Building Bridges Between Policy and Practice with Jon Ewing, 2025 MGMA Legislative Liaison of the Year Award Winner
Download MP3Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA, host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We're back today spotlighting one of our twenty twenty five MGMA award winners. Today, we're gonna be talking with the recipient of the legislative liaison of the year award. And our guest today is Jon Ewing.
Daniel Williams:Jon is a chief operating officer at the Women's Clinic in Jackson, Tennessee and the current Tennessee MGMA legislative liaison. Jon's been a driving force in connecting national and state policy priorities with the day to day realities of medical group administration. Jon, we've been talking offline. I just want to welcome you to the show.
Jon Ewing:Thank you, Daniel. It's an honor to be here, and I'm still kind of in shock that I'm being interviewed for this award.
Daniel Williams:Well, that was my first question. I wanted to ask you a little bit about that. Where were you when you found out? What was that like? Were you expecting it?
Daniel Williams:Did you know you'd even been nominated?
Jon Ewing:I had no idea I had been nominated. I got a call from MGMA National from NFTY, and I asked her when she told me this, I said, Is this a hoax or someone pranking me? She said, No, you were selected as the national legislative liaison. And I said, Well, I didn't even know I had been nominated within my state. So it was very shocking.
Jon Ewing:And then I reached out to my board, which has the legislative liaison in Tennessee. I serve on a board of executives for our Tennessee MGMA. And I said, are you guys getting me back for the multitude of pranks that I've I said, Surely there are people much more qualified than me to receive an award like this. This is very honorable and it was flattering and completely took me off guard.
Daniel Williams:Right, right. Well, we want to congratulate you again for that honor and that is amazing. We're going to dig deep into that, what the legislative role is. The last few years I've had the opportunity to talk to past legislative liaison award winners and really understanding that role a lot, because I think a lot of our MGMA members aren't aware of that. So we're going to dig deeper there, But first, let's talk a little bit about your background.
Daniel Williams:You and I were having fun talking offline about that Jackson, Tennessee area. I was trying to locate it on the map in my mind because I was telling you an older brother of mine, his first job out of college, wow, about forty years ago was at the Jackson Sun, the local newspaper there. He worked there for a few years. You brought me up to speed. Tell me about the Jackson Sun.
Daniel Williams:It's not a physical copy anymore. Is that right? What's the deal with The Sun?
Jon Ewing:I think they have a few prints still, Daniel, and that's great that your brother worked for them. The Jackson's Sun was one of our main sources of advertisement. I have been with the woman's clinic here for eighteen years. So obviously just eighteen years ago, that was a key way that we advertised, that we loved to have articles about our clinic or our physicians or healthcare in there. But the Jackson Sun's still online and people do go and look at it and they're still one of the great media sources here in Jackson.
Jon Ewing:It's an actual an old building ten years ago, I might not have taken someone to the downtown area to show off Jackson, but they've really, as they do with many cities, have restored our downtown. And we had a tornado or a series of tornadoes come through a few years ago, and it required that we had to clean up the downtown and fix buildings. It is truly a historical area down there. And the Jackson Sun is in one of those historical buildings and has been for years. But it's a beautiful area.
Jon Ewing:And part of the area they do now, they do a out of the Jackson Sun location. You can go and have events and have at night, you can go and rent it out, rent the space because it's so pretty, and have different events with your business.
Daniel Williams:That's incredible. All right. So a little bit more about your background. Are you a native of Jackson? Where'd you grow up?
Jon Ewing:Yeah. I'm not an original native. I guess you could say I am now because I've been here for over twenty five years, but I'm originally from Arkansas. I grew up in a small town called Heber Springs, Arkansas. It's about 60 miles north of Little Rock, and it's just about three hours from Memphis.
Jon Ewing:So Memphis, Tennessee. So it's a little, lake community with a river that comes out of it. And one of our claim to fame in in Heber Springs, Arkansas is we have the world record brown trout. So there's world class trout fishing in Arkansas there. And I actually was a trout fishing guide through high school and college.
Jon Ewing:And I would take people out on little trout fishing expeditions and went to college at Harding University, which is a private school there in Arkansas. And I have a biology degree, a Bachelor of Science in biology. And I went the healthcare route through biology. So that's a little bit of the undergraduate part of my background. Then I moved to Tennessee because I got a job in healthcare.
Daniel Williams:Okay. I love that. Thank you. And if I have any need any fishing tips, I will call you up because as a kid, a couple of times we went on canoeing trips up there in that northern sort of Arkansas area and did some whitewater canoeing there. And that was just incredible.
Daniel Williams:Such beautiful country up there. Really love that.
