Episode #8. Empowering Small Healthcare Practices with Cybersecurity and Technology Education with Karen Blanchette, Executive Director at PAHCOM

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Ed Gaudet:
Welcome to Risk Never Sleeps, where we meet and get to know the people delivering patient care and protecting patient safety. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet.

Ed Gaudet:
Welcome to another episode of The Risk Never Sleeps Podcast. I am joined today by my favorite person in the whole wide world, Karen Blanchette, the executive director of PAHCOM, and PAHCOM, stands for the Professional Association of Health Care Office Management. There it is, look at that. Just in case I forgot, you have it there in the back wall. Excellent, wxcellent. Welcome, Karen. How are you?

Karen Blanchette:
How are you? Thank you. I'm fabulous.

Ed Gaudet:
As always.

Karen Blanchette:
I've always, and I'm happy to be here, and I'm super excited about your new podcast.

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah? Thank you.

Karen Blanchette:
I feel really lucky to be one of the first.

Ed Gaudet:
You are. That's right, you are one of the first. Thank you very much. And I'm excited about this podcast in particular because we've known each other for a short period of time, but I feel like I've been to war with you already, in a sense.

Karen Blanchette:
Actually, been on the task groups with you, I think, for a long time.

Ed Gaudet:
I know, but I'm.

Karen Blanchette:
You used to be really quiet and not anything because I was at three, nd then after a little while, I decided to pipe up.

Ed Gaudet:
You did, you did pipe up, and you piped up often, and I thought, who is this person on the other end of the phone? And then we got to meet each other in Washington, and that was a blast. We had a good time at dinner, didn't we?

Karen Blanchette:
Yes, yes. Fine. Yeah, in-person meetings are back, be safe.

Ed Gaudet:
So good, stay safe, stay classy, San Diego, ... All right, so tell us a little bit about PAHCOM.

Karen Blanchette:
So PAHCOM, the Professional Association of Health Care Office Management, it's been around since 1988, and the purpose there is to support small practices. It was actually founded by my dad. Yeah, and in those days, I was in college and tending bar, and I didn't know what he did. And, you know, every once in a while, I spend a weekend stuffing envelopes and stuff, with newsletters, but other than that, I didn't really get involved. But he did it, it was born out of a post-graduate school thesis that he wrote. He went to Naval Postgraduate School, and he was talking about how there were all these resources for hospitals and large groups, but not for the small practices. And so she decided to start taking them at their time, and that's how it was born. Back in those days, he didn't have the Internet or cell phones or ... thing, and it was largely based on mouth-to-mouth and snail mail, paper, you know, letters and newsletters and all of that, and it just blew up. People needed it so badly because there really wasn't any way for people to share knowledge for their small groups. And so I ended up graduating college, joined the Navy, became a hospital administrator, while the, I'll tell you later when you asked me more specific question about how I got into it. But even today, we continue 30, oh, do the math, five years now serving the small practice population. And it's oftentimes the doctor themselves that works our information because they either don't have an office manager and trying to do it themselves on weekends, or kids go to bed, or they have a family friend or a florist, it's handling it, but isn't really trained to do it, and there's just so much to know. There is a highly regulated industry, lots of money on the table, and there is a right in a wrong way to do it, and doing it really right, you can make a lot more money. So many doctors are leading revenue on the table because they just don't realize that they're able to get that.

Ed Gaudet:
That's a great reason to join. How many members are there today?

Karen Blanchette:
Oh, gosh, you know, three and a half, 4000. I'd like it to be a lot more, obviously, because then we can share more widely, but with the Internet, people think that they can Google questions about their medical practice, and it's not in context. Actually, I was trying to, I was thinking about something the other day, and I was like, let me the answer to this thing, and I can't Google it because if you Google it, then you have to explain, Well, no, I don't mean this. I don't mean to say, Oh, I think it was a problem with Amazon or something. Even the first thing I want to tell you is, do this. And I said, Well, no, that's not. And so you start Googling questions about CMS or about healthcare law that, you'll get so many different opinions in so many different things from different contexts. And so when you're dealing with people in your own community, I don't have to ask you how big is your practice. I already know that we're talking small practice here. I don't have to at the end of the conversation, go, Oh, no, you need to be talking to ACHE. You know, which is really different world. I used to belong to ACHE, but that's a whole nother story.

