‘Good data yields good decisions': Honoring Dave Gans, 2025 MGMA Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Download MP3Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA, host of the MGMA Podcast Network. Today, we are spotlighting our most prestigious MGMA award, and that is our MGMA Lifetime Achievement Award. And it is such an honor to share with you who our Lifetime Achievement Award winner is. If you've been part of MGMA, you may have heard this name before because our our guest today and our Lifetime Achievement Award winner is Dave Ganz.
Daniel Williams:Now, Dave is a retired senior fellow of industry affairs with MGMA. He's also a member of the board of directors for the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care. And for decades, Dave has been one of those most trusted voices in medical practice management. We're going to get into that story on Dave about his mentorship, his role at MGMA, and all kinds of other things. I don't wanna give it all away right now.
Daniel Williams:Dave, welcome to the show.
David N. Gans:Thank you so much, Daniel.
David N. Gans:You I'm just pleased and so honored to be here.
Daniel Williams:Well, it is an honor for me to get to interview you here. You have also been an MGMA podcast host over the years. You focused on executives, And that is just one inkling of things that you've done related to MGMA. So let's talk first. We're going to cover as much ground as we can today.
Daniel Williams:As you and I were joking, we probably could have done about an eight hour podcast or a podcast series talking about your history here. This is only part one. This is part one of the series. So let's talk about that achievement award first. What have you been floating?
Daniel Williams:What has it been like since you learned that you had been honored with this?
David N. Gans:I'm overwhelmed. Yeah. Literally. I had a wake up call a week ago Tuesday to inform me of the award. I was unaware of anything prior.
David N. Gans:I've admired healthcare leaders who were the previous recipients, and I never imagined that one day I would be among them. And now I'll be included in the company. It's humbling and it's meaningful. Especially honored to receive the award as an MGMA staff member because I know their previous recipients, and they were distinguished practice executives, healthcare leaders, physicians, and I'm just so pleased to be among their company. I want to thank MGMA, its board of directors, and the membership for the recognition.
David N. Gans:I am, again, overwhelmed and joyful that my contribution has been recognized, and I want to continue to help the association any way I can. Now, my only sadness is that my wife, Joan, excuse me. Yeah. It's not here to share the moment. We were married forty nine years when she passed away four years ago.
David N. Gans:She was my greatest supporter. And I know she would have been so proud to see if she may honor my contributions.
Daniel Williams:Absolutely.
David N. Gans:Yeah.
Daniel Williams:Well, thank you so much. I know you and I have talked about your wife before and yeah. Anything, this is a very human experience here to be part of that. And so yeah.
David N. Gans:Well, I'd be
Daniel Williams:tearing up on the stage. Exactly. Yep. Exactly. Thank you so much for your vulnerability and your humanity here.
Daniel Williams:Thank you. Really appreciate that. So, Dave, at MGMA, you are considered an institution here. And on a personal note, I interviewed with MGMA seven years ago. And when I was preparing for my interview to be hired at MGMA, I went out and started doing research.
Daniel Williams:And one of the things that I landed on was in a podcast interview you had done where you were providing the history of MGMA. You were going back, I believe you can correct me on this because you are the MGMA historian, I think all the way back to 1926. Is that correct? That is correct. Tell us about that.
Daniel Williams:How in the world did you become sort of this MGMA historian? Well, first you
David N. Gans:know, well, I gotta start. MGMA was founded in 1926.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
David N. Gans:22 managers got together in Madison, Wisconsin, and they had such an enjoyable time. They learned a lot. They met people who had like experiences. They decided they needed to do the same thing next year, and they did. Yeah.
David N. Gans:And the year after that. And that eventually became the Medical Group Management Association. So the twenty twenty five Leadership Conference is the organization's ninety ninth year. Well, I came to MGMA in 1979 as a graduate student intern. So I've been a witness to MGMA's history for half of its history.
David N. Gans:And I've had the opportunity to personally know many of the founding members and also, you know, the leaders who made the organization what it is today. So this was the opportunity, you know, I've been part of its history. Yeah. And I, you know, I like to say I know the high points and maybe some points where we have had to struggle and we've overcome those challenges. I also know where those few bones are buried.