Jon Ewing:Well, all of that northern part of Arkansas is the is the Ozark Mountains. And so if you canoed, it would have been on the Buffalo, the Spring River, Mulberry, Little Red was the one I grew up on. And so perhaps, Daniel, sometime in our future, I plan to go back there one day and again take people out on fishing trips. I still go a couple times a year and go see if the trout are still biting.
Daniel Williams:That is wonderful. I love that background because we know that everybody that I have on the show is in healthcare in one capacity or another, but you're also a human being, Jon. So we love to hear a little bit about what makes you tick. So let's talk about where the focus came. You had the biology background, then you got into the practice work.
Daniel Williams:Where did you slide into the legislative side of it? When did that bug bite you, so to speak?
Jon Ewing:Yeah. So I'll give you just a little bit more on that too. I grew up at that small town in Arkansas. My father was a small town general practice physician. And I worked in his clinic when I was in high school, and that's what we did.
Jon Ewing:I mean, back then, people would pay the physician with barter and trade sometimes because they didn't have insurance. And it's rural Arkansas. That's the way it worked. And then I went to college and got my biology degree and I started looking at different jobs in biology. And what ended up happening and how I got into this is I got into a consulting role working in healthcare administration with a company that was actually based where you are Daniel in Denver, Colorado.
Jon Ewing:And we partnered with hospitals. This company is called Medadyne and they partner with hospitals all across the nation. And I actually landed this job with my BS in biology right out of school and they hired college graduates to work in management. And so the goal was in the service industries of healthcare, they would work with environmental services, infection control, they would work with patient satisfaction. And so I got into healthcare administration that way, was Jackson, Tennessee at the hospital here and then transferred because part of it's kind of like the military with Medadyne, you transferred to promote.
Jon Ewing:So I moved to Tupelo, Mississippi with North Mississippi Medical Center, and I was 25 years old and moved up as the assistant director there. And then the director in Jackson asked me to come back and to and so then I became a director of a department in the hospital and really worked my way up in administration and then became a consultant to where as a VP I traveled. I had University of Kentucky Hospital in Lexington. I had two in New Orleans, Ochsner and West Jefferson. Then I had Cox Healthcare in Springfield, Missouri.
Jon Ewing:And I went in and consulted with these hospitals. So I did that job for probably thirteen years. And then the physicians of the women's clinic who I knew said, Would you like to get off the road and be our administrator? We're looking for a new administrator. And I kind of wanted to get off the road.
Jon Ewing:I was flying on Fridays or on Sundays and not getting in until Fridays and missing seeing time with the kids. So long story short, I've been in clinic administration for the past eighteen years here as the Chief Operating Officer. And about three years ago, I became as kind of, I call it a side hustle, the Executive Director of an Independent Physicians Alliance, which is about 25 clinics here in Jackson and surrounding areas. So I'm also overseeing that. And I was going to the local or the Tennessee MGMAs and another administrator who happened to be on the board said, We'd love for you to be our legislative liaison.
Jon Ewing:So it was a voluntold situation, Daniel
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jon Ewing:Where I got into the role and then learned all about it after.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jon Ewing:That's where the legislation began. I've always had some interest with civics, but I really learned everything from Misty Hickman, who was my mentor that was the legislative liaison before me. And really what's fortunate in the state MGMAs as well as the National is there's a great mentoring program where she trained me with what you need to do and how you need to carry this out. And really you learn through doing. And I absolutely love the role.
Jon Ewing:I've been in it for two and a half years now, almost three years, and I really love learning about what's going on with legislature. So I feel like I'm just covering too much. Why don't you ask me more questions? But that's kind of the background of how I got into it.
Daniel Williams:I love that. No, we're fellow Southerners, we're storytellers. The road may wind this way or it may wind that way. We get back to the truth and the story at some point. So
Jon Ewing:Well, so far it's all true.
Daniel Williams:That's good. Well, we were talking about fishing tales. So, you know, those can
Jon Ewing:get that the last fish didn't get a little bigger every time I tell that story.
Daniel Williams:That's for sure. So let's talk about that. So you were voluntold, so to speak, to get into this legislative side of it. What has surprised you about immersing yourself on the legislative side of things? When we talk politics, everybody immediately has an opinion.
Daniel Williams:But now somebody who is really involved in policy or at least observing and hoping to shape it in one way or another, What has surprised you about it or not surprised you about it?
Jon Ewing:Well, I think that's a great question. And I'll tell you why I love that you asked that question is because when I got into this role, Misty told me we really have to be neutral and bipartisan. We're very careful about our positions. And of course, as a human being, I have positions that I feel personally. However, during this three years, I've been extremely, extremely careful to make sure that the only position that I take is one on the side of healthcare.
