Episode 170: Why AI Is Going To Help The Healthcare System With Traci Granston, MD
AI in healthcare is transforming the way medicine is practiced, and few understand both its potential and its limits like Dr. Traci Granston. From the precision of competitive figure skating to the demanding world of orthopedic surgery, Dr. Granston has built her career on discipline, resilience, and reinvention. A trailblazer in a field once dominated almost entirely by men, she spent over two decades in private orthopedic practice before making a bold pivot into the world of medical technology. Now serving as SVP of Strategy at a high-growth startup, she leverages AI to streamline processes like prior authorizations—cutting delays and boosting efficiency—while championing the irreplaceable human touch in patient care. In this conversation, she shares her inspiring career journey, the realities female surgeons face, and how patients can take an active role in shaping their own health outcomes.
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Why AI Is Going To Help The Healthcare System With Traci Granston, MD
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs, where I interviewed Traci Granston. She is an award-winning surgeon, executive leader, and corporate board member passionate about supplying her unique mix of strategic and governance expertise to organizations targeting emerging opportunities within the healthcare sector.
She has distinguished service on three boards to date, both corporate and not-for-profit, in addition to roles serving on corporate DEI and technology advisory committees. She has twenty-plus years of experience in healthcare practice leadership, in addition to service as an SVP of strategy for a high-growth startup in the medical technology space.
She is an expert in machine learning and AI usage within the healthcare space, an author and sought-after thought leader on AI-related ethics, risks, opportunities, and responsible use, and a career-long thought leader and innovator. During this episode, we talk about how she went from being an orthopedic surgeon and transitioned to managing AI in healthcare. She discussed her career journey from competitive figure skating and medical training to her role.
Traci shared insights about her experience as a female surgeon, including her decision to leave private practice for an executive MBA program and her work using AI to improve the healthcare processes. I hope that you enjoy this interview that I had with Traci. There are so many great nuggets in there for you to take away. If it resonates with you, please share, like, and make sure that your colleagues also get to check out this episode and understand how it could help them in their lives as well.
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Orthopedic Surgeon To AI Innovator: Dr. Traci Granston's Journey
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs. I’m very excited to have Dr. Traci Granston with us. Traci, before we get started, do you want to give the audience a little background on yourself?
Thanks for having me. I’m an orthopedic surgeon, which in and of itself sometimes is a bit surprising. Most orthopedic surgeons are male, so being a female orthopedic surgeon in and of itself is surprising. I had the ideal and perfect career, and chose to make a career pivot midlife. I have found myself in another very exciting role. Many people ask how I got to this great role now managing AI in a health tech company. It’s a bit of a windy path to get to my role.
I can’t wait to talk about this. Give us a little background on yourself. Where did you grow up? What was the occupation of your parents?
I grew up in Bellevue, Washington, which is a suburb of Seattle. It is a very small community, which is now much larger. I was a competitive figure skater when I was young and was uber competitive. I was skating against Rosalynn Sumners. For any ice skating fans, she went on to win a silver medal in the Olympics. I quit at around age eleven. This will give you some insight into my personality.
I fell in a competition and got 3rd place instead of 1st or 2nd. I didn’t get to go on to junior nationals, so I decided this sport was not for me and quit on the spot. I moved and switched over to having horses, probably the next most expensive sport. My poor parents were very supportive of anything we wanted to try. I spent a lot of time in 4-H and horses, which taught me a lot about drive and work ethic. You have to do what you say when you’ve got a horse that’s depending on you. It was a great transition at the time.
I went to college at the University of Washington. I was in a sorority. I was one of the few in my sorority that was pre-med. I would find myself having to stay in and do a physics lab on Friday morning when the rest of the sorority was out at an exchange or doing something fun. I was able to balance fun, work, and do well in my pre-med courses.
I went to medical school at Vanderbilt in Nashville. It was quite a change to move from Seattle to Nashville. I learned a lot about humidity, Southern food, and all of that. It’s my only private education experience, and my time at Vanderbilt is what created me into the physician I am. Certainly, I had some challenges at Vanderbilt, too. I was having an advisor questioning why I wanted to go into orthopedic surgery when that wasn’t a field for women, but I successfully navigated all of that.
I did my orthopedic residency at Case Western in Cleveland. I was there for six years. I did a clinical research year, as I was going to go into academic medicine, and then decided I couldn’t be all things, including being a mother, so I decided to go into private practice. I came back to Seattle and did my hand fellowship at Harborview, which is our major trauma hospital here, and then joined my practice in Seattle. I practiced there for 22 years and have made this career shift.