David N. Gans:The skeletons in the closet that says, okay, well, some things are best forgotten.
Daniel Williams:That's right.
David N. Gans:All right, but we need to celebrate what we do have. Yeah. And we have a great history in the organization.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Well, I don't think the history of MGMA can be written without a couple of chapters. Dave Ganza's name owned those chapters. So let's talk about that. When did you first hear about MGMA?
Daniel Williams:You said you came in as a student intern. What was that introduction to MGMA?
David N. Gans:Well, my connection to MGMA came almost by chance.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
David N. Gans:Alright? My first career was I was in the United States Army in the Medical Service Corps, and I had ten years of active duty. And I was at the time stationed at Fitzsimmons Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. And I had looked at my long term plans. My wife and I talked about what we wanted to be as as our for our career and our family.
David N. Gans:And we thought, well, you know, this was time for me to go back to school. So I applied University of Colorado to the graduate program in health administration, and I was accepted. So I left active duty, remained in the army reserves. So I had a parallel career for thirty one years in the military, retiring in December 2000 as a colonel in the Medical Service Corps, Army Reserve, and having had just a parallel career, but also one that gave me great perspective into care delivery and managing physicians and clinicians and how they can best deliver patient high quality patient care. Now but my military experience said, you know, I've really worked in a group practice.
David N. Gans:So I said, you know, I share this interest with the program director because there's the program had a requirement. It was a much more traditional program than what you see in today's education, you know, that where we did a three month summer internship and two nine month, you know, half, you know, years of class. Right. And but doctor Lee Kaiser, the program director, encouraged me to contact MGMA. Says, you know, there's a small organization located on South Colorado Boulevard that may be of interest.
David N. Gans:Well, it was. I'll say. And I'm deeply grateful to doctor Mary Alice Krill, who is the director of research at the time, and Al Princke, is actually the person who hired me. And I was an intern in June 1979. Following that summer, I continued as a full time student.
David N. Gans:I worked part time at MGMA. I attended my first MGMA Annual Conference in 1979 in San Francisco at my expense. Wow. I went to well, I ended up working for staff because I was on the staff, but I was there to get the experience as a student on what is this organization and what is group practice. And that convinced me on group practice as a career choice.
David N. Gans:March 1980, there was a job opportunity in the MGMA Center for Research to manage a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation that was to develop a financial management handbook for medical groups who are going to be involved in capitation contracts, because capitation and the whole concept of prepaid care was new at the time and organizations needed to understand what did they need to do? How can they make this care delivery model work for their organization and to be successful? So I had that opportunity and then continued to have the added responsibility of bringing the MGMA surveys in house and taking full responsibility to conduct the MGMA surveys and the data products that it developed.
Daniel Williams:Wow. No. I didn't realize you started on that data side so soon in the career.
David N. Gans:Day one. I actually on my internship, I did a I earlier in the year, the the organization had collected data on academic practices Right. But didn't know what to do with it. So one of my responsibilities was to take completed surveys Okay. Questions in paper and analyze them.
David N. Gans:Well, I key entered the data Mhmm. Into key punch cards and the tech the state of the art technology. Right. Analyzed the information, wrote the report, and people thought, well, if he could do that, he could do he could do the other surveys. Right.
David N. Gans:And do them well. Well, that was how I started.
Daniel Williams:That is incredible. So in the military, did you have a background in any kind of data analysis, or is it just a happy convergence here that got you there?
David N. Gans:Well, actually, I had a financial background. Okay. I was I was trained as a logistics officer, but at one time, my responsibility included managing the military. The term is called a stock fund, which at the time was a 10,000,000 fund
Daniel Williams:Okay.
David N. Gans:To account for the expenditures at the Fitzsimons Medical Center and all the equipment and supplies that were used. So I had a a background that dealt with finance and financing and managing fine and managing large budgets, which contributed to you know, of course, a lot of the work most of that at the time was done literally on a Frieden calculator Mhmm. Mechanical because this predated
Daniel Williams:Right.
David N. Gans:You know, computer systems that were used other than in the mainframe environment. So this was this was a different world at the time. Wow.