Ed Gaudet:
No, and you've been a great advocate for those doctors and those office managers. I know on when we're on those calls together about cyber, you're always the one, What about the single-physician practice?

Karen Blanchette:
Yeah, yeah.

Ed Gaudet:
Don't forget them.

Karen Blanchette:
Well, it's easy for people who are creating the guidance for the healthcare sector to use to focus on the people that a lot of us on the team deal with firsthand, the vendors, the CIOs at the hospital groups, and those people. But they forget that more than 50% of their physicians out there today are working with a small practice of ten providers or fewer. That's actually an AMA quote from a recent survey, I think it was last year. So they're out there everywhere. Most of us see a family doctor who is a small practice.

Ed Gaudet:
That's right. Those single practices and those rural hospitals are the backbone, the foundation of healthcare, and we have to help them whenever we can.

Karen Blanchette:
With respect to the question about PAHCOM, too, I want to say how we got on this relative to cybersecurity and technology in general, my, maybe I should wait until you ask your question about this, but I'm kind of rolling into the work that we do on the task group, technology specific and cybersecurity that we're sharing and that we're creating as tools for the practice's two years. I have a lot of passion for it, as you know, in 2011, PAHCOM wrote a book. Here it is in its paper form, and now you can get it on Kindle. But what happened was we had the certified medical manager at PAHCOM, it's been around since the early eighties, maybe '91, and it's awesome. It's nine different domains, everything from HR and marketing to technologies, and that too, it's a little bit of everything. And the credential, the certified medical manager, helps to demonstrate that a person knows enough about all of these things to be a successful manager. But the IT part just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and I have a bit of an IT background myself. And then, my husband was a cybersecurity architect for AT&T working in the media space. And there's a lot of, he's an ethical hacker and does a lot of Black Def Con and all that. And anyway, I went to a conference at PAHCOM, and we thought, you know what? We're not doing enough with the IT here, we really, really need to step it up because who's out there making sure that the small practices are up to speed and have the tools that they need in order to protect themselves, protect their patients, protect the hospital groups that they're connected to in their network to? Who's out there doing that? And nobody was, and nobody is still ... So as an association, it's looking at, but I'm sure there are a lot of vendors, and we have a lot of partners that we work with. Your organization obviously does that, but as healthcare associations go, we decided to go ahead and pick that up then, and it has just been exploding ever since. And that is where we decide to put a good bit of our resources at that time now, 12 years ago. It seems like yesterday that we did that, but really, really glad that we spent the time and energy on that and that we focused on that because you could not have known then that it was going to be as critical as it is now. And it's not something you can just wake up one day and decide to excel at.

Ed Gaudet:
That's a great point. In fact, 12 years ago, it was about the data, which is a problem. Obviously, we don't want to lose PHI, we don't want to lose patient information, or protected health information, but with ransomware, which is fairly new phenomena over the last five or so years, not only are patients now at risk of harm, so are hospitals and so are clinics and so are physician practices of actually shutting their doors because they can't pay the ransom, and everything they do is in electronic or digital form, and now it's secured, encrypted, and the bad guys have the key, and we can't pay. So yeah, we have no option but to shut our doors and close down. So that's a real problem now.

Karen Blanchette:
You can make yourself less of a target. There's no 100% way. People saying, why bother doing it? I mean, they're going to get in if they want to get in. And it's like, really? Did you lock your door at your house today? Because, you know, a 12-year-old could work through your window. And it's like we lock our car door because whoever's, the low-lying thieves are going to just check car doors as they walk through the parking lot, and if yours is locked, they'll go to another place, but if it's open, then there goes your stereo or whatever's in your glove box and that sort of thing. So it makes sense to do due diligence, follow a basic set of guidelines and reccomendations that our group and others are creating for you, and giving to you for free. And that's the other thing that's really, really cool. I mean, it's bad that it's so bad that the government has to pay for all of this to happen, but it's good that all of this is free to so many small practices and other groups who need it. Yeah, there are real great resources being created and developed and delivered for free thanks to HHS and Department of Labor, and other groups. We actually have a great right now that we're working with partners in case one of our partners that we're working with for a Labor grant to get free training online at your own pace for the HITCMPP, which is our HIT credential for small practice managers and also the exam. So it pays for the training and the exam and the practice employer, the participant that's getting the education, nobody pays any of that.