Let’s go backwards a little bit. Growing up, what did your parents do?
My mother is an art teacher. She was a teacher, and then an art teacher. She had a Master’s in Art History. My father was an electrical engineer, and then had his Master’s in Business. He owned his own company in the Seattle area at the time. He owned a computer data storage company. This is way back. Think about before you had your own personal computer. He would store data for people, and they would pay to store the data. When I was a kid, I would go into his office. These computers had a space below them for all the heat, and they would take up an entire room. There were these massive computers and servers.
That then morphed into a company for Microsoft, which was a direct mail marketing company. In the early days of Microsoft, when you would buy a Microsoft product, you would register the product. It would go to his company. They would keep track of the customers. When a new product would come out, they would do the marketing for it and the advertisement, and they would send it out. They started in the early days with Microsoft. He ended up retiring at a relatively young age. He sold the company, separate from the office building in Seattle. He was able to retire in his 50s.
That’s awesome. Did you have any interest in computers then?
It’s an interesting question. No one in my family was medical. When I told my dad I wanted to go to medical school, he questioned it and said, “Let me have you talk to my friend who is a pediatrician.” I thought, “That’s great.” I went to have lunch with his friend, who is a pediatrician. The whole point of my meeting with a pediatrician was to explain how difficult it is to be a physician, how hard it is, and how it’s probably not the career path for me, but it didn’t dissuade me. Once I went through that, he realized that I did have a passion for it, and it’s what I wanted to do. He was very supportive from that time forward.
Why wouldn’t he want you to go?
The Reluctant Father: Why Dr. Granston's Dad Questioned Her Medical Path
He was worried about long hours and working hard. His friends who were physicians, even back in that time, had burnout. No one in our family was medical. He had a business where I could have worked. We had a very successful family business, which was not his business. It was a universally mechanical contracting, so plumbing, electrical, and HVAC. There were a lot of other options for me. He wanted to make sure I had thought about it.
Honestly, in my undergrad time at the University of Washington, I tried all the different classes. I tried business classes. I tried engineering classes. I tried all of them to see what I liked, and I liked the basic science classes. I decided I was going to follow my passion and my dream and not have external forces tell me who I should be because I knew what I cared about.
AI In Healthcare: I just decided to follow my passion and dream, not letting external forces dictate who I should be, because I knew what I actually cared about.
I want to go back to the ice skating story because that’s interesting. Your parents were okay with you being at that level and quitting that day? How did that go?
It is an interesting story. I had the most amazing mother who supported anything we wanted and always told us we could be anything we wanted to be. From the time I was about two years old, I would skate around and wanted to watch ice skating. This is back when you had to watch it on TV when it was being shown live. We would have popcorn and watch ice skating. My grandmother was a seamstress, so she would make these beautiful ice skating costumes, even though I wasn’t skating at the time.
When I was about 4 or 5, my mom finally took me to start skating. There was a local ice rink that was up on stilts. It ended up getting condemned because it was deemed not safe for people to be skating in it due to the weight of the ice. I started very close to my home, which is 5 to 10 minutes away, but once that rink closed, we had to go to North Seattle. It was probably a 30-minute drive. My mom said, “If you want to do this, we’ll do this.”
We would get up at 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning. She would cook me a hot breakfast, and then we’d get in the car and drive up. I would skate for a few hours, and then I would come back and go to school. I would leave school early in the afternoon to go to ballet, because I also have to do ballet. It was very much an all-in kind of thing.
I was very good at the time. I was winning first place most often, so I was expected to win this competition. A couple of things happened at that competition. One, I realized that the sport itself is based on those four minutes when you’re on the ice. When you fall, even though you’ve landed that jump 287 times the week before, it doesn’t matter. It’s those four minutes only.
They’ve changed this in ice skating, but one of the judges at the time was the father of the girl who got second place. That was probably the first time I understood the concept of fairness. I thought, “This doesn’t seem right.” At that point in my life, I was also having to make decisions around how I couldn’t go to sleepovers or slumber parties because I had to get up to skate in the morning.
