The Business of Health with Chip Kahn
About this Episode
Episode 10, AI Series: Chip talks with Dr. Toyin Ajayi, co-founder and CEO of Cityblock Health, which delivers value-based care to more than 100,000 Medicaid and dual-eligible members across ten states, many of them people of color managing chronic conditions. [AB1.1][AB1.2][MR1.3][AB1.4]Ajayi makes a pointed case: Roughly 60 percent of health care AI investment goes to billing, coding, and risk adjustment — making sure someone gets paid — while only a fraction goes to delivering care. If we continue to concentrate AI there, she warns, it will drive up cost without improving outcomes. She says there is a better way — AI built for care can lower costs by improving care for those hardest to reach. She and Chip discuss what that looks like and how Cityblock is using AI now to improve care and the patient experience for its members.
The Host
Charles N. Kahn III is a senior visiting fellow at KFF. He is also a visiting senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a nonresident senior scholar at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics. He serves as co-chair of the international Future of Health collaborative.
Guest
Dr. Toyin Ajayi is a Board-certified Family Medicine physician and CEO of Cityblock, a value-based healthcare provider for Medicaid and dually eligible beneficiaries. Prior to Cityblock, she served as Chief Medical Officer of Commonwealth Care Alliance, an integrated health plan and care delivery system for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Dr. Ajayi serves on the Board of Directors of Evolent Health and Foodsmart and is a co-founder of Coalition Partners. She’s an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She’s been named to Inc.’s Female Founders 500 list, TIME100 Next, Modern Healthcare’s Top Women Leaders in Healthcare, and the STATUS List.
Dr. Ajayi received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, her medical degree, with Distinction in Clinical Practice, from King’s College London School of Medicine, and in 2024 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science from Georgetown University. Board certified in Family Medicine, Dr. Ajayi completed her residency training at Boston Medical Center and practiced as a hospitalist and primary care provider with a focus on patients with chronic, complex and end-of-life needs.
SERIES
This weekly podcast features insightful conversations between host Chip Kahn and his guests, who discuss the business of health care, connecting the dots between the health care business, policy, and patients.
The podcast’s first series on AI in health care illuminates how AI is changing health care, and features guests who are deploying this technology, managing its consequences, and designing policy around it.