Ed Gaudet:
You can't beat that, right? Free's good.

Karen Blanchette:
Oh, you can't be God. So we're not supposed to say free because.

Ed Gaudet:
No.

Karen Blanchette:
... For no use. Yeah.

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah, so to the listeners, to the physicians out there listening, the office managers that are listening today, put more money in your pocket, become a PAHCOM member. How about that?

Karen Blanchette:
Well, you don't even have to be a member. I mean, not that I don't want you to be a member; of course, I do, but you don't even have to be a member to qualify this grant. The grant is open to the public and we're promoting it open to the public. You know, an association that serves a small practice management group, small practices, isn't making a lot of money. I don't want to come out and say, all right, you know, well, we're poor, or whatever. But the thing is, when you sell one unit to a small practice, you sell a very, very inexpensive unit to one person. When you sell something to a large group or a large hospital, well, that's a contract arena. That's a different kind of thing. And so my dad started it because of passion. I'm doing it because of passion. You know, I'm a simple person, and I feel very, very lucky that what looks my switch is making a difference, helping people, watching that smile on a person I just taught something to. Those kinds of things you can't buy. Now, don't get me wrong, you can send me money if you want to, I'll make it. I like it, and I have bills to pay, but at the end of the day, we're really here to do is try to make a difference. And so, yeah, we're throwing it out there to everybody, and I think it might even be the rules of the grant, but we have a lot of stuff for free on our site. Anyway, aside from the grant, just because, gosh, you know, people follow some rules, learn some things, watch some CMS training. You can go to our education calendar, which is also publicly available, and there's tons of free education out there, and I hope that more people will take advantage of it.

Ed Gaudet:
Excellent. Well, that's terrific, and again, if you're an office manager, if you're a physician of a small practice, reach out to Karen. Take a look at PAHCOM, very interesting association, doing a lot of great work for our industry. And, of course, I'm also very interested in the person behind PAHCOM, and that would be you, Karen. So, we're turning some of the questions and let our listeners get a chance to know you a little better. So you talked a little about your dad. So how did you get into healthcare, though? You said you were in the military at one point. So tell us the story.

Karen Blanchette:
Well, so I went to college because my dad made me. I'd like to take credit for being smart enough to do it on my own, but it wasn't. I actually.

Ed Gaudet:
You and I would be in a van down by the river. The war for our dads, probably.

Karen Blanchette:
I was in a van down by the river for a while. I took the long scenic path to my degree, but in the end, I ended up trying to redeem myself, got a master's degree, and then went to get a job at a hospital because my dad told me that healthcare is, you want business, you got business. You want to do things that make a difference for people and help people, and you got that. You want something that's going to always be around forever and ever and ever and ever? Healthcare. You want somebody who's going to be changing all the time and has all kinds of cool science around it? Healthcare. And I was just asking, Yeah, yeah, that's what I want to do. And that's what he was. He was a healthcare administrator. I mean, he started out as a corpsman in Vietnam, but then he went to school and became a healthcare administrator. So MBA, knock, knock, knock castle around the corner; I want a great job doing a real important thing for lots of money. And they laugh. Oh, I don't know. We might have a position in the mail room, but they said how much experience you have. And I said, All right. And so then I looked at the military, and military said, We're going to pay you crap for like the whole time you're in.

Ed Gaudet:
But you're going to get a lot of experience.

Karen Blanchette:
You're going to get a lot of things ... Yeah, job number one, first day, I'm the assistant to the director for surgical services at our 500-bed hospital, not the secretary or administrative assistant. I'm the, you know, whatever. You got a secretary, and then I basically followed him around and learned how a hospital was, and it was fascinating. It was, I guess I had that job for almost a year. And then I ran a division with over 200 people and millions of dollars in budget and all of that, patient administration, got a 500-bed hospital, and they rotated through from records and to decedent affairs. I got to learn how to embalm bodies, all kinds of just amazing amounts of information. And then, at one point, I was being trained to go to Fleet Hospital Five in Iraq. And John went to training for that at Camp Pendleton, which was really cool. They dropped these tiny boxes from the helicopter in the Lola desert, and then you build a hospital. I mean, really, like with the air conditioner.