When my family went on a ski trip, I had to stay behind with my coach because winter for skiing is the same time as the competitive season for ice skating. One, you couldn’t get hurt skiing. Also, you couldn’t miss the competition. I was already seeing all of the life choices I was going to have to balance. Even at the age of eleven, I was able to think, “What if I even went to the Olympics and won gold? What would my life look like after that?” At the time, you would have been doing Ice Capades and traveling. I realized that that’s probably not what I want to be doing.
I loved my time ice skating. I still skate and I love it, but it was a good choice. I was very supported by my mom. Probably selfishly, she was thinking, “I don’t have to get up so early and drive you to Seattle every day.” There were so many pieces to it. I had thought about it. Even though I quit on the spot, there were a lot of things that I didn’t like about the sport. She was very supportive of me finding my passion.
A year later, my sister and I decided to get horses, which was a great choice because it forced us to think about how we were going to pay for horses. My parents made us pay for half of everything. It forced us to think about, “How are you going to make sure you have time for school and your horse? Your horse isn’t going to stop needing you to take care of it.” It taught us so many good life lessons. My mom would tell you it was probably the best choice we ever made. My dad wasn’t so thrilled with another expensive sport and making us pay for half of everything. We were young. I was probably 12 or 13. We started cleaning houses, babysitting, and all these things to support having horses.
That’s amazing. When did the medical field interest you? Where did that begin?
Probably related to the injuries from ice skating. I remember thinking it was great that you could be injured, and then someone knew it was wrong. They would tell you how you’d get better, and what they told you actually worked. I was interested there. With having horses, for a while, I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian, and then I realized that as much as I loved animals, I cared more about fixing people and getting them back to something that they enjoy, which is truly the field of orthopedics. It’s an amazing specialty where you can fix problems and get people back to doing the things that they love and are important to them.
Breaking Barriers: The Unwavering Confidence Of A Female Surgeon
That’s very cool. That was a time when there weren’t as many women going to fields like that. How did you have the confidence to do it? It sounded like you were being dissuaded from a lot of different places by your family, friends, and even an advisor. There were a lot of people telling you negative things. What was in your head that was keeping you moving forward?
I’ve thought a lot about this, and I have done some speaking about this. I was very much certain that that’s what I wanted to do. When you start in medical school, the first thing you do, at least back then, is anatomy. You’re in a cadaver lab. I was so interested in the anatomy of the hand and the extremities. I knew that that was my passion.
Whenever people would challenge me, I thought, “Why not me? Why can’t I do this? I’m going to show you that I can.” At the time, only 1% of orthopedic surgeons were women, so I understand why my advisor was saying, “Maybe this isn’t for you. Maybe you should think about it.” It’s also frustrating to think you’re going to make it and go into something.
The way that it works for matching in medical school is that you try to get interviews in the specialty you want. You interview, and then one day, you open an envelope to see if you matched. He was trying to make sure that I knew that it might be a slim chance. If you don’t match, it’s hard because you are picking up whatever is left that's open. It’s usually called a transitional year, and it’s a big bummer.
He was trying to say, “There is probably not a great chance you’re going to get a spot in orthopedics,” but I never once considered that I couldn’t do it. I knew I wanted to, so I was like, “Watch me. I’m going to do it.” I ended up matching the best program in the country. When you want to do something and that's your true passion, calling, or whatever it is, you aren’t going to let these little obstacles get in your way. You’re going to find a way to do it. It also speaks to when you’re super tired and you want to give up. If you care about it, you won’t give up. You’ll keep doing all the things you need to do to get to your goal.
AI In Healthcare: When you truly want to do something, when it's your passion or calling, you won't let little obstacles get in your way. You'll find a way.
Do you think your mom’s encouragement helped you have that inner confidence?
Very much. My mom, unfortunately, has passed away, but she was one of those incredible people who believed that you could be anything you wanted. My sister has a pretty phenomenal career as well. We were supported by her at such a young age. She was also a substitute Art teacher in high school. We would have various people living with us temporarily who were struggling or having a hard time. When we were younger, we were annoyed. We were like, “This person is living here now,” but it goes to show you how much my mom believed in people.
When my mom passed away, people reached out to me, whom I had never even known, on Facebook, saying, “I want you to know that your mom had a significant impact in my life and changed the trajectory of my life because she let me live at your house for two weeks,” or whatever it was. She is one of those special people who always saw the good in humans. She encouraged my sister and me to be whatever we wanted. I attributed a lot of that to my mom very much.
It also sounds like she was a healer, too, just in a different way.
She healed people through art.
