CHIME Fall Forum 21 – Carina Edwards, CEO of Quil
Episode 212 • 29th October 2021 • This Week Health: Newsroom • This Week Health
00:00:00 00:15:07

Transcripts

Bill Russell:

Today in health, it interviews from the chime

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conference in San Diego.

Bill Russell:

My name is bill Russell.

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I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in health.

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It a channel dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged.

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Just a quick reminder.

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I wouldn't be dropping interviews over the next couple of days and into

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next week from the chime conference.

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And then I'm going to have some more interviews from the next conference I

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want to be going to, and then eventually I'll get back to Florida and to the studio

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where we'll start looking at the news.

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Once again.

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Hope you enjoy this interview.

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All right.

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Another interview from the chime floor.

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And we are here with a member of the class from welcome back Kotter.

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We're here with Corinne Edwards.

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That was a great picture of you up there.

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You did.

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I'm sorry.

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I didn't finish with the Korean Edwards, Quill health CEO, but the the opening

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for chime, you were up on stage.

Bill Russell:

You're a chime board member.

Carina Edwards:

I am a time board better.

Carina Edwards:

We did this whole skit for welcome back hotter.

Carina Edwards:

Yep.

Carina Edwards:

The new Yorker in me had to come out and they showed my

Carina Edwards:

really big hair in high school.

Carina Edwards:

It was, are

Bill Russell:

you originally from New York that explains to the New York giants?

Bill Russell:

Totally.

Bill Russell:

Yes.

Bill Russell:

But you lived in Boston.

Carina Edwards:

I did.

Carina Edwards:

So I was born in Yonkers.

Carina Edwards:

I grew up in New York and I went to school in DC and then my first gig was in Boston.

Carina Edwards:

So it just became this thing where I always held on to the giants,

Bill Russell:

the giants, but not giant.

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I was

Carina Edwards:

never that big into baseball.

Carina Edwards:

And so now, because of my basketball, legions was also not strong.

Carina Edwards:

So I'm a Sixers fan and I'm a giants fan.

Carina Edwards:

That's my two sports, but I thought

Bill Russell:

you followed.

Bill Russell:

Yeah, don't worry.

Bill Russell:

You're Phillies.

Bill Russell:

You're not missing much.

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I'm sorry.

Bill Russell:

I'm sure somebody from Philadelphia is watching.

Bill Russell:

I'm originally from Pennsylvania.

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And so I grew up a Phillies fan, an Eagles fan, Penn state fan, all those things.

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But what I found is when you move around the country yeah.

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It's.

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It's kinda neat to root for the team where you live.

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I'm always going to be a St.

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Louis Cardinals fan.

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I lived there for 20 years, but when you move to a city, it's, there's

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something about connecting with it and being there and it's great for

Carina Edwards:

me coming to Philly.

Carina Edwards:

Cause I think Philly is very similar to a New York city.

Carina Edwards:

So it's just a, it's a fun, it's a gritty city, but it's close to New York so I can

Carina Edwards:

get to the Meadowlands really quickly.

Carina Edwards:

So for me, I'm still rooting for a local team, but I can't

Carina Edwards:

wear any blue on the streets.

Carina Edwards:

And

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the good news Saquon Barkley went to Penn state.

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So

Carina Edwards:

a little tiny in there.

Bill Russell:

I know we're going to talk well, hell don't worry because it is.

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I want to hear your journey.

Bill Russell:

It's been awhile since I, since we visited, but.

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New York giants.

Bill Russell:

They've got problems.

Bill Russell:

They do.

Carina Edwards:

So a Cowboys game, I have to give them credit.

Carina Edwards:

So 70% of the offensive line was in the locker room.

Carina Edwards:

Injured.

Carina Edwards:

Danny Jones got that bad whack, but I give them credit because they had grit

Carina Edwards:

to come back and score a touchdown.

Carina Edwards:

And just I know they didn't win the game, but they showed grit.

Carina Edwards:

And last week, the Panthers, that was fun.

Bill Russell:

You really are a diehard fan.

Bill Russell:

We're going to do it.

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We're going to come back someday.

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Maybe someday.

Bill Russell:

Maybe spring bill Parcells back, is that the last time you had.