Daniel Williams:You have seen so much change in technology in healthcare over the course of your career, but I wanna go back to that data analysis, the benchmarking. When I started back in 2018, so that just kind of dates it there, you are already known as the go to guy in data analysis, benchmarking. You'd already written a book on benchmarking. Talk about that, how you not only took it from, as you said, from day one, but then continued to evolve MGMA's role really in health care and practice management as far as being a company that's known for its data.
David N. Gans:Right. Well, I had the responsibility the first few years literally by myself to Well, manage the it was a it was a smaller environment. Okay. And fewer and fewer data products at the time. I had the opportunity to hire our first full time employee, one, to deal with surveys, and then we expanded into a department.
David N. Gans:And as my career evolved with MGMA, my jobs changed. I was the first director for what we now call the Data Solutions Group. And so I was responsible at the time we'd created the first compensation and production survey for physicians. We, of course, we took the management salary and compensation survey to new levels and of course evolved cost and revenue survey and practices and developed surveys for other groups as well. We also created the looking at how do some practices perform better than others.
David N. Gans:And we created a report that looked at the performance and practices of successful groups. How do organizations gain their success and what differentiates some practices from others who may be in the same environment but have different results? So that was it was an evolution over the years that that changed. Also in a benchmarking role, I had the opportunity, as you said, I edited I co authored a book with Greg Feltenberger, MGMA member.
Daniel Williams:That's right.
David N. Gans:And that we looked at on benchmarking, and the book focused on benchmarking. Our theme that throughout the book was good data yields good decisions.
Daniel Williams:Mhmm.
David N. Gans:You know? And understanding how your practice compares to its peers is the first step to understanding your strengths and weaknesses. Then you can use under that understanding to take your most valuable resource, which is your time with the practice administrator's time and the time of its physicians to get the best results. So you can most effectively improve the organization knowing where you stand compared to others and where your own organization is, how it is changing over time, which is that whole concept of benchmarking.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Share an example then, if you practice who is taking these benchmarking tools and processes and seeing success with it. I would love to hear one of these stories.
David N. Gans:Well, we have interviewed practices over the years asking, what do you do different? What did
Daniel Williams:you do?
David N. Gans:And one of my best examples I can give, there was an organization, it happened to be in Salt Lake City, Utah, that had had some crises. And so they the other practice administrator and had talked with his physicians and says, we need we we need to look what where we are and what we're doing. And came to the MGMA data, did a an a internal assessment comparing the information, realized where they had problems Mhmm. And then utilized some of the reports we'd created, the success stories, which we still do.
Daniel Williams:That's
David N. Gans:right. You know, saying, you know, what what contributes to success? So they went they read the success stories. They did it as a group, you know, with the the administrator and had a team of some of his staff, but also some of the nursing clinicians and couple of the providers to say, what how can what can we learn from this? Yeah.
David N. Gans:And they modeled changes in their organization. And they said, in a year's time, we made progress. In two years' time, we were among the best. So it was a great example of using information from other organizations and taking that information, applying it in their practice, and getting the results that they had hoped. Wow.
Daniel Williams:All right. We've talked a lot about the data side, the benchmarking side, but one of the things that strikes me about you and from the very first time I ever met you is how compassionate you are for other people, how giving of your time. So when I started, I keep using me as a reference because I wanna make this personal as well of what kind of person you are. I started in May 2018, and I asked my boss, Andy Swanson, at the time. I said, what should I do?
Daniel Williams:And he said, go shadow some people at MGMA. Go downstairs and shadow Dave Ganz for a little while. We had set up an appointment, went down to your workspace down there on the First Floor, and you were, you may or may not remember this, but you were preparing for a presentation. You were a co presenter, and you were walking the person step by step very patiently. You were fielding questions from them.
Daniel Williams:I don't know who you presented with in 2018. But There were many. There were many. So in this particular case, y'all were going through a slideshow, a PowerPoint. Yep.
Daniel Williams:And you were just so patient with your time, and you were the same way with me. I had a thousand questions, for you, and you were ready to answer a thousand and one. What is it about you that has that mentoring capacity where you really do like to be with people and mentor them?
David N. Gans:Well, thank you. Well, being honest, helping others and witnessing their success has been one of the most rewarding aspects of the career. You know, knowing that that I've been able to influence and help people solve their issues and solve their problems and make better decisions is a tremendous reward. I've never considered myself too busy to help someone even though it meant extending my workday.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Yeah.