There you go. It is a path. In your private practice, you joined a practice or you started one up yourself?
I joined one. I joined a very established orthopedic practice in the Seattle area. I had a fantastic practice for 22 years. I had a very busy practice where you had to wait 4 to 6 weeks to see me. I had a full surgery schedule. The shift for me has a lot to do with the greater healthcare issues in our country. I came and did a hand fellowship at Harborview. I’m a hand specialist, but I practice in an orthopedic group. Hand surgeries are high volume but low billing. I would do 13 to 14 surgeries in a day, whereas our joint or spine surgeon might do 2 to 4 surgeries in a day. They have much more volume with patients.
I can’t bill as much as a big spine surgery, so the question was becoming, “Should I see more patients? Should I do more surgeries?” I was already doing 350 to 400 patients in the office, seeing those patients, and then doing 60 to 70 to 80 surgeries a month. I felt like I could handle that, but I didn’t want to do more. It would compromise who I was as a physician because I took time to get to know my patients and their families.
I didn’t want to be rushed. I didn’t want to move to a model where I wasn’t the one making the decision for surgery. Meaning, a mid-level would see the patient, decide on surgery, and I’d meet them on the day of surgery. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I know plenty of physicians like that model and do that, but for me, and the way that I practiced medicine, I knew my patients at a deeper level. I didn’t want to compromise that.
I decided that I would go back and get another degree, because what else would you do? I went back and got my executive MBA at the University of Washington. I purposely picked the executive MBA program the way it was structured, but there was also an opportunity to do an international immersion. It had a lot of networking opportunities. Unfortunately, I started in the fall of 2019, so my in-person experience was cut very short and turned into a remote program. It was a 2-year program, and it was 4 days a month. I didn’t get the international immersion. I didn’t get all the networking.
One of the things they focused on was making sure your LinkedIn profile was up to date. I remember the conversation very clearly with the career network management person, saying why I would update my LinkedIn profile because I’m just a surgeon. What am I going to put on there? That was the first time someone talked to me about, “What is your value proposition? What do you bring?”
I was able to say, “Don’t you manage an operating room? Don’t you understand risk? Don’t you manage profit and loss for your practice? Don’t you think about all these things?” They were like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Help me quantify that I’m more than just a surgeon. I have these other things that I also do.” We put that information on my LinkedIn profile, and a couple of weeks later, a recruiter from the company I work for reached out and said, “We might have a role you’d be interested in.” I look at all these things as an interesting timing of when things happened and how I found my way to my role.
What did you say your value proposition was?
It talked a lot about being able to make quick decisions, understanding risk, and driving good clinical outcomes for patients. Everything I ever did in practice and in my job is what’s best for patients. From that lens, it’s pretty easy to make decisions. You’re not having to make tough decisions because you always know why you’re making them and who you’re making them for.
AI In Healthcare: When you know what's best for patients, decisions are pretty easy to make.
We talked quite a bit about that. That resonated with my company because even almost five years later, that is what we are still doing. It’s a company that processes prior authorizations for insurance companies, but we are from the lens of what’s best for the patient, not necessarily what’s best for the health plan. We’re not worrying too much about the financial benefit. When you focus on what’s best for the patients, the finances follow.
The AI Revolution In Healthcare: Dr. Granston's Vision For Prior Authorization
What interested you about doing this?
I knew I was going to be leaving clinical medicine and somehow doing something in healthcare on a bigger scale. I never dreamed I would be doing prior authorization. Most physicians don’t like prior authorization and complain about it. That was not my North Star of, “I’m going to go look for this company.” When I started talking to them, understanding how they were trying to get out of the way of physicians that were providing good care, worrying about areas where they maybe weren’t or where there were some issues, and thinking about how AI can automate things, it was interesting to me to think about the impact on a broader scale. This was back in 2020.
I came on very part-time as a physician reviewer. I would be the one who would be reviewing the cases to determine if they should be approved or not for an insurance company. After a short amount of time, I started spending more hours there. A couple of years in, I was moved over to the strategy side, which is where I am. I am one of the ones who is helping train the machine, deciding for machine learning, deciding where we use AI, how we use AI, and when we use it, and trying to think about more than just the individual authorization at a single point in time.