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Come on

Carina Edwards:

now, we took two rings away from Brady.

Bill Russell:

That's true.

Bill Russell:

You had the Eli years and the catch over the head and that kind of stuff.

Bill Russell:

You really are a fan.

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If you like to.

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You'd like, no, all this stuff ever since I was a kid.

Bill Russell:

Wow, fantastic.

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Quill health.

Bill Russell:

Yes.

Bill Russell:

You guys are, when we first met, I was in Philadelphia and we actually

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did it on location in Philly.

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That was fun.

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And got to see your location.

Bill Russell:

You guys were early on.

Bill Russell:

Maybe at signed pen.

Carina Edwards:

Yeah.

Carina Edwards:

So we started, I joined in April, 2019 and we basically

Carina Edwards:

signed a pen two months later.

Carina Edwards:

And so you and I think I connected right in between that.

Carina Edwards:

Yeah.

Bill Russell:

Just gotten started.

Bill Russell:

All right.

Bill Russell:

So you just got started.

Bill Russell:

That was a couple of years ago.

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It was there's this thing called COVID in the middle.

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This thing called COVID in the middle, that slowed things down

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a little bit or accelerated

Carina Edwards:

it accelerated some things for us.

Carina Edwards:

So what happened was we had pen signed.

Carina Edwards:

We also signed off.

Carina Edwards:

And so we had Philly covered and we were looking to take our time to make sure that

Carina Edwards:

the platform we had built was really going to produce the outcomes that we needed.

Carina Edwards:

And we had time to tune it before we started scaling.

Carina Edwards:

So that's been, that was the fun journey, but what happened in March,

Carina Edwards:

2020, all of our patients went offline.

Carina Edwards:

And so we had to say wait a second, we have this amazingly scalable platform.

Carina Edwards:

It can do any journey.

Carina Edwards:

So what's going on with.

Carina Edwards:

And so we worked with Comcast and independence across our parent companies.

Carina Edwards:

And there were so much misinformation going on.

Carina Edwards:

We partnered with NBC news and the today show, we curated a COVID prepared

Carina Edwards:

this toolkit and taught people how to work from home and had a homeschool.

Carina Edwards:

Your kids had a caregiver remotely.

Carina Edwards:

And so we spun that up in five days.

Carina Edwards:

It was one of those moments where you're like, I hope it works and hope it works.

Carina Edwards:

And so we brought in the Comcast scaling engineers, we've got our backend scaled

Carina Edwards:

up and we launched a 1.3 million.

Carina Edwards:

That following

Bill Russell:

Monday.

Bill Russell:

So you're ready to scale now, is this like stuff that's just going to go on the shelf

Bill Russell:

or is this stuff that like proved out the

Carina Edwards:

platform at the platform?

Carina Edwards:

So it really, when it proved scale, we could do it.

Carina Edwards:

And then two, it proved the flexibility of how we bring together

Carina Edwards:

videos, articles, links, texts, emails, to engage populations

Carina Edwards:

and bring them back to an expo.

Bill Russell:

So if I'm an ex affinity customer and I happen to be an

Bill Russell:

video customer, even though I'm in Florida, I think they're everywhere.

Bill Russell:

Yeah.

Bill Russell:

I can essentially talk to my set-top box and say what and access

Carina Edwards:

Wilhelm.

Carina Edwards:

Yeah.

Carina Edwards:

So Quill is available on your mobile device or your or the web,

Carina Edwards:

but you can also go to the Comcast box, they Quill, or you can say

Carina Edwards:

what happens next into your voice.

Carina Edwards:

Remote.

Carina Edwards:

The quilt app comes up just like you pair your Netflix account or your Hulu account.

Carina Edwards:

You compare your quilt account.

Carina Edwards:

So on the landing page right now is a ton of great information about the

Carina Edwards:

vaccine and why to get the vaccine and everybody should get vaccinated.

Carina Edwards:

And then.

Carina Edwards:

It's the, if you pair your journey whether you're one of our 10 customers,

Carina Edwards:

you get 10 now, which is great of your, one of our 10 customers.

Carina Edwards:

You can basically see your journey on the screens.

Carina Edwards:

So we're doing a lot with the television when it comes to oncology, new diagnosis,

Carina Edwards:

really sitting down with your family and understanding what it's going to

Carina Edwards:

mean to go through head and neck cancer.

