The short version is that a close friend died from a preventable medical error and left behind a ten-year-old daughter. That is where this started.
But the longer version, the one Dave tells in this episode, is about what that loss made him unable to stop noticing. How the system he had spent his career inside, building technology for health systems and working at the intersection of healthcare and innovation, was not broken by accident. It was built this way. And the people inside it, the physicians, the administrators, the insurers, were not villains. They were operating exactly as the incentives demanded.
What changed for Dave was not discovering a new problem. It was deciding to stop optimizing inside a broken model and start documenting the communities, employers, advisors, and clinicians who had already figured out how to build something better. This book is that documentation.
He also talks about what the title actually means. Relocalizing health is not a policy idea. It is not a theory. It is something that is already happening in Alabama, Alaska, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida, the communities that anchor this book. It is what happens when healthcare dollars stop leaving a community and start building it instead.
The book launches July 29 at RosettaFest in Nashville. Every attendee gets a copy. You can pre-order on Amazon now.
Key Takeaways:
- A close friend's death from a preventable medical error left behind a ten-year-old daughter. That loss is where the decade of work started.
- The system is not broken by accident. It was built this way. But the people inside it are largely operating exactly as the incentives demand, not as villains.
- Dave spent years inside healthcare technology, building software for health systems, working at the intersection of innovation and care delivery. That proximity made the dysfunction visible in a way it might not have been from the outside.
- The turning point was deciding to stop optimizing inside the broken model and start documenting the places where people had already built something better.
- Relocalizing health is not a policy idea. It is not a theory. It is something that is already happening in the communities in this book.
- The Health Rosetta Dividend is the financial expression of this: when employers build the right kind of plan, they generate real savings that can be reinvested into people and communities. The communities in the book prove this over five, ten, twenty, and thirty-year timelines.
- The book is a field manual, not a manifesto. It is written for employers who are done overpaying, advisors who want to build plans they can stand behind, and community leaders who understand healthcare cost as an economic development problem.
- With AI displacing workers at scale, the communities that capture the AI Catalyst by redirecting healthcare savings into workforce development will be the ones that build durable economies. The communities that do not will pay what Dave calls the AI Tax.
- The tools are now democratized through the Nautilus Health Institute. The playbook exists. What is needed is the courage to act, community by community.
Resources Mentioned:
- Relocalizing Health by Dave Chase: pre-order on Amazon now
- RosettaFest 2026: RosettaFest.org
- Health Rosetta: healthrosetta.org
- Nautilus Health Institute: nautilushealthinstitute.org
Learn More:
RosettaFest 2026 - https://rosettafest.org/
Health Rosetta - http://healthrosetta.org/
Nautilus - https://www.nautilushealth.org/
Kynexions - https://kynexions.com/
Dave Chase - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chasedave/
Podcast Website - https://relocalizinghealth.com/