If someone is having a problem for a while, it’s not just today when you need an authorization. Do we know what they’re going to need in 3 or 4 weeks? Do we know what they’re going to need in three months? Can we make sure that more of a second opinion model that they’re getting the right care at the right time? With that comes a whole ton of strategy and thinking. It has been a very exciting field that I would’ve never said some years ago, “This is what I’m going to do in my career.”
As far as AI and machine learning coming into the medical field, because there’s so much out there about it, whether the answers are better than a doctor and so forth, what feelings do you have about it?
The answers probably are never going to be better than a doctor because there’s the art of medicine that you can’t teach a machine. The way that we’re using it at the company and the way I think about it is, can you use it for predictable things? That’s where AI is very good, in predictable things. For example, when an authorization comes in, let’s say you’re sending in a request to have a knee replacement. We know that you have to have certain X-ray findings. You have to have done certain things. We can use the machine to go through and look through those clinical records and find all those pieces. If it finds it, it approves it right away. That, to me, is a fantastic use of AI.
What would have happened in the past is that this case would have been penned. A nurse or a physician would look at it, and it could take some hours or days to approve it. All the while, the patient is wondering if this is going to be approved. The other thing that we do is if the request is submitted, and let’s say we don’t see all the pieces, maybe you need an MRI because it’s for a spine surgeon and we don’t see it, we ask the person or the end user, “Can you submit an MRI so we can review this?” We’re looking at it in real-time and getting the stuff while we have the person on the portal.
Missing information is a huge pain point for prior authorization. It can sometimes take days. You can imagine in the old world, you would fax in a request, “There’s no MRI, but we need the MRI.” You pick up the phone and call a practice. A different person answers the phone, who has no idea what you’re talking about or why you need an MRI. They may put you on hold or leave a message. It’s back and forth like that. It can take days. That's why people will get frustrated. It’s the delay in making a decision. We’ve eliminated all those problems using AI.
What we don’t use AI for and never will be is for saying, “You shouldn’t have this procedure.” If we can’t find all the pieces of information, it falls to a nurse and then ultimately a physician to look at it. We don’t ever intend to take that away. There are very specific, unique circumstances. There may be a reason why surgery for you makes sense, versus everyone else doesn’t quite make sense. That’s the art of medicine.
There are things to consider around social demographics for patients and where they live. Do they have rides? Can they get to the care? Can they do all the things? You can never train a machine with all those pieces and parts. Automating what you can and getting out of the way of physicians is important, but making sure that we’re considering the individual characteristics of each patient, too, is important.
AI In Healthcare: Automating what you can and getting out of the way of physicians is important.
Any predictions you have for the future with it?
I do think that there’s going to be a lot of models where you see an AI physician. If you have a common cold or a sinus infection, maybe that’s okay. I probably would avoid that, in general, because the misdiagnosis can cause lots of other problems. A lot of hospitals are bumping up against the financial crisis with decreased reimbursements from Medicare and increased costs of staff, supplies, and everything else. That’s a quick way to save money, but I don’t know if that’s the right way.
The bigger question is, what are we as a country going to do about our healthcare system in general? Are we going to fix Medicare and the decreasing reimbursements? I retired a decade early from clinical practice, and I’m not alone. Several physicians are leaving because of the financial pressures. I do think the knee-jerk reaction is going to be, “We’ll stick AI in there.” We’ll use it here and there, but it’s never going to be as good.
Part of the privileges of being a physician is getting to know all the specific things about you as a patient, your family, and what matters to you. That helps determine your care plan and when it makes sense, let’s say, for an elective surgery, and when it doesn’t make sense. I don’t think we can ever train AI to understand that.
Beyond The Operating Room: Dr. Granston's Newfound Passion In Healthcare Strategy
What is it that excites you now?
I would have never dreamed I would be excited about the career I have to work at our prior auth company. I am sitting in a space where I’m managing all of the clinical strategy for the company. We’re thinking about how we go above and beyond utilization management. We were talking to CMS about regulations for AI, how we think about it, and why we think prior auth is important, but maybe not the way it’s done.
Being able to look at a massive problem within the healthcare system, solve it, and figure out how to make things better, to me, was an amazing thing. I love a hard challenge, and this is one of them. I love being part of the solution instead of the person who’s complaining about how terrible the system is. I believe in being very active in solving the problem. We can solve this problem by doing some of these creative things we’re doing with strategy, the way we’re thinking about longitudinal care of patients, and all of these things.