Jon Ewing:And so regardless of left, right, whatever people's views are, and that was probably the most interesting, People are very quick to give you the way they feel about something in this role. And not that you are kind of a double minded man or double minded woman, but it's more of you hear what people have to say and then you try to make sure that how you articulate that back to the lawmakers is you stay very conscientious and neutral only to push forward with your, I guess, as kind of being the protagonist for healthcare improvements. And so you to kind of filter that out to determine what's best for healthcare and what we're trying to push. But you really become a lobbyist. And I guess to answer your question, what was most shocking is I didn't realize how many people are so passionate about wanting to make a difference and how many lawmakers, and I don't mean this insulting at all, but how many lawmakers don't understand the healthcare side of what we endure empathetically because they're just seeing it from the side of the lawmaker and not always when you have a lawmaker that sometimes there is a symbiotic relationship between the lawmaker and the healthcare worker because they've been in healthcare.
Jon Ewing:When that happens, you've got a true advocate working for you in healthcare. And when that happens, that's when we really try to make a difference. But most of the time, the most shocking part is that you're having to enlighten or awaken the lawmakers to what's happening out here in healthcare today.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. I'm so glad that that's the answer you gave because about fifteen years ago, I was working in the financial services industry in the media side of it. I ran a magazine that covered that. So I learned that the organization had kind of mobilized and they were going to DC and they had set up appointments with congresspeople from each state. And so I embedded myself there with that group.
Daniel Williams:And so they knocked on doors of congresspeople and then had a little bit of time assigned, but it goes exactly to what you're talking about. And it's quite remarkable, actually. This isn't to make a political statement thing, but when actually observe it, it's remarkable that anything ever gets done because I'll tell you the day we had, we had about 20 or so scheduled before us was, I'm not joking with you, a Boy Scouts organization. There was another one that was an association, I believe it was of nuns. I'm not even making these up.
Daniel Williams:And then we were the financial services industry, and then there were four more different industries. And so when we got in the room, and I'm there with pen and paper taking notes, the people who were pushing their agenda, so to speak, they didn't meet with the congressperson. They met with an intern or someone of that level who was about 22 or three right out of college. He had no idea what they were saying. And that may be something that at least at some point you've observed as well, where you are really educating them on the very basics of your topic, at least trying to bring them up to speed.
Daniel Williams:And then you're competing with the Boy Scouts and the nuns and everybody else. So I wanted to share that story because yours may be a little bit more advanced because y'all are entrenched a little bit. But what is it as far as if any of that resonated or it sounded like a tall tale, I promise it's all true. What is your experience been? Have you gone to DC or are you going to Nashville?
Daniel Williams:Where are you going when you talk to someone who's in Congress or someone of that ilk?
Jon Ewing:Well, I'll go directly to the in Tennessee, our legislature is called the General Assembly. And I have not been I've been to DC, but I didn't go to DC to lobby. But specifically, we go and I say we meaning as the legislative liaison for MGMA in Tennessee, I also serve on the Tennessee Medical Association. And so what's interesting about that is typically it's a group of doctors that the Tennessee Medical Association is asked to work and they serve as lobbyists and delegates to talk to Congressmen and women in Tennessee. And then even on the federal level, need to, but we'll have MGMA members that are on the administrative side.
Jon Ewing:So, and the doctors will use us as reference points to talk about the business side of things, to talk about reimbursement. So fortunately, one of our responsibilities and one of mine as the legislative liaison is to go to what's called in the General Assembly for Tennessee and Nashville, Doc on the Hill. So I don't know if that happens in every state or something similar. I'm a little naive to that with what happens in other states. But I can tell you that that entire day, the state senators and state house men and women are listening to healthcare people talk about healthcare matters.
Jon Ewing:So that day they're focused on what are the healthcare topics that are current. And it doesn't mean that the we'll actually attend part of the assembly, so we may go to the Senate and hear something they're debating, and it may have nothing to do with healthcare for the day. But when the congressmen and women are in their offices, they have interviews scheduled with those of us to talk about that. And so, fortunately, I'm not in there competing with the Boy Scouts. Did see a group of, and this is correlate with your story, did see a group of people trying to help with improving the roads in Tennessee.
Jon Ewing:They were pushing that that day. But it was interesting because I can recall one representative that I talked to, and we were talking in my business, which is women's health, we were talking about the reimbursement for delivery of a baby. And in Tennessee, we've got TennCare, which is the Medicaid version of, that's what we call it, TennCare. This is not meant to be discriminatory with what pay is, but it's pitiful what the provider gets paid with TennCare. And I was without having collusion, I was explaining to the congressmen that what we get paid on the commercial side versus what we get paid with the Medicaid side in Tennessee with many times a higher risk for the baby, for the mother.