Ed Gaudet:
MASH, that's cool.

Karen Blanchette:
Computers and everything. Like MASH, except nowadays. Yeah, it was really cool. And I wish I had the administrative department there, and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. And then a senior full Bird Captain and Army, Navy, all that stuff called different things, Forward Guy in the Navy. So anyway, she came, ... contact, Hey Blanchette. They're going to build it in aircraft carriers. I'm like, Yeah? He goes, You should it... You know why there're only 14 at the time. In the world, positions like this for hospital administrators. And he said, this one's going to allow women. And so she said, Oh, right, sure. Whatever. You know, And Larry Siebel, thank you, sir. Yeah, so I'm like, what I'm going to do? He's like, I'll cancel that. You know, you're doing a ship craft career, ... It was cool.

Ed Gaudet:
How long did you do that for?

Karen Blanchette:
Two years. Yeah, but it was out reconditioning units. So we got to plan the hospital there, like, sure blueprints, make sure the builders are doing it right. I'm like, what? You know, had a ... power. I should dig it out. It's right over there.

Ed Gaudet:
That's great.

Karen Blanchette:
Come over a box and grab a fridge. It was so much fun, but we had a department of 30 on there, 65-bed hospital, and you know, you're in. Little battle dressing stations all around. Was shipping ..., right, for ..., here you have access to stuff they are all of them can be retrofitted into ORs. It was just really wild stock and yeah I loved it, I loved it a lot. And then after that, my second boss contacted me and said, Hey, Blanchett, I hear you're coming up for order. She's going to change your job. And we get, I want you to be my CIO. 1996, I'm, what's a CIO?

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah, exactly. A lot of people were probably asking that question in 1996, yes.

Karen Blanchette:
The Navy hasn't come on board yet, recognizing that we actually need a technology department in the healthcare office, you know, and this was a regional headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, covering all of the Eastern seaboard, Keflavik, Iceland, or to Europe. It was a big job. And he said, we need somebody like this, and ... will get me, but they'll give me another hospital administrator. I'll ask for you and, but you got to agree to be this. And I was like, I don't know anything like that, was ..., I know you. You're the one in that second job. I said, patient administration. You're the one that came in and took that machine off your desk and put your Mac on there because the IT guys would come down with their glasses with me, and they got, she used a semicolon instead of a colon. And I was like, I just want to read my report, man.

Ed Gaudet:
It was so fun.

Karen Blanchette:
And I got to make hip-hop in person, and so I ended up taking that job and that is why I'm here.

Ed Gaudet:
Made all the difference.

Karen Blanchette:
Because I ended up making friends with the local people that were GS-employed, the civilians, they are the glue that holds the military together ... continuity, and they were like, Hey, we're putting in a new rack over at the blah, blah, blah. You want to come in? Yeah, and you learned how to run five jumbos. Hey, it wasn't what a CIO needed to do, but it was how I roll.

Ed Gaudet:
You took that proverbial road not taken, and it made all the difference.

Karen Blanchette:
Well, I thought, you know what? If I'm to negotiate contracts and it ended up happening, a new clinic was being built and there weren't any VIP closets and there was no planning for monitors in the different exam rooms or any of that stuff. And I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you have to do this. We don't have time to like both, you don't have time to stop patient care and then break stuff down and then we're going to have to put holes in the walls and order. Now they're like, really? You know, yeah. And then the contractors tending to go, That's going to be $1,000,000,000. And I say, why? They go, Oh, honey, we got to run lots of ... stuff, you know? And I'm like, Oh, do you mean, you know, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so it came in, Hey, if, you know what, you're managing, if you know what's going on, you don't have to have your fingers on the pulse of every single thing in your business. But you do have to understand what they're talking about, what it means. And that brings me back again to the HITCMPP. We're not teaching practice managers to be the IT guy, but we are teaching practice managers to understand what the IT guy is talking about and to be able to understand what the CMS or the HHS or the whatever different rules that you're following are. And to understand what 405(d) is and why, so that when you're paying money from your practice for these services, you know what you need, what you don't need, and you know how to check to see if you're getting what you're paying for.