There’s a world where you, as a patient, we know everything about you. You’ve already had X-rays. You’ve had a knee injection. Let’s say you’ve gone to physical therapy. You don’t even need to get a prior auth because we know you’ve already done the thing. It’s already sitting out there pre-approved and ready to go when you’re ready for that. To me, that’s a great system because it means we understand who you are as a patient. We know that at some point, you’re going to need your knee replaced. You do it when you want because it’s already been approved. Your insurance company understands it’s happening.
It takes out all the pressure of, “We've got to get prior auth. We’ve got to squeeze you in before the prior auth expires. We’ve got to get this done.” It makes it, “When is it good for Amy to have her knee replacement?” Patients are always going to do best when things are in their control and when they’re scheduled around their life, versus trying to cram it in because of different reasons. I do think we’re going to have a much nicer world if we can get the overall healthcare system improved.
They’re big goals to take on, but that’s awesome. Any advice you have for patients?
Ask questions. Ask your physician, “How much are you using AI to determine my diagnosis?” Make sure the physician is asking about all the things in your personal life, “How are you sleeping? What’s your diet like? What’s your nutrition? Do you have stress at home?” All of the things that make you the person you are are important to understand your health conditions.
Things like sleep, we have undervalued sleep in the past. If you’re not sleeping, that stress from not sleeping can cause problems that are solved with sleep, not medications. Making sure they understand you holistically as a person is important. If you don’t feel like your physician is asking those questions and they want to treat an X-ray or a diagnostic imaging like an MRI or something, and they’re not treating you as a patient, I would say to get another opinion or get another physician.
AI In Healthcare: We've undervalued sleep. Stress from lack of sleep causes problems solved by sleep, not medication.
It’s hard.
It seems like all the great ones end up leaving out of frustration and doing other things. You want to find someone who’s passionate about you as a patient and cares about solving your individual problem.
Do you miss working with patients?
I 100% miss working with patients. I loved working with patients. What I don’t miss is all the financial pressures of being in a practice and ever having to think about, “I need to see more patients,” or thinking about patients as dollars. I never did that, and I never wanted to do that. I do miss patients. I miss being in the OR.
The OR is one of those great places where everyone is working seamlessly as a team. I would do a thumb osteoplasty case in less than an hour. There are lots of moving pieces to that surgery. My scrub tech would be handing me what I needed without me asking. To have that kind of a team is a special thing. The OR is a special place. People are trusting you with their lives and the outcomes of their surgeries. It’s hard to describe without being in it. I do miss that.
I don’t mean this in that I’m a great person, but I was a very good surgeon with great outcomes. My patients appreciate everything. I would stay in the OR, close the incision, and make sure they had the right splint on. I cared about everything, all the way through to even how the incision looked. I took a lot of pride in outcomes for my patients, and they all did well for the most part. I do miss it. There’s nothing better than someone coming in three months after surgery and saying, “You’ve changed my life. I’ve gone back to golfing. I got my life back. I’m sleeping at night because my pain has gone.” There’s nothing that’ll ever replace that.
Rapid Fire Wisdom: Dr. Granston On Friendship And Life's Priorities
That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing those stories. I do like to end with some Rapid-fire questions. You pick a category of family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.
Friends.
Things or actions I don’t have that I want to have with friends.
I would love to be more proactive about reaching out to my friends rather than waiting for them to reach out to me when they need something. My life is very busy, and I would love to carve out more time for friends.
Things or actions I do have that I want to keep with my friends.
I do think about my friends often, and I do hold them very near and dear to me. They are like my family. They are what make life important. I don’t ever want to lose sight of how important friends are.
It does get discredited.
They are amazing, knowing that you can pick up a phone on any day. I have friends that I haven’t talked to in a year. If I called them right now, they would answer. That, to me, is super important.
Things or actions I don’t have that I don’t want to have.
I don’t ever want to be superficial with friends. I don’t ever want to just have them say, “I have a certain friend,” because of their status or something else. I only want friends with deep relationships who know me very well.
Last one. Things or actions that I do have that I don’t want.
I probably am too busy with all of the things I’m doing in my life. I’m a hard worker and always have been. I start working at 5:00 in the morning because I’m on the West Coast and my company is on the East Coast. I don’t stop when I should. I would love to make it a priority to say, “I’m going to go have a happy hour with a friend,” or “We’re going to go for a walk,” or “I’m going to go do something.” I need to carve out more time for that kind of thing instead of heads-down working all the time.