Jon Ewing:It was terrible. And he had no idea that there was such a disparaging difference between what the payment was. So that was an opportunity to help a congressman to be able to hear empathetically what's going on. And I said, and then I've got to recruit physicians into my practice to come deliver babies that are going to happen. It's gonna happen regardless.
Jon Ewing:And they've got to want to come do this in the state of Tennessee. And this is a little bit bigger, Daniel, but what I don't want is someone to get their training in Tennessee, their medical license. And because we've got this TennCare or the reimbursement that they to evolve and migrate to another state. I want to keep the Tennessee doctors here. But because of that, maybe an obstetrician gynecologist goes to another state cause they need to have an adequate reimbursement with where they go.
Jon Ewing:That's one small snippet of things that we do with being an advocate out there, a lobbyist for trying to make a difference in healthcare.
Daniel Williams:Right. And to reiterate what you just said, you were educating that congressperson. They had no idea, right? Is that the understanding that they didn't know Yeah,
Jon Ewing:we told them, we don't look at what the The provider isn't looking at the insurance of the patient that's in front of them. But it's only right that everybody deserves to have some good healthcare. And if you're having a baby born, pay the doctor for doing their work. So there's a huge difference between what the best commercial pay may be for a delivery. And the way that worked, Daniel, is all of the prenatal care doesn't get paid until the delivery happens.
Jon Ewing:So 20 visits you may have in your doctor's office, it all comes when the baby's born is when you get paid. So you've got to wait that time to do that. And sometimes the amount that you're paid barely covers the cost of the nurses that were attending the doctors. So that's just a snippet of things that we're talking about in current legislation to try to make a difference.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. And I'm so glad you were able to give that particular example because there is an education that takes place. Because let's be real, was at a conference yesterday and there was a research study that was done on the level of trust consumers have with different industries. Healthcare actually is pretty high up there. Congress is the lowest.
Daniel Williams:It's last. And they're an easy target to bash in all of this. But then when you meet with someone face to face and you understand what they're you know, taking politics out of it completely, but when see what they're faced with in being educated on different topics, when they're being different lobbyists or pushing different agendas to them, you go, wow, I mean, I do have some sympathy there for what they have to deal with. And then from your side of it, as that legislative liaison, you see the task in front of you in educating them as well.
Jon Ewing:Yeah. I'm glad you said that. And one the things that I know that you guys had mentioned for me to bring up was how do you educate the rest of MGMA members or other administrators on how to talk about this? And what I said is you start with a common interest with your legislatures. And it can start with your local, your mayor, your people that may be running for state Congress or the US Congress or Senate, and you start having a conversation with those people.
Jon Ewing:And what's interesting is that if you go in with an approach that's angry and dogmatic, it's regardless of your psychology background, somebody's gonna shut you off. So that's not the approach for a legislative liaison. You go in and find common ground. And once you get an empathy where both of you are understanding, then push your agenda some, well, this is why we're trying to make a difference. Because you can imagine when you're talking about the Boy Scouts, when you're talking about roadwork that needs to happen, when you're talking about a convent that's trying to be improved, whatever it may be.
Jon Ewing:And then let's throw in healthcare on top of that. This congressman or woman is getting hit from every angle and you know, their head nodding, but when you make a difference is when you get in touch with them with something that like this is going to affect you and your family. Your mother, your father, your wife, your husband, your child, and we all need healthcare. And so that's why when you can get that touch, I was looking at some research, Daniel, that in the year 20.... let's see, by 2030, we're going to be 40,000 physicians short in The United States. Forty thousand.
Jon Ewing:And this is not to be a sensationalist. That's the reality based on actuaries extrapolating that. Our baby boomers, which is our largest population, will all of them will be in Medicare age by 2030. Everybody. So that's going to go from 68 million people that are in Medicare to 80 million people that are in Medicare.
Jon Ewing:And part of my job is to know a little something about the big beautiful bill, to know a little something on the national level, to know what's happening on the state levels and how that's affecting that. What are we going to do about Medicare finances in the future? How are we going to handle that? What's that going to mean for the 40,000 physicians we're going to be short and a greater population of people because the older we are, the more sick we get. And we've got to take care of these folks.
Jon Ewing:And we've got to think about that. And so those are the things that we hit to talk about is like, don't just look at balancing a budget today. Think about what I call it a chess game. In checkers, you think you're just a few moves out. In chess, you're thinking five or six moves out, and you're trying to think about what they're doing.