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah, I often say it's often better to know what the question is than the answer. And so if you know what questions to ask you to be much more informed than if you just knew the answer to the question.

Karen Blanchette:
So it was a fascinating job, I loved it. And then after that, I did oh, I just did two years as a CIO for all of this. Changed everything, I did network administration, and I learned all kinds of stuff. And then I thought, how much is the Navy need paying me again?

Ed Gaudet:
It's just got time to, time to get paid my worth.

Karen Blanchette:
Well, by then, I had the experience and the education I was looking for, and they had gotten their money out of me. So I got out and worked for Computer Associates.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, yes. Well, thank you for your service, of course. So if you look at last year, better year than the previous couple of years, what are you most proud of? Personally, professionally, either, both.

Karen Blanchette:
Last year.

Ed Gaudet:
2022.

Karen Blanchette:
You know, it's something that I don't know that most people would even know we did, but we took the big hit, but for a forward-thinking reason, we got rid of our legacy database systems and the hosts of programmers, developers that we used to have to keep. And we really streamed that down and started using more forward-thinking tools. So for example, our website didn't used to be mobile friendly because the programmers that we hired back in 1990, whatever, you know, Oh well that's going to be really hard, doesn't make sense if this is broken, that's broken. Sometimes the message that I'm trying to convey here in what was really hard for us to do and we did it, and I'm really glad we did, very proud of it, within our team to understand what it is that we did. And I hope that, you know, our users do know or customers do know because they can use their phone to manage their PAHCOM account and you couldn't before. So that's a big thing. And that came with this little, it was painful, but I think that it's an important step and you see it with legacy systems all the time. We've been doing this way for 50 years or so, but we've been doing it this way for 30 years, and with change it's going to be, there's no easy way to do that. But then what happens? New company starts up, they don't have all that legacy baggage and then they can run circles around you because they've got fancy things that people expect today. It's hard to let go of the comfort zone. I talked about fear earlier, and I don't know how much we're gonna end up talking about fear on this podcast, but I was saying that fear the F word, it's the F word, it's fear. And fear can cause you to miss out and not be out there and to not do things like pull the plug on a legacy system. It was incredibly risky to do that and it cost us so, but it's also given us opportunities that we wouldn't have had before. It's opened the doors to more, being able to support more people and do it in a better way. So while it was risky and I was afraid, I think that the real bad word is the C word, and that's comfort.

Ed Gaudet:
Now, I would agree, and especially in our business and our industry, you have to be so maniacal about embracing change and embracing innovation and technology because you blink and you'll be marginalized. And there are kids right now in a garage looking to disrupt you, right? And I know because I was one of those kids. So you always have to be thinking about the next big thing and challenging the team to think that way as well, which is hard to do because most people don't change, their creative.

Karen Blanchette:
People are just trying to get comfortable. It's like, when finished, this will be comfortable.

Ed Gaudet:
Exactly.

Karen Blanchette:
But no.

Ed Gaudet:
There's no comfort in this.

Karen Blanchette:
If there is comfort, then you are.

Ed Gaudet:
You're probably retired on a beach.

Karen Blanchette:
You're either retired on a beach or you're falling behind.

Ed Gaudet:
Or in a van down by the river, back to it. All right, so if you weren't doing this job, what would you be doing? You have such an interesting background. You've done a lot of different things. What would you be doing if you weren't doing this?

Karen Blanchette:
I don't know. Do I have untold sums of money?

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. It's your fantasy.

Karen Blanchette:
Yeah, racing ...boats.

Ed Gaudet:
Wow, there you go. That's great, that's great.

Karen Blanchette:
That's, for sure. I got a small taste of that a couple years ago. My husband, the awesome white hat cybersecurity dude, he ended up dying. It's been.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, sorry.

Karen Blanchette:
Thank you.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, I didn't know about that.

Karen Blanchette:
Yes, sir. It was horrible. This is him.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh.

