Exploring Healthcare

On this episode I sit down with Amy Otto who is the Director of Client Experience at VirtualMed Staff. VirtualMed Staff is a full-service telemedicine company that specializes in the placement of psychiatrists, hospitalists, and neurologists with hospitals, clinics, and medical groups across America. Amy has spent her career working in different areas of the healthcare and employee benefits industries and brought a unique set of experiences and knowledge to the discussion around telemedicine, mental health, cross state licensure and payment parody, and podcasting.
 

Connect: 

[email protected] 

[email protected] 

https://twitter.com/nickolascrim 

Referenced in the show: 

https://www.virtualmedstaff.com/ 

https://businessradiox.com/our-studios/sandysprings/atlanta-business-radio/ 

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Moments-Certain-Experiences-Extraordinary/dp/1501147765 

Time stamps: 

[1:06] Amy’s background 

[4:45] Telemedicine/ virtual care 

[8:20] Cross state licensure, payment parody, and psychiatrists shortages 

[13:53] VirtualMed Staff 

[19:45] Physician shortage 

[23:06] Broadband connection access 

[23:50] Day-to-day as Director of Client Experience. 

[30:25] Employer strategy around mental health 

[31:43] Virtual care and mental health 

[33:27] Mental health needs among college students 

[39:33] Atlanta Business Radio Show 

[44:21] Interview prep 

[47:08] The Power of Moments 

[49:57] Purchase of $100 or less 

On this episode I sit down with Vijay Kedar Co-founder and CEO of Tomorrow Health where they are working to simplify home-based medical care. They are tackling this problem in several different ways, which we dive into during the conversation. We discuss Vijay's biggest takeaways from the 2021 healthcare conference circuit and perspective on the industry, his motivation for starting Tomorrow Health, and some of the logistics of delivering high quality care to the home. 

Connect: 

[email protected] 

https://linktr.ee/nickolascrim 

Referenced in the Episode: 

https://home.tomorrowhealth.com/ 

https://medium.com/tomorrow-health/reimagining-healthcare-in-the-home

https://headway.co/ 

https://www.mavenclinic.com/ 

https://www.hioscar.com/ 

https://www.landmarkhealth.org/ 

https://www.scanhealthplan.com/ 

https://www.geisinger.org/ 

https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things 

Timestamps: 

(1:27) HLTH Conference takeaways 

(4:36) Impressive healthcare companies 

(5:47) His path into healthcare 

(9:09 ) Tomorrow Health 

(12:29) Shift away from home based care 

(16:14) Barriers to home based care 

(20:06) Regional focus of healthcare 

(21:50) Patient experience at Tomorrow Health 

(24:17) Benefit for suppliers 

(25:30) Other D2C attempts 

(28:57) Surprising markets 

(29:40) Companies that inspire him 

(33:57) Growing the team 

(37:29) Hard Things About Hard Things 

On this episode I sit down with Dutch Rojas founder of Sano Surgery, Everyone Healthcare, and Shop Healthcare - all of which exist to bring affordable & accessible medical treatments for the world. We talk about Dutch's path into healthcare and entrepreneurship, direct contracting and cash prices, and some alternate healthcare finance models he thinks have long term potential.

Connect: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dutchrojas/ 

https://linktr.ee/nickolascrim 

Referenced in the episode: 

https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things 

https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One 

Timestamps: 

() Dutch’s background 

() Contracting cash prices 

() Building an exchange 

() Financing healthcare long-term 

() Health share model 

() Healthcare costs a barrier to pursuing other jobs or lifestyles 

() Scaling the business 

() Price transparency 

() Contracting globally 

() Marketplace 

() Serving the underinsured and uninsured 

() Certificate of Need (CON) laws 

() Mentors 

() Book recommendations 

Connect:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidney-haitoff-5a805810/
https://twitter.com/nickolascrim
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickolasc/

Referenced in the Episode:
https://mishe.co/
https://surgerycenterok.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great

Timestamps: 

(0:37) Bringing healing to our healthcare system 

(3:50) Working in his Dad’s medical billing company 

(7:28) Difference between the contracted rate v. Billed charge 

(10:06) Pricing variance among hospitals v. Private practices 

(14:53) Reimbursement process 

(17:07) Dr. Keith Smith / Surgery Center of Oklahoma 

(22:34) mishe 

(32:11) Fund the Care Initiative 

(35:17) Uber and taxi medallions 

(38:31) Book Recommendation 

Connect:
https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/
[email protected]
https://twitter.com/nickolascrim
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickolasc/

Referenced in the Episode:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/

https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Never-Pay-First-Bill-Health

Timestamps:
(0:54) Andy’s background and starting a search fund

(3:48) Changing the way we do things 

(4:53) Thinking differently & average folks

(7:24) Failing along the way & humility 

(8:48) Learning from employees at VRI 

(13:18) Business partner & complimentary skill sets

(16:04) Apple example 

(17:40) CrowdHealth & personal experience with the healthcare system 

(25:27) Subscription model, tools, and process 

(30:02) Cash-pay rate 

(31:17) Quality of care 

(35:15) Barriers to scaling 

(37:13) Net Promoter Scores 

(38:54) Price transparency

(43:28) Transparent revenue streams 

(45:10) Financial incentives 

(48:40) Lost wages 

(51:30) Patient advocacy

(53:08) Book recommendation 

Connect:
https://aim-m.com/
https://twitter.com/nickolascrim
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickolasc/