Jon Ewing:I need people to think about chess moves for 2040, 2050. Let's make a better world.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. In that statement, you explained to me why I'm so bad at chess. I'm doing the move that I'm doing. So I'm supposed to be thinking five or six moves ahead. Well, thank you, Jon, for explaining that
Jon Ewing:to Well, it's a lot more complex than that and there's much more people much smarter than I that are really good at chess.
Daniel Williams:Well, in the remaining time that we have, talk about you and the role that you've had as a legislative liaison. What role are you well, let's break it down this way. Are you interacting with other legislative liaisons from other states and or our government affairs team in DC? Where are you getting some of the information that you have so you can be better prepared to then present that to your legislators?
Jon Ewing:Well, kudos to MGMA National. I mean, there are video conferences that I attend. And at the end of those, we have questions. One of the ones that we had recently, and this is something that I carry back to the other, we call them local chapter legislative liaisons. I typically get the best audience with them on the state level when we have, we typically have two conferences a year and one's in the spring, one's in the fall.
Jon Ewing:And then I get to talk to those other legislative liaisons. But for the national one, MGMA is really good about telling us what's happening out there, communicating that. For instance, they ask over 100 of us to say, How many of you in your practices are using extra man hours for prior authorizations? And they immediately popped up from just that question with 100 people that we were 90%, all of us said that we were using extra man hours we'd never used before with sitting on hold trying to get a prior authorization, which happens to be a huge topic in Tennessee government as well as in national government. So back to your question, the video conferences, I go to local chapters.
Jon Ewing:Many of my peers will ask me to speak through a video conference or to come to one of their local chapters. I made a PowerPoint, which was I tried to not sound like I was insulting anyone. I said, we're going back to a civics lesson, and you had the little bill cartoon guy that goes through. And so we watched how the bill works. And then we talked about how you can make a difference with that.
Jon Ewing:So a lot of it are side conversations at the conferences where you're having dinner and you're talking about the matters that are affecting these practices and physicians. And others are video conferences, attending in person local chapters and doing presentations with what's happening. When I first started, I was a neophyte and very naive about what was happening out there now, I can communicate about what others tell me too that are happening in their areas.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Last question. For anybody that's listening, they might be at that stage where you were several years ago, like, gosh, I don't know about being a legislative liaison. I don't know if that's right for me, but you've done it now and you've really made it on that personal level. So if you want to share with our listeners how it's affected you on a personal level by being someone who is enacting change, getting in front of people, talk about that.
Jon Ewing:Yeah. Thanks, Daniel. And I definitely wanna be an advocate of encouraging others. I had a professor tell me one time that leaders create leaders, and that is kind of the ethos that we try to live by. So I feel even with this interview today is challenging people that don't be afraid and don't cower away from the word legislature, that even if you've not had any government experience, the government appointed people or voted in people, they want people that are real, that can tell them true stories that are happening out there.
Jon Ewing:So make a difference because you're passionate, not because you have a stereotypical want to be part of politics. Go to make a difference with helping healthcare. Play the chess game of looking forward into the future, hearing from other people and then being essentially what we are Daniel, is we're being advocates for other people. Within your clinics, you're an advocate for the patient and you're an advocate for your providers. In this role, you're an advocate for improvement in healthcare.
Jon Ewing:And so that's my greatest challenge to anyone else is don't shy away from it. Learn from others. Mentor someone else if you've been a legislative liaison. Someone has a little dabble of interest, let them run with it because the heart of a volunteer, it's not like we get paid anything for this. We do it because we love to make a difference in a profession that we're passionate about.
Daniel Williams:All right. Well, Jon Ewing, thank you for making a difference as a legislative liaison and MGMA's Legislative Liaison of the Year. Thank you so much.
Jon Ewing:No, I can't believe that. Thank you, Daniel, for taking the time to interview, and it was nice to hear a little of your background. What's your brother doing now, by the way?
Daniel Williams:He is a lawyer. He's a corporate lawyer, so that's where he's gravitated to.
Jon Ewing:Well, thanks for taking the time to do this, and I hope that through this avenue with National MGMA that someone else will realize that you can make a difference out there and try to do that.
Daniel Williams:Absolutely. Well, Jon Ewing, thank you so much. And for, anybody listening, Jon will, along with me, we'll be in Orlando for the Leaders Conference, and we hope to see you all there. It's going to be September 28 through October 1 in Orlando. Go to mgma.com/leaders where you can learn more and you can register today.
Daniel Williams:Thank you all so much.