Karen Blanchette:
Yeah. Anyway, and living my world, I was like when he went to Watertown on business, I would miss him so much. But when I would go out of town on business, I'm busy doing other stuff, you know? And what it is, is you've got your bubble and then there's an empty spot. But if you create a new bubble where there's not an empty spot, it's good for you.

Ed Gaudet:
Help.

Karen Blanchette:
That's super helpful for healing, and you're never going to forget. And it's not about forgetting anything like that. It's just about being able to survive. And so sailing was one of those things that I always wanted to do and I had done with friends a few times. I didn't really know how to do it, and that was the riskiest thing.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, you're jumping right into the question. Wait, were you prepped ahead of time here?

Karen Blanchette:
No, I knew there was something I've got, and that's what.

Ed Gaudet:
This is the Risk Never Sleeps podcast. So I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, what is the riskiest thing you've ever done?

Karen Blanchette:
I sailed with a friend who didn't know how to sail, and me and her husband, who did not know how to sail, and a super nice old guy who was not in the best of health and was very old and not in the best of health, who was the only person who knew how to sail. And they bought a boat near where I live in around the Tampa Bay area in Florida, and they lived in Houston Road, Dallas. But we sailed from Tampa Springs to Houston, which is straight across the Gulf of Mexico in February with just the four of us and a boat that they had never sailed before because it was a 1975 vintage 39-foot something. It was stupid.

Ed Gaudet:
You didn't capsize, though, did you?

Karen Blanchette:
You know, it was really cool in some ways. We have lots of video of hundreds of dolphins following us for like miles.

Ed Gaudet:
Isn't that beautiful, though?

Karen Blanchette:
And they would be, like, racing there like this. And then you could tell because the one had a little thing and, you know, we'd go back and we come by again and go back. But they were as far as the eye could see, you could see them and all, it was while, but it was dangerous. It really was. We had no business doing that. And after that, I took sailing lessons.

Ed Gaudet:
And you realize how stupid it was.

Karen Blanchette:
I'm going to sail. And she said, Well, we just bought this boat. And if you're serious about that, or you just talk and snap, are you really going to say no? Because if you say no, let's go. And I was like, Oh, yeah, But anyway.

Ed Gaudet:
So you've been sailing.

Karen Blanchette:
Yeah, so then I learned how to sail. I took lessons and all of that, and then I joined a sailing group and all that. And then I realized I don't really like sailing, I like racing.

Ed Gaudet:
You like, what?

Karen Blanchette:
Racing.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, racing.

Karen Blanchette:
Oh, it involves at least the groups I was in here, involves a lot of alcohol and a lot of ... And so you sail for a bit and then you drink and you chew the fat, which I love to do in between races. So then I joined this little old ladies' racing club here. They have these, they have regattas and stuff, and they sail these little boats called prams. It kind of look like a soapbox derby kind of boat.

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah, that's cool, yeah.

Karen Blanchette:
And then if you do well, then you get to sail and race and sunfish. Oh, so very nice. I placed third my first season there.

Ed Gaudet:
That's great.

Karen Blanchette:
It was like, ... There's a place near where I live, where you can go, where they do a lot of racing of the larger boats. And these are people who, they really do real regattas. You can be crew on their boats and so on with them several times. And it's, if you haven't been and you have an adrenaline thing, always crazy. I mean you were like screaming along in another boat tacks right in front of you and then your plow right into the side of all, you think you're going to sink, but then they go, Oh, this thing is stacked. We'll just throw it under there and keep going. I'm just Oh, wow. My first thought was my car .... Well, but because it was, it's wild, it's a lot of fun.

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah, I just can't get the scene of the Jaws movie out of my head when I think of all those small little boats, that's all.

Karen Blanchette:
Well, there's a lot of boats there. They'll pick you up.

Ed Gaudet:
That's right. So you also done some other risky things in your life, too. I think I recall seeing you jumping out of planes, possibly?

Karen Blanchette:
Oh, that.

Ed Gaudet:
So tell us about that. That's really interesting.

