Randy Oostra on treating the whole person, not just the patient

What this conversation is about

Randy Oostra was president and CEO of ProMedica, a nonprofit, mission-based health and wellbeing organization headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, when he joined Glenn Llopis and co-host Scott Lacy on Personalization Outbreak. With four decades in healthcare and management, he had been named to Modern Healthcare's list of the 100 most influential people in healthcare.

The conversation connects two kinds of reinvention: Oostra's own decision to start his career over, and ProMedica's long effort to treat people as whole human beings, not just patients.

The edit

Oostra believes American healthcare grew up around hospitals and the four walls of clinical care. The result, he says, is a system that asks people to fit it:

"And the idea that you have to go to a hospital, walk in there kind of lose your identity, be treated as a patient." — Randy Oostra · 00:10:35

Yet much of what shapes a person's health happens outside those walls: whether they have food on the table, safe housing, transportation, utilities and childcare. Healthcare has often treated those needs as someone else's problem. Oostra thinks that has to change:

"It should offend us that all we get is people worried about our clinical care, not all these other aspects of our life." — Randy Oostra · 00:13:58

How he, and ProMedica, started over

When Oostra was 28, a physician he traveled with for work asked what he planned to be doing at 50, and said he would be disappointed if the answer was the same job. Around 30, Oostra left that path, went back to school in hospital administration at the University of Minnesota and started over. Glenn noted how much that resonates today:

"A lot of people are either in the process of starting over thinking about starting over or maybe afraid to start over." — Glenn Llopis · 00:05:00

His advice is to find a career path that lets you fulfill your purpose. ProMedica's own reinvention began with a surprise. The organization invested in programs to teach children to eat better, until its trainers reported that the problem wasn't nutrition: the kids were hungry. ProMedica began screening patients for food insecurity, then for the full range of social needs, and then acting on what it found, including opening a grocery store in a food desert. It now screens its own employees too.

Co-host Scott Lacy offered a different way to think about starting over:

"We need to help people not start over, but to recognize that they're already there and all they have to do is realign and see things in a different way." — Scott Lacy · 00:37:37

What leaders and organizations can take from it

It wasn't a master plan, Oostra admits. The work started quietly, and some people in the organization first pushed back that they didn't get paid for it. Over about a decade it became part of who ProMedica is, and today its board would say this is simply what they do. He sees the same opportunity for employers: people can't leave their struggles at the door when they come to work, and traditional wellness programs often miss the root causes.

• Treat the whole person. Put a person's social needs on equal footing with clinical care, and take responsibility for connecting them to help.
• Start small and let the stories spread. Early examples inside the organization helped people see needs they hadn't noticed before.
• Include your own employees. The same needs show up in your workforce, and they affect how people show up at work.

His closing thought named the core problem:

"I think what we have is a very standardized system that we're trying to put people into, and yet it doesn't fit the needs of individuals." — Randy Oostra · 00:39:11

How this conversation connects to Glenn's methodology

Glenn's body of work comes down to one idea: without agency and without knowing the rooms where you belong, you can't have the conviction to reinvent yourself on purpose, or the strong identity that guides how you live and lead. Oostra's story shows both halves: a person who changed course, and an organization changing the room people are put into.

• Agency (the Individual). Choosing to leave a path that no longer fit, and starting again with purpose.
• The rooms (the Environment). A healthcare system that sees people as individuals, not patients who must fit its four walls.
• Conviction and reinvention on purpose. A decade-long journey to make social needs part of ProMedica's mission, even when it wasn't popular.
• Identity that guides how he lives and leads. Every person is different, so every stage of life calls for a personalized plan for health and wellbeing.

See the body of work behind the method →