David N. Gans:I remember conversations with our HR vice president about the workday at the association. I said, well, I could probably cut back to forty five to fifty hours. You know? Yeah. He says, well, you know, sometimes you you you do what you what what needs to be done for the organization.
David N. Gans:Over the years, many of the people I've supported have re have returned the favor. They reinforced to me that how MGMA is a collaborative and reciprocal organization. You know, what what you give comes back to you. And I've always felt the time and energy I invested helping others brought far better far greater rewards to me than I could have achieved otherwise.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. You and I drove over here together to the studio here at Brand Viva. We were over at MGMA and we were chatting because we had both been on the road a little bit. You were in Chicago. I was in Dallas.
Daniel Williams:We were just crisscrossing at other organizations where we were speaking and interacting with people. What has that role been like to be on boards, to be a public speaker, to hear the voices of other people? Talk about what that's been like for you in your career and to be able to learn from others and to help others.
David N. Gans:That external perspective is critical, you know, because we don't work in isolation, you know, that we don't live in isolation. We live in this broader environment, and you need to get exposure to what other peep others are doing. Also, you need to understand the issues that they may have. Travel does that. And the opportunity to be at meetings with other people to share their interpretation of what the speakers may be saying is an important element of learning as well because you gain from their perspective.
David N. Gans:This is the value of collaboration and the value of getting other others insights into what they see and how they how they planned to respond in the future. So I gained from that.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
David N. Gans:And you do that by being outside of your normal comfort zone.
Daniel Williams:Let's see. We've got time for a couple more questions. And as you and I were joking again, that we could spend about eight hours just doing part one. So I'm gonna be very choosy with what I ask you about. So let's think about those practice administrators who are listening now.
Daniel Williams:And I want you to just think back and think about what advice you would give them, because there's so many decisions to make. And even though technology makes things easier, it also kind of speeds things up and can make them more complex as well. So what is some advice you would dispense to those practice leaders and things you would wanna share with them?
David N. Gans:Number one, healthcare is changing. That is not a surprise. No. And it's changing faster than ever.
Daniel Williams:Right.
David N. Gans:Okay. New technologies, innovative applications are solving old problems. Oh, and they're creating new ones too. That's true. You know, practice leaders, they need to be aware of what is happening in our industry, how outside organizations are responding to current issues.
David N. Gans:Now, one of the key elements of benchmarking is learning from out of industry organizations. In other words, how do they solve problems? And then you can apply their solutions to our environment in healthcare and practice management. Health health care in general and group practice specifically is in a critical time. Increased costs.
David N. Gans:We know we know that. We have staff shortages. Okay. We have lower payments. This is a crisis. We cannot solve tomorrow's problems with today's response or yesterday's response especially. So we have to look what how do we innovate? Okay. Technologies like AI have the potential to reduce costs, improve patient service, and enhance outcomes only if we apply them in the appropriate way.
David N. Gans:How do we do that? We don't have an easy answer, but this is this is what we have to think about. How do we apply new technologies, new concepts to solve our current issues, and we'll get new ones, which keeps our business, you know, you know, you know, keeps keeps us very active and say Right. What are we gonna do? We you know, we have to solve new problems.
David N. Gans:Amid the changes, we don't want to lose sight of the core purpose. Why are we here? Why do group practices come to work? Why do our physicians and our clinicians, why are they in the office? They're to provide high quality care and focus on the needs of the patient.
David N. Gans:So you cannot get lost for the so called losing the sight of the forest because we're in the midst of the trees and in the underbrush. Yeah. Practice administrators had the critical role of managing systems in the organization. Okay. They need to manage the systems to optimize patient care.
David N. Gans:Okay? Allow the practice providers to focus their attention on the patient. That is something we don't want to forget. We want to focus on how can we provide the best quality of care to our patients? How can we provide a safe working environment for our staff?
David N. Gans:And how to reward our providers for the work that they're doing. It's not an easy task, but that's our role.
Daniel Williams:Love that. I love that. Alright. The last question, and this is a fun one. One of the interesting things about you, we were talking about this on our ride over, is that you stay mentally active.