Karen Blanchette:
You know, I was a skydiver avidly for over ten years, and it is how I met my husband. And it is such a wonderful, wonderful community. Doing the tandem skydive, going to a drop zone, saying I'm going to fix my purse, and jumping out of a plane strapped to somebody is really awesome and I highly recommend everybody do it. And that's just a tandem from a good drop zone like somebody that's regulating it. So the USPA-rated, United States Parachute Association-rated drop zone, you can Google it, you can see who they are. But that's so much fun. But what I really liked was the challenge, it's kind of like sailing or golf, although I personally don't care for golf, it's very, very, very, very, very, very hard to learn to be proficient flying your body. And you can do it at wind tunnels, they're everywhere these days. I Fly is the most popular brand of wind tunnels, they're in a lot of cities now. And people think, oh, that's fake skydiving. And I'm here to tell you, oh, no, that's where the world Champions Train is in the wind tunnel, because the wind tunnel gives you many minutes in a row of what we call Freefall time. Freefall time, from the time you get out of the plane to the time you have to open your parachute, is about one minute, depending on the type of skydiving you're doing. But if you go in a wind tunnel and practice that freefall stuff that moving your body around, maneuvering, wheels that can fly right up to you, stop right in front of you, ... on the nose, turn around, do a flip, and then slide away. It's not easy to learn how to do that, but that's what makes it so rewarding. You learn just a little bit. And then for people who have what kind of personality type A, and control free, and adrenaline junkie and all of that, you want our land in our made one little thing I did better than the last time and I'm just like.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, that's cool.

Karen Blanchette:
That's, you know, just I think like when you make that golf swing, that shot and you get because you put a lot into making that happen. And when you finally nail it, it's just. And the other thing about skydiving is and I believe golf is the same, too, as well, maybe not skydiving for sure. You have to focus and you have to focus. You have to.

Ed Gaudet:
Your life depends on it.

Karen Blanchette:
You life depends on it, yeah, that's why ... golf. I think for golf, it does matter if you're not really present, if you're not in the moment, then you probably won't do well again. Talking about a game I don't play and I think that that does correlate.

Ed Gaudet:
I get a birdie once in my golf, you know, literally I hit a bird with a ball spelled it. I feel I know, I feel really, no, it actually happened in the twosome in front of me. They picked the bird up and they put it on the back of their cart so terrible. And they drove around with it the whole time because they were mocking me the whole time.

Karen Blanchette:
Like mocking bird?

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, hadn't thought about that. It could have been a mockingbird. That would have been appropriate. All right, well, we're getting ready to wrap up here. Karen, thank you so much for joining me today.

Karen Blanchette:
Let me look and see if there's anything I really wanted to tell you but I didn't tell you.

Ed Gaudet:
No, you told me so much.

Karen Blanchette:
Fear is mitigated by knowledge, not, if it's important.

Ed Gaudet:
Okay, listeners, remember that.

Karen Blanchette:
Podcasting, podcasting, podcasting. We can talk about podcasting.

Ed Gaudet:
What do you want to talk about Podcasting?

Karen Blanchette:
This is right now. Remember I said, make them smile. I used to say that at the end of every show. That was ... that I made back in 2005.

Ed Gaudet:
You actually, yeah, you did podcasting before it was cool, before the cool kids were doing podcasting.

Karen Blanchette:
... picked me up by my little broken self and gave me money.

Ed Gaudet:
And threw a mic in front of you and said, talk.

Karen Blanchette:
Yes, so yeah, but for people who want to learn about skydiving or who are interested in the Zenness, which I didn't really get a chance to share too much because it's only a half-hour, an hour show, not a five-hour show, YouTube, because they don't have my site up anymore. But if you YouTube, skydivergirls, all one word, then you can see some of the, I used to interview girls and talk about.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh cool.

Karen Blanchette:
Yeah why do you ..., and you'll hear over and over and over again. It helps me focus, it helps me release all the noise, it helps me remember who I am. A lot of those same kinds of things you hear about yoga or meditation, it seems odd that skydiving would give you that, but it really does.

Ed Gaudet:
Well, I imagine there's that moment of peacefulness that you can't get anywhere else when you skydive.

Karen Blanchette:
Yeah, and it's beautiful.

Ed Gaudet:
Of course.

Karen Blanchette:
The views are spectacular.

Ed Gaudet:
You can't pay for those views. Those views are priceless. All right.

