What Did Healthcare Optimize Away? The Business Case for Humanness
Healthcare has spent decades getting better at measuring, scheduling, automating, and optimizing care.
But what if some of that progress has quietly removed the very thing patients value most?
In this episode of The Operator, Jimmy McKay and Larry Benz examine the business case for “optimizing humanness”, treating warmth, attention, empathy, trust, and human connection with the same seriousness operators give productivity, technology, and financial performance.
Larry argues that these aren't merely soft skills. They can influence whether a patient accepts treatment, returns for another visit, refers a friend, or disappears without ever rebooking. They can also shape clinician retention, leadership effectiveness, culture, and burnout.
The conversation moves from individual patient interactions to the design of entire healthcare organizations, asking whether the pursuit of efficiency can unintentionally eliminate the moments where trust is actually created.
Key ideas include:
• Why healthcare tends to solve human problems with operational tools
• The difference between optimizing what is measurable and what is memorable
• Why patient anxiety may be the true chief complaint
• How human connection can influence case acceptance, referrals, and retention
• Why the final sixty seconds of a patient visit matter
• What Google reviews can reveal about your organization's strongest people
• Why “soft skills” should be trained like clinical competencies
• How rigid workflows and scripts can eliminate valuable human moments
• Why psychological safety and emotional intelligence matter in healthcare leadership
• Three practical ways operators can begin operationalizing humanness
• Why culture needs metrics, accountability, reinforcement, and design — not another slogan
• How better human connection may benefit both business performance and clinician burnout
The central question isn't whether healthcare should stop optimizing. It's whether we've been optimizing the wrong things.
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