Is there anything that we didn’t cover or you wanted to reiterate before we close up this discussion?
I purposely chose friends over family because we did talk about my mom a lot. I do think who your parents are, especially who your mom is, defines you as an individual. I felt very blessed and lucky that I had truly the most amazing mom. Many people who she wasn’t a mother to would also tell you that. Don’t underestimate the value of your mother.
That’s nice. Thank you so much for joining. I’m sure our audience is going to get a lot out of this conversation.
Thank you so much. It was nice chatting with you.
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Now for my Mindful Moments with this episode with Dr. Traci Granston. It’s so fascinating to hear about her upbringing, where her father was an engineer and her mom was an art teacher, and the differences in what she was able to perceive and how she was supported in her journey. We talked about how when she was younger, she was in ice skating, and where that even came from.
One of the things that has come through in a number of these interviews is when there’s someone in your life who lets you know that anything is possible. That was her mom. Her mom said she could be anything she wanted to be. There’s a difference in that thinking versus so many of her stories where people were trying to deter her from her decision to be a doctor.
Voices are so powerful. We have to be so careful in the advice that we give and how we’re affecting someone, even if we think we might be being helpful. We also have to understand where maybe our own fears are coming up when we’re giving advice to somebody else, and whether that is something we should put on someone else or allow them the space to be able to navigate their own life and feel supported while they do it.
She talked about ice skating, which ended quickly when she got 3rd place instead of 1st place in a competitive ice skating competition, where it was going for the junior Olympics. Even though it seemed like a rash decision, there are probably things in our lives where we’ve had things in the back of our heads that something is not a fit or why it’s not going to be a great long-term plan. That’s what she talked about here. It was realizing that long-term, this wasn’t the path for her.
She ended up switching to taking care of horses and horseback riding. One of the big lessons there was being responsible, paying for half, and taking care of the horses, which has led in her life not only to healing animals, but also humans. She felt so confident in her decision to become a doctor, even though she was being deterred not only by friends of the family but also by advisors she had at school, because there was such a small acceptance rate of women at the time.
That goes to show you that sometimes, we create these limiting beliefs in our heads because we only see a few people who look like us and think that that opportunity is not available to us. The fact is, we haven’t been there yet, and maybe not enough people have broken through that barrier yet. In order for those barriers to be broken, it does take time, effort, perseverance, and belief in yourself that you can get there, which she proved in her story. She was in private practice for a long time.
We talked about the issues in healthcare, healthcare billing, and how it drives the medical field to deal with patients, and how it wasn’t resonating with her. She ended up going back to get her MBA. In that process, she pivoted and was hired by a technology company that was utilizing AI in order to not only be able to do authorizations quicker, but also predict more about what that patient is going to need and what the timeline of that was going to be.
This is another area where we have to keep our eyes open and not be closed off to opportunities because sometimes, we can’t even imagine what we’ll be doing. If we look back and realize where we’re at now, could we have imagined this path to get there? Probably not. It’s important for us to realize that our opportunities are available when we choose to see them, when we choose to say yes, and when we choose to be open to those opportunities. Because of that, she has become an expert in a space she never thought she would know, which was AI and machine learning. That has also afforded her opportunities to be able to speak, educate, be on boards, and serve in different ways than she ever imagined.
We left off with the belief in who supports you. That could be a parent, a friend, a random teacher, or a colleague. It wasn’t even something that they had planned on or even knew how they influence you. Those people become so important in your life to be able to shape the things that are possible for you going forward when you feel supported, when you feel that someone gives you an idea that maybe you never had before, and you’re open to it.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Breaking Beliefs. I know I did. Please join us for our next episode as well. If there are things in here that you think would help somebody else, please like and share them as well. We love to get new listeners onto this show, too. Thank you for all of your support. Remember that your energy is contagious, so being intentional about how you show up is important to help the people around you.
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About Dr. Traci Granston
Accomplished Orthopedic Surgeon with over two decades of clinical excellence, now serving as Senior Vice President of Clinical Strategy in health technology. Leveraging extensive clinical expertise, AI/ML technology, and healthcare insights to drive systemic improvements across the medical landscape. Demonstrated success in transitioning from direct patient care to strategic leadership, and maintain active board member responsibilities. Combining deep clinical knowledge with business acumen to pioneer innovative solutions for healthcare's most pressing challenges. Proven track record of embracing new opportunities and delivering transformative results through strategic vision and unwavering determination.