Carina Edwards:

Another one that we're doing is a lot of PT, a lot of self-directed exercises.

Carina Edwards:

You already have the screen hanging on your wall.

Carina Edwards:

Why try to stand up?

Bill Russell:

So this is you go in and talk to, if I were at a health system, you

Bill Russell:

come in and talk to, I assume the CA CMO medical officer and others, and you would

Bill Russell:

say, here's what our platform can do.

Bill Russell:

And then they sit back and go, where we could use that.

Bill Russell:

We use that here and here.

Bill Russell:

And so that's, what's driving your content,

Carina Edwards:

IRIS.

Carina Edwards:

It is.

Carina Edwards:

So we actually, we had a couple of core thesis on where to start.

Carina Edwards:

So the first was where anybody's entering into value based

Carina Edwards:

contracts are capitated models.

Carina Edwards:

And so Medicare is your.

Carina Edwards:

Where are those where those things are capitated and you have to control the 30,

Carina Edwards:

60, 90 days post experience and getting patients prepared for the better outcome

Carina Edwards:

is how we start them pre procedure.

Carina Edwards:

And then we follow them through, post-procedure getting insights

Carina Edwards:

from them along the way.

Carina Edwards:

Interesting.

Carina Edwards:

And then we pivoted to chronics cause that's for the ACS of the world.

Carina Edwards:

That's a big one.

Carina Edwards:

So COPD, diabetes, lupus.

Carina Edwards:

How do we make sure that we can enable the PCPs?

Carina Edwards:

And now we're also doing, fee for service.

Carina Edwards:

Thriving.

Carina Edwards:

And so for differentiating service lines, like musculoskeletal cardiology the areas

Carina Edwards:

of bariatric surgery, the areas that are growing revenue for health system.

Carina Edwards:

So we're differentiating to prove, can we reduce risk?

Carina Edwards:

Can we improve patient compliance?

Carina Edwards:

And can we actually deliver a consumer grade experience?

Carina Edwards:

That's

Bill Russell:

fun.

Bill Russell:

I like about this.

Bill Russell:

The, I talked to Glen Tullman last week at the health conference.

Bill Russell:

The thing that Glen is a master at is he knows healthcare.

Bill Russell:

So he's able to say, okay, here's the soft spot that we're going to go in here.

Bill Russell:

We're going to solve this.

Bill Russell:

Here's another one.

Bill Russell:

And when I hear you talk like somebody who knows healthcare.

Bill Russell:

And when I walked around the health conference and I talked to some of

Bill Russell:

the startups, they're like, we think this, and we think that, and I'm gone.

Bill Russell:

You might want to prove out your thesis before you take

Bill Russell:

that $5 million or 10 or 250

Carina Edwards:

million that the money is raining in.

Carina Edwards:

I've been in this industry for 25 years.

Carina Edwards:

The exciting part for me is we've proven outcomes with rigor.

Carina Edwards:

And so we've reduced readmissions.

Carina Edwards:

We reduce like the savings, improved discharge to home.

Carina Edwards:

We've reduced ed visits.

Carina Edwards:

So I know on the outcome side, the platform works and the way we

Carina Edwards:

get patients through an episode of care is very differentiated.

Bill Russell:

Will you do studies like public?

Bill Russell:

You

Carina Edwards:

are going to do a few of them right now.

Bill Russell:

That's that's good stuff.

Bill Russell:

And the other thing is, when you're at one client, I'm interviewing you

Bill Russell:

saying, Hey, I really like you tell me about what is it like being at a

Bill Russell:

startup, but when you're at 10 clients, that's that's validation in healthcare.

Bill Russell:

That

Carina Edwards:

means, it's exciting.

Carina Edwards:

And it's also we're we're partnered up in.

Carina Edwards:

So I have a partner Pete care, who is the best in class

Carina Edwards:

interactive in-patient system.

Carina Edwards:

And so when you're hanging TVs on the wall and you're having your patients connect to

Carina Edwards:

their television, we can do the prey, they do the bed, we do the discharge home and

Carina Edwards:

it's this lovely care continuum solution.