Karen Blanchette:
I'm so glad that you had me on.

Ed Gaudet:
Well, thanks, Karen.

Karen Blanchette:
... back again.

Ed Gaudet:
You will be. Of course, you will be, and if I do expand this to 5 hours, we'll have a lot to talk about.

Karen Blanchette:
Yeah, here we go. Keep your wrist in check.

Ed Gaudet:
Yes.

Karen Blanchette:
What I wanted to sa,y I probably had the Rust Never Sleeps. Oh, and I looked up to my albums and said, No, I have, Harvest is the only Neil Young album, but I was, I was like, I'm going to bring that.

Ed Gaudet:
Did I tell you that that's how I came up with the Risk Never Sleeps, was, did we talk about that already? Yeah, Rust Never Sleeps.

Karen Blanchette:
Immediately, on the first band ... or is it?

Ed Gaudet:
Nah, that's right. It's Neil Young and Crazy Horse, just a great album. So, you know, I haven't asked this question I want to ask you. Yeah, there you go. Hey, hey, man. I'm into the blue. Desert Island. Top favorite albums that you would take on a desert island with you. What would they be?

Karen Blanchette:
Wish You Were Here.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, very good, very good. Little Pink Floyd. Love it.

Karen Blanchette:
And then same group, I hate to say it, but Animals also.

Ed Gaudet:
My favorite album, by the way, that is. Oh, I love that album. I just got chills when you said that.

Karen Blanchette:
You too?

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah, great album.

Karen Blanchette:
I, personally, great albums, .... so many. I don't know. I love a lot of artists. I listen to a lot of like Steely Dan, I like Pretzel Logic.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's fantastic here.

Karen Blanchette:
You know what, I also like jazz too.

Ed Gaudet:
Me too. What do you like for jazz?

Karen Blanchette:
Who was it? Oh, is it okay if I say lettuce?

Ed Gaudet:
No, that's.

Karen Blanchette:
That's ... That's ...

Ed Gaudet:
Not really. Yeah, you can't say.

Karen Blanchette:
That, so, I don't know. Try to think.

Ed Gaudet:
You nailed the first couple of albums, though. That was good. I'd be on your desert island.

Karen Blanchette:
Yeah, thanks. You know, when I think about the albums that I've kept over the years, you know, Frampton Comes Alive.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, such a great album. I was just talking to someone the other day about that album.

Karen Blanchette:
Sticky Fingers.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, no, I see. All right.

Karen Blanchette:
I just want to make sure I handle it all.

Ed Gaudet:
I know that's exactly what I do. I look at the, What are the albums in my head like? Where did I hide my stuff? Which album? Well, my first album I ever bought Night at the.

Karen Blanchette:
Oh, really?

Ed Gaudet:
Yes, yes.

Karen Blanchette:
Cool. When the movie came out, I'm like, I don't know.

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah, like it's such a great album and it's so contemporary. Even today you listen to some of the songs.

Karen Blanchette:
And I don't have a turntable anymore.

Ed Gaudet:
Oh, I resurrected my turntable. I pulled it out of the basement and I brought it up to my bedroom, much to my wife's chagrin. And I'm like, I'm putting this in the bedroom, and then I was so adamant about it, and yeah, I could put on. Again, I brought all my albums, took them out of the crates, and put them in my we have this, I have this massive walk-in closet, so I put them in my walk-in closet. So I just.

Karen Blanchette:
There you go.

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Blanchette:
So Rumors.

Ed Gaudet:
Rumors, great one.

Karen Blanchette:
Yeah.

Ed Gaudet:
Yeah, it's Clapton. Wow, you are. Holy cow.

Ed Gaudet:
Well, Karen, thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you for sharing your stories with us. This is The Risk Never Sleeps podcast. I'm Ed Gaudet. Thanks, everyone, for listening today. And remember to, if you're on the front lines of healthcare and cybersecurity, stay vigilant because risk never sleeps.

Ed Gaudet:
Thanks for listening to Risk Never Sleeps. For the show notes, resources, and more information and how to transform the protection of patient safety, visit us at Censinet.com. That's C E N S I N E T.com. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet, and until next time, stay vigilant because risk never sleeps.

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