this fertile soil. And it's a beautiful picture of what a great culture will do to help enable to navigate all the other challenges, which is gonna lead where we're gonna go in a second core, which when I was originally working on some of this, the early days that launched our future councils, I was working late one night. My wife's like, What are you working on? And so I'm trying to share with her, and she goes, Well, that's incredibly depressing. You have all these challenges. And she goes, You've got to give people hope. And you know, like if you just disempower them, in fact, it's what really reminds me one of the metaphors we use in our coaching years ago, I was in Las Vegas at this presentation. Do you know why a lion tamer uses a chair to tame a lion? And most people don't. It's because the four legs of the chair paralyze the lion. In other words, these four legs are coming at a lion and it it's paralyzed. Like, what do I do? And these challenges coming at our leaders could be like the four legs of the chair. So the prescription is meant to give people hope. So, do you want to go there next?

Cordt Kassner 26:12

Yeah, so you've you've alluded to prescriptions to these challenges and and kind of what the next step, what people can do about these. What where did the future council go with that?

Grow Know Flow Sow And Moats

Chris Comeaux 26:24

Yeah, so this is interesting. Again, to give my wife the credit. So I came up with something sticky in our brain. This is almost like the this is the culmination. Um, now, within all of those challenges, now within our TCN toolbox with our members, we have a huge inventory of strategies that our members could deploy. This is almost like thematic that really cuts across all of their strategies. And so here's the sticky to stick in our brains. Grow, No, Flow, Sow, R&D. It's almost like you'd be sing song. Grow, No, Flow, Sow, R&D. So, what is that, Chris? Grow. In your organization, your mission, doing everything you can to remove barriers to reach everybody that needs your care. That is grow. That's the prescription of gotta be growing, your organization. If you are retreating, that is a major problem, especially amidst this time of change. So that's grow. The no, which is really hard for people like me that grew up in the hospice and powder care field. We have just always said yes. Oh, community needs a community bereavement program. Yes. Community needs a pality care program, yes. Now it's gonna sound like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth when I get to sew, but we're gonna have to be more discerning. We don't have the rich days of reimbursement when we could say yes to everything. So there may be things we have to say no to. And folks that have come from the real business world, the pruning of a business is a normal thing. We've not done that very much in the hospice and powder care space. So, what do you need to go back and prune? If I have any gardeners or we're taping this in the early part of spring, you got to prune stuff. So the healthy stuff grows well. That's the no. What do you go back and say no to? And it may be some tough decisions in there, but good pruning will enable the good stuff to grow, especially as you go back and think through all those other challenges. So we got grow, we got no, we have flow, huh? And so, where is their friction in our organization with our referral sources? Where is there friction with the patients and families we serve? Where is there friction with our staff? I just got out of an all-staff meeting. That was my question to our team. Where are we creating friction internally with you guys as a team? Because you have to eliminate that friction. That's where we're looking for flow. And where you create flow, you create workforce happiness and you also create great better service to your customer. So we got grow, we got no, we got flow, we got sew. This is springtime. Where do you need to sew some innovations? And you really could go back through all of those challenges. Where are some of the innovative ideas that we need to sew and nurture and grow going forward? So that's the sew. So we got grow, know, flow, sow. And then the R&D is the Reculture and the Dig a Moat. The reculture gets back to that last challenge of where do we make the soil fertile so we can plant the grow, where we can actually have tough conversations, say no, where we could go and hunt the friction like it's the enemy, and where we can actually sew, take some of our balance sheet, invest in the things we need to invest in smartly. So that's where our reculture, the culture supports that. And then the last, the D, is Dig a Moat. Many years ago, Cordt had this amazing opportunity. A guy who was mentored by Warren Buffett actually was teaching his investing method. And there's so much I learned in that. But one of the cool things that Warren Buffett looks for in businesses, he invests in is a moat around the castle. And so the moat is what is your competitive advantage in your business that is very hard for other people to replicate. Therefore, it creates a moat around your castle. And you may go, well, what would be an example of that? Because quite often in the hospice and powered care space, we don't have a moat. And then competition literally just you're just wrestling over the current market share. But the more you create a moat around your castle, the harder harder it is for competition to assail you. And this is the key point, the more you can invest the resources you have in serving your customer well. So the prescription is Grow, No, Flow, Sow, Reculture, and Dig a Moat. Grow, No, Flow, Sow, R and D.