Carina Edwards:

And they've been great because they've been answering a lot of infrastructure

Carina Edwards:

RFPs for wonderful new towers going up.

Carina Edwards:

And so it's been a great route to market for us to provide you.

Carina Edwards:

Sure.

Bill Russell:

Talk to me about the road to CEO because when you write.

Bill Russell:

We met when you were at Impravada you, weren't not a CEO, but you

Bill Russell:

were, you're doing a lot of stuff.

Bill Russell:

The interesting with what I see from the outside, because

Bill Russell:

I see you on social media.

Bill Russell:

I see.

Bill Russell:

Oh, Korean Edwards is going to be here with Dr.

Bill Russell:

Klasko and she'd be here with, and I'm like, how does she get the product done?

Bill Russell:

How does she get the board meetings?

Bill Russell:

How does she get sales?

Bill Russell:

This, the role of the CEO is a lot of, it's a pretty interesting dance, isn't it?

Carina Edwards:

I think the first thing is you have to surround yourself with great.

Carina Edwards:

And I've had the great fortune of having a few folks follow me that we have

Carina Edwards:

a shorthand or any, which is lovely.

Carina Edwards:

And they have an amazing team.

Carina Edwards:

My CFO, my chief people officer, my chief of staff, they are

Carina Edwards:

they are aligned to the mission.

Carina Edwards:

They help us drive to the

Bill Russell:

outcome.

Bill Russell:

So you're not looking at code every day.

Carina Edwards:

I just brought in Dwight rom to look at code every day.

Bill Russell:

But what I mean?

Bill Russell:

So there's an operation component.

Bill Russell:

There's a marketing, there's a sales component.

Bill Russell:

You're the F you end up being the face of the organization or is it Al Roker?

Bill Russell:

W

Carina Edwards:

it's really important.

Carina Edwards:

So I've always been, so my role at Impravada was I ran all of our

Carina Edwards:

customers and our post-sale experience.

Carina Edwards:

So running and being integrated in where the clinicians work and

Carina Edwards:

understanding the workflow and seeing the outcomes that's business outcomes.

Carina Edwards:

And so being the front end of this, to know the specifics of the journeys,

Carina Edwards:

to understand how our customers are using it, like when you and I met back

Carina Edwards:

in the day, or you were a CIO at St.

Carina Edwards:

Joe's and you were a customer and getting in there to understand

Carina Edwards:

your business challenges makes us.

Carina Edwards:

So when

Bill Russell:

you're sitting across from a CEO, you're saying, look, these are

Bill Russell:

the results we're getting here, and here.

Bill Russell:

And you already know their challenges you already, before you

Bill Russell:

go in and sit down with that CEO.

Bill Russell:

How much of their population is at risk.

Bill Russell:

How much of their population is Medicare, Medicaid, all that stuff.

Bill Russell:

That's public.

Bill Russell:

And so you're ready to talk about what you've done

Carina Edwards:

and also where they need help.

Carina Edwards:

Because I think everybody across the provider side is at a

Carina Edwards:

different stage of this journey.

Carina Edwards:

And so when I think the most, the worst term we're seeing everywhere

Carina Edwards:

is the digital front door.

Carina Edwards:

And we assume there's one.

Bill Russell:

All right.

Bill Russell:

We're going to have to edit like five of my episodes.

Bill Russell:

Now

Carina Edwards:

go ahead.

Carina Edwards:

Because I think it goes back to, there's probably not one digital front

Carina Edwards:

door, there's different experiences.

Carina Edwards:

You have to spin up for different patients on different parts of

Carina Edwards:

their journey and the pane of glass that they use should be irrelevant.

Carina Edwards:

It's what's more convenient for them and the consumer, and more importantly,

Carina Edwards:

what's more convenient to their caregiver.

Bill Russell:

That's it?

Bill Russell:

Yeah.

Bill Russell:

It's interesting.

Bill Russell:

This is really being driven by the consumers.

Bill Russell:

Expectations have really changed during COVID.

Bill Russell:

Are we tracking that.

Bill Russell:

Because a lot of times we get anecdotal in healthcare.

Bill Russell:

We go everybody wants a digital front door.

Bill Russell:

And the reality is when we look at the data, we go, you know what?

Bill Russell:

They respond to tax a lot better than the newer digital front door, maybe.