Timestamps: 

(1:00) Defining medical management 

(6:36) Challenges facing healthcare consumers 

(11:41) Defining quality 

(15:42) Educating consumers 

(21:57) Barriers to adapting medical management 

(30:02) Misdiagnosis 

(33:40) Gold Carding 

(36:00) Evidence based medicine and standards 

(42:40) Direct-to-consumer products 

(53:00) High price-tag medical procedures 

(1:01:30) Consequences of delayed care 

(1:06:00) Social determinants of health 

(1:07:00) Out-of-the-box employer strategies 

(1:11:45) Community health manager 

Connect:
https://twitter.com/DrNundy?s=20
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shantanu-nundy-1a094a33/
https://twitter.com/nickolascrim
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickolasc/

Referenced in the Episode: 
https://www.careaftercovid.org/care-after-covid
https://accolade.com/
https://www.oakstreethealth.com/

Timestamps:
(1:36) His path into medicine 

(2:35) His experience working in his family’s boarding school in India 

(6:54) The importance of health equity and solving problems at their scale 

(9:20) Example of shortage of primary physicians 

(12:20) Community health worker model in Africa 

(13:44) Does every person actually need a primary care physician? 

(15:15) Motivation for writing Care After COVID 

(17:30) Reasons for FDA push back on at-home testing in 2020 

(19:48) Key takeaways from Care After COVID 

(23:30) Framework around distributed, digital, decentralized care
(25:42) The shift from home-based to clinic-based care

(31:09) Increasing digital access and literacy among patients 

(36:15) Accolade 

Connect:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leon-wisniewski-a38174b/
https://twitter.com/nickolascrim
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickolasc/

Referenced in the Episode:
https://healthcostlabs.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Cups-Tea-Mission

Timestamps: 

(1:52) Leo’s background and skill set 

(3:27) Discovering code shifting within carrier contracts 

(4:34) Experience in the fraud department 

(8:21) Barriers to sharing data within healthcare 

(10:00) Need for one central and open database of non-identified medical claims 

(15:50) Lessons from EHR project 
(17:21) Reasons for lack of price transparency within healthcare 

(22:00) Cost-per-unit 

(23:10) CMS hospital pricing requirements 

(25:59) His process at Health Cost Labs 

(30:38) What he’s learned from analyzing 3000+ hospital pricing files 

(32:11) Health Cost Labs v. Turquoise.Health 

(34:30) Growing sales 

(37:23) Thoughts on bootstrapping his business 

(38:33) Motivation for moving from programming to business side 

(40:29) Benefits of a diverse skill set 

(41:49) Takeaways from Q4 Live conference 

(44:46) Book recommendation 

(48:23) Purchase of $100 or less 

Connect:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/prinzing/
https://twitter.com/nickolascrim
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickolasc/

Referenced in the Episode: 
https://roveranalytics.com/
https://www.oofos.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Title-Leader-Sanborn...

Timestamps:
(1:45) His path into entrepreneurship and early business ventures 

(4:56) His process for coming up with business ideas 

(7:45) Story behind Kadalyst and identifying the need for better employee communications at the workplace 

(13:13) Examples of utilizing behavioral psychology and economics in messaging 

(15:27) Contradictions between messaging and encouraged behavior in the workplace and how to avoid them 

(18:07) Defining and communicating culture 

(20:12) Tools for researching a company’s culture around health and wellness 

(21:00) Benefit of companies clearly communicating culture on their career page 

(23:17) Mission of Rover Analytics 

(26:33) Need for 100% participation from employees to truly understand groups risk profile 

(30:40) Employee UX on the Rover Analytics platform

(32:58) Defining predictive analytics and how to utilize the data to provide better patient advocacy 

(37:30) Thoughts on the low cost of data storage and sorting through a large data sets 

(39:35) Health routine that has improved his life 

(41:37) His book recommendation 

(43:38) Purchase of $100 or less that improved his life 

Connect:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyrxbaker/
https://www.instagram.com/amyrxbaker/
https://twitter.com/nickolascrim
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickolasc/

Referenced in the Episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oQbbC2Ral4
https://www.ewg.org/apps/

Timestamps:

(1:45) Amy’s background 

(3:33) Lessons from forks in her career path 

(5:40) Pharm to Pharm program idea 

(6:45) Benefits of virtual care and ongoing triaging 

(8:52) Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act and Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy 

(12:20) Does increasing access to generic drug lower costs for patients? 

(14:15) Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and some of the contracting and pricing games they play 

(21:40) Amy’s comment to FTC regarding vertical integration 

(22:40) PBMs mail-order pricing game 

(24:03) Definition of patient drug compliance 

(24:56) These issues are more than dollars and cents. People’s livelihood and health is involved. 

(25:30) Patients loyalty to their local independent pharmacy 

(26:19) Explanation of vertical integration and what it does to competition 

(31:20) It’s up to use to help educate our politicians 

(32:40) Amy’s 2016 Longevity Summit talk on toxic burden 

(36:45) Healthy Living app for scanning personal care product and seeing safety rating