Cordt Kassner 30:46

I love that. I Chris, I really appreciate you and your team and Teleios and the future councils group taking the time to work through each of these eight challenges. We've talked a lot about pictures for each of these groups, and and the analogy that keeps coming to my mind as we're talking about this this morning is a roadmap that you know we we want to get from A to B, but there are curves in the road, and so we need some guardrails around some of this. And and there are potholes and challenges in in the way, but let's not let those challenges prevent us from getting to the goal. And to me, that's the empowering, that's the exciting part of change and and how much change is happening right now. This is an exciting way to get to our goals, and it it just causes us to reflect on you know, why did we get into this field anyway to increase access to high-quality end-of-life care for folks? And and how so how do we do that? How do we implement that? And you're giving us the roadmap to successfully reach our goals. And I really appreciate you taking time and and walking us through this. I I think there's this is very rich, there's still a lot more to unpack.

Chris Comeaux 32:06

Sure. Yeah, well, kudos to you. You just landed the plane beautifully. You know, why did I do this? First off, I'm insatiably curious. And to get past challenge that paralyzes us to taking, making the future, what is possible, instead of focused on, well, this is a problem, to flip it because we've inherited the patriarchs and matriarchs, the Ira Byocks that again, I love the podcast you and I did right before Christmas of 25, where he's like, you know, we were sitting around the fire envisioning a day where wouldn't it be awesome if we had research and people majoring in this stuff and there would be textbooks about this? All of those things are the reality now. And they sat down and they dreamed it, didn't sit back and go, well, you know, people are dying in hospitals and it's going to be really difficult to change how we do death and dying. They seize those challenges. What will they say about us 15 and 20 years from now? And my hope is we could take this framework, quite like his strategic framework, and move beyond these challenges and create a beautiful future for the baby boomers first and foremost, because they're the greatest generation currently that we're going to care for. And they look back and say, wow, we did serious illness care amazing during this next 10, 15 year period. That's why I'm that's why I get up every morning, do this, and thank you. This has actually been really fun. I'm like, I hope my guests have as much fun as I just had with you asking me these questions.

Cordt Kassner 33:31

Wow, I love the the information you're sharing with us. And you know, I I think we, we, all of us, the the capital W, you know, everybody involved in hospice and palliative care have a lot to be proud of for the accomplishments that have occurred over the last you know 30, 40 years. But let's not lose sight that there's still a lot of challenges, excuse me, a lot of challenges in front of us. And there's there's more work to be done. And what an exciting time to participate. Chris, thank you so much.

Hope, Legacy, And Subscribe

Chris Comeaux 34:04

Yeah, what an exciting time. So, our listeners, we appreciate you. Please make sure you subscribe. And then hopefully, this is one you go check us out on YouTube, because this is one where the visuals will help. You know, at the end of each episode, we create a quote, a visual. The idea is to create a brain bookmark. Like we're going for a tattoo. This will be a really fun one as well. We're hoping that it sticks. Make sure you subscribe, pay it forward. This is one I hope that you pay forward to your board of directors, your leadership team, even amongst each other as staff. I really mean this to be an inspiration for us to navigate the future. You know, it's easy for us to rail against the world and be frustrated by things. Lest be the change that we wish to see in the world. So thanks for listening to TCN Talks, the Anatomy of Leadership. And here's our brain bookmark to close today's show.

Jeff Haffner 34:47

"The prescription for the challenges we face is Grow, No, Flow, Sow R&D." by Chris Comeaux.