Bill Russell:

But we don't tend to look at that data.

Bill Russell:

We just assume, oh, digital transformation means a really cool

Bill Russell:

app or a really cool something.

Bill Russell:

Are we tracking that?

Bill Russell:

How we're interacting with.

Bill Russell:

We

Carina Edwards:

are, and I think it goes back to, everyone's

Carina Edwards:

got different digital personas.

Carina Edwards:

And when you're on different parts of the journey, getting a hip replacement

Carina Edwards:

is completely different than going through head and neck cancer.

Carina Edwards:

Or if you're going through head and neck cancer, you have to have surgery.

Carina Edwards:

There is something where you have your family's impacted, you are impacted.

Carina Edwards:

Your life expectancy is impacted.

Carina Edwards:

So getting prepared for that mentally and having a good outcome is tied

Carina Edwards:

to preparedness hip replacement.

Carina Edwards:

Do you know, the fundamentals, do you need to show up prepared and then

Carina Edwards:

recovering from that it's getting moving and making sure patients are moving.

Carina Edwards:

So sometimes getting moving means a TV and exercises, getting

Carina Edwards:

ready for head neck cancer.

Carina Edwards:

That means a lot of other offline conversations.

Carina Edwards:

Just understanding the information when you're ready to hear it

Carina Edwards:

on whatever pane of glass you

Bill Russell:

want.

Bill Russell:

What about, so w we have a lot of conversations about health

Bill Russell:

equity and those kinds of things.

Bill Russell:

Communities.

Bill Russell:

Philadelphia is one of those.

Bill Russell:

Cause the interview I did with Dr.

Bill Russell:

Klasko taught he very much.

Bill Russell:

Hey, that's zip code?

Bill Russell:

It's going to die five years quicker than that zip code.

Bill Russell:

And he wasn't talking like a hundred miles away.

Bill Russell:

He was talking like, yeah.

Bill Russell:

Yeah.

Bill Russell:

In Philadelphia it was pretty stark.

Bill Russell:

Does the set top box.

Bill Russell:

That's a phone.

Bill Russell:

You have a lot of different ways

Carina Edwards:

to tone the texts and the emails really resonates.

Carina Edwards:

So we have, one of our customers is AmeriHealth Caritas, and

Carina Edwards:

they're a Medicaid provider and we serve 187,000 Medicaid lives

Carina Edwards:

in Philadelphia, five county.

Carina Edwards:

And really for them, we're really driving up health literacy for

Carina Edwards:

caregiving, just on the notion of if you're caring for someone in the

Carina Edwards:

Medicaid program and you they qualify for being a longterm shared services.

Carina Edwards:

And what are the benefits?

Carina Edwards:

How do I navigate Medicaid?

Carina Edwards:

How do I make sure that the person I'm caring for it gets the right care

Carina Edwards:

at the right venue at the right time?

Carina Edwards:

So it's been really interesting understanding their text, email

Carina Edwards:

adoption versus long form video content.

Carina Edwards:

And then also with that population, we promote the Comcast internet essentials

Carina Edwards:

program where any household that qualifies for Medicaid can get $10 a

Carina Edwards:

month internet and a hundred dollars PC.

Carina Edwards:

So we can start connecting homes in a different way, especially in urban

Carina Edwards:

environments that have connectivity.

Bill Russell:

Brianna, we could talk for another half hour easily.

Bill Russell:

You're stepping off the board next year.

Carina Edwards:

Yeah.

Carina Edwards:

My term is over in December 10 year five-year it was five years.

Carina Edwards:

It was phenomenal.

Carina Edwards:

It's a great organization.

Carina Edwards:

What we do here, I'm really excited for the Vive conference coming up.

Carina Edwards:

I think it's going to be a great

Bill Russell:

marriage.

Bill Russell:

Of course I was worried about.

Bill Russell:

Sometimes you and I, this is the only time we get together.

Bill Russell:

So we'll have to, we'll have to make it a little bit more next year.

Bill Russell:

So thank you for your time.

Bill Russell:

Thank you.

Bill Russell:

Appreciate it.

Bill Russell:

Don't forget to check back as we have more of these interviews

Bill Russell:

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Bill Russell:

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Bill Russell:

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