Daniel Williams:You were in a board meeting in Chicago just a couple of days ago, but you also love adventures. And every time I bump into you, you're about you're either planning, another adventure or you're just back from another adventure. So you have something coming up. That's why we moved up this interview. What's going on?
David N. Gans:Well well, today is Tuesday.
Daniel Williams:That's right.
David N. Gans:Alright. In two days, I am on a flight to Copenhagen. Right. And I am about ready to leave with friends and on a fourteen day bike ride. Wow.
David N. Gans:We're gonna we're gonna ride from Copenhagen to Oslo, Norway.
Daniel Williams:Right.
David N. Gans:And I've always felt that the best way to experience a country is from the perspective of a bicycle seat. The pace is appropriate. Mhmm. You know, your eye when you're traveling in car at 70 miles an hour, you don't, you don't, you see the white, you see the asphalt ahead of you. Yeah.
David N. Gans:Right. And the cars around you.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
David N. Gans:But you're not looking at anything else. Mhmm. Because you have to be safe. Yeah. On a bicycle, it's a slower pace.
David N. Gans:Right. And if you wanna stop and smell the roses, the roses are right there. Yeah. It's an easy stop. So this will be my twenty seventh bike trip in Europe.
David N. Gans:I've cycled throughout Italy and Spain and Portugal, Greece and France. Mhmm. And this will be my first time in Scandinavia.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
David N. Gans:So I'm looking forward to the trip. My most recent trip was in June. I had a wonderful vacation in Champagne and Burgundy provinces of France. It was wonderful cycling. We had good weather.
David N. Gans:Know, cycling through rural roads and vineyards cannot be beat.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
David N. Gans:Great scenery, good food, fine wine. It was a wonderful vacation. I'm looking forward to doing it again.
Daniel Williams:I have to follow-up. On a fourteen day bike ride, do you pedal up to a hotel or an Airbnb, or do you sleep under the stars? What do you do?
David N. Gans:This is civilized. That this is with a bike tour group called the name of the group is called Experience Plus. They've been in the business for fifty years.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
David N. Gans:And they are well familiar with with what the American tourists wants. So we stay in good hotels. Nice. We have fine meals. K?
David N. Gans:We have full support of of of our guides and a van and a van to help with your luggage. Sure. And should you find that last hill too much or if it's raining too hard, you can always get in the van and go to the next place.
Daniel Williams:Oh, that's wonderful.
David N. Gans:And each night, you know, you're gonna have people take help take care of you.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. That is wonderful. Well, you've been taking care of us and the MGMA family for forty three years. Where are we in the Well, years
David N. Gans:I actually had, well, I retired from MGMA in 2022. Okay. Alright? So I have basically forty two years of employment, one year of being an intern. Right.
David N. Gans:And I've now been retired for four years.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
David N. Gans:Well, I still continue to work for MGMA in the context. I still provide my column that I do the data mine to the MGMA connection. I've been able to serve in other ways for the association. So I look at, know, I no longer work cause I'm not getting paid. That doesn't mean I'm still not assisting the organization fulfill its goals.
David N. Gans:Yeah. And I look forward to continuing to do so.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Well, Dave, we are grateful for you and grateful for all the work and just the joy you've brought to MGMA and its members. So thank you so much.
David N. Gans:Thank you. This Dan, this has been a a most enjoyable experience Yeah. And a good interview. And I wanna thank MGMA, its its board of directors, and the membership for the recognition. I am, again, overwhelmed and joyful to be that my contribution has been recognized, and I want to continue to help the association any way I can.
Daniel Williams:Well, thank you for that. So everyone, Dave Ganz is our 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award winner. He will be recognized during the general session at the twenty twenty five MGMA Leaders Conference in Orlando. That is going to be Monday, September 29 from 09:30 to 11AM. That's eastern time.
Daniel Williams:That's where Orlando is in that eastern time zone. So we look forward to celebrating his remarkable contributions to the field of medical practice management there. So if you want to learn more, if you want to attend, go to mgma.com/leaders where you can learn more, where you can register. And Dave and I look forward to seeing you there in Orlando. So until then, thank you so much for being MGMA podcast listeners.
