Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Healthcare in Color: Dr. Iyad Houshan on Seeing Patients in Their Natural Environment | Nursing Home Series | Senior Care

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Healthcare in Color: Dr. Iyad Houshan on Seeing Patients in Their Natural Environment | Nursing Home Series | Senior Care · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:17
today's guest is Doctor Yad Hushan, Chief Medical Officer at
0:21
Welby Senior Medical. They specialize in providing
0:25
personalized in home care for older adults dealing with
0:29
complex conditions. Founded in 2014 and based in
0:33
Chicago, Well B is on a mission to change how care is delivered
0:37
to older patients, ensuring they stay healthy at home.
0:42
They deliver compassionate, patient centered services
0:45
including 24/7 urgent care, medication management, and
0:50
therapy support. Under Doctor Hushan's guidance,
0:53
Wellbe continues to grow and help seniors receive the care
0:57
they need from the comfort of their own homes.
1:00
Doctor Hushan draws on his leadership background at
1:03
Alignment Healthcare, Remita Health, and Care More Health
1:07
where he helped achieve A4 star rating.
1:10
He is recognized for his work in improving patient outcomes and
1:14
developing better care models. Now before we get into all the
1:17
good stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company,
1:21
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AD back benefitsagency.com. All right, back to our guest
1:50
today, the Chief Medical Officer of well be Senior Medical Doctor
1:54
Hushan. I appreciate you making the time
1:56
to Share your story today. Absolutely.
1:59
Thank you very much, Anthony, for this opportunity.
2:02
So let's jump in. So I see you graduated from Ross
2:05
University School of Medicine in 1999, and since then you've LED
2:09
multiple organizations specifically focused on seniors
2:13
with chronic conditions. Tell us, Doctor, what initially
2:17
drew you into the field of senior care?
2:21
Yeah. So I, I kind of started my, my
2:23
career teaching at the University of Nevada School of
2:26
Medicine and this really helped me kind of deepen that
2:30
knowledge, retention of knowledge, enhance critical
2:34
thinking skills and really improve on communication skills,
2:40
strengthening diagnostics and clinical resourcing, and also
2:43
develop leadership and mentorship skills.
2:46
Then from there, I kind of cut my teeth in Medicare Advantage
2:50
health plans where I joined, you know, care more health plan,
2:53
which is a Medicare Advantage, build care more health plan in
2:58
Nevada from the ground up to be a four-star health plan, less
3:03
than two years. For the folks that probably on
3:06
the health plan side, they will understand the challenges that
3:08
you have to go through to really achieve this in a short period
3:12
of time. What were some of the big ones?
3:15
Some of the big ones is you're actually trying to get into
3:18
finding the right network that will support your, your, your
3:24
care model. And at the time Care More was a
3:26
unique care delivery model that is run by the health plan.
3:32
So you have to find the right clinicians, the right primary
3:36
care, the right specialists, the right network, the right home
3:39
health agencies, all of those need to be aligned for you to be
3:43
able to deliver the right care to those patients in a short
3:47
period of time. And we're talking about you go
3:50
in and you probably end up with, let's call it six different,
3:54
let's let's bring cardiology as an example, six different
3:57
cardiology groups. You got to do the homework and
4:00
try to study and make sure that those groups are going to
4:03
provide the care you intend for your patients, because not all
4:08
of those are created equal. And that's similar to every
4:11
other network per SE. So putting that together and
4:15
making sure that in the process you're delivering on the
4:18
promises of those patients who said, I want to sign up for this
4:22
health plan and they promised all of these benefits on all of
4:27
this care. So you want to make sure that
4:29
you stay true to that statement while building the the network
4:34
you know to to the specifications that you really
4:37
would want for a family. Of yours.
4:40
And So what state was that in? Was it a one or two star three
4:43
star when you first came in? That was we started in in
4:48
Nevada, in Las Vegas, and then from there we actually ventured
4:52
into Arizona. That was the second state where
4:55
we actually ventured outside the two states we ventured outside
4:59
of California. But what was the What was the
5:02
star rating before you came in? Or did it not have one?
5:05
I'm just trying to get an idea of.
5:06
How much you increased it by? Yeah, the star rating there you,
5:10
you start, you get fathered into a three and you got to make your
5:13
work, you know, into a four and that's kind of the delta.
5:17
And when we talk about star rating, you know, PDS and
5:21
quality measures are normally very hard to accomplish.
5:26
And this is kind of where the government told us those are the
5:29
quality measures that we're going to be really great to you
5:32
on and they're actually excellent measures.
5:34
So you know how when you go for example to the hotels, right,
5:37
there's a three star hotel, a four-star and a five star.
5:41
When you go to a three star hotel, you have certain
5:43
expectation versus A5 star hotel.
5:46
This is the same thing as the services that you're going to
5:48
provide, the quality of services you provide to your patients and
5:52
normally the patients who are joining Medicare Advantage and
5:56
start now. This is not a health plan.
5:58
What I gave you, the answer is like mainly on the health plan
6:01
side, but the patients will come in at probably at 2.32 and a
6:06
half stars, meaning that this is a sick population.
6:10
And there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure
6:12
you close all of these quality gaps from, you know, let's call
6:16
it, you know, colonoscopies, breast cancer screening,
6:21
medication adherence, which seems to be the big one that
6:25
that you have to go through. So those are some of the
6:27
challenges that you would get to, to get them to a four-star.
6:30
Now the star program is bigger than he does.
6:33
And you know, it has a lot of, you know, technical terms here,
6:37
you know, caps and hoss, it's, it's patient, you know, care
6:41
gaps and also more of objective service measures where we ask
6:47
the patients, you know, after you being with this health plan
6:50
for a year, do you feel like your healthcare has improved or
6:53
not? Do you feel like your well-being
6:55
has improved? There's a lot to it.
6:57
Then when I just mentioned that, I just wanted to bring up those
7:00
examples just in case we have any experts listening to us.
7:03
It's a big program and I'm just trying to highlight certain
7:07
pieces of it. Got it.
7:09
So you guys, you started out in Nevada, you went to Arizona.
7:13
I believe Care More is a lot bigger than that today, right?
7:16
It's grown quite a bit. They're yeah, they're bigger.
7:18
They're they're multiple States and the model has changed since.
7:22
And yeah, that's what was Care More than the kind of, you know,
7:26
taking some of those learnings from Care More went to this
7:30
other company where we kind of founded try to get into coalhead
7:36
Essentials, get into Hospice and Medical Group.
7:38
So this is a Hospice where we're about 7 states, I'm sorry, you
7:45
know, 7 sites, 3 States and about 1000 patient hospices.
7:49
So if you think of a Hospice, this is a medium to high size
7:54
normally than the few hundreds, but 1000 gets you into the
7:58
medium size there and seven sites.
8:00
We also had a Medical Group with about 170 clinicians and at the
8:04
time we built a model to enable taking risk for duly eligible
8:09
patients and long term care patients to establish, you know,
8:13
palliative care program. Now when I say duly eligible, so
8:17
those are the folks who in California, we call them Medi
8:20
Medi. And you know, it's like you have
8:23
Medicare and you have medical in California or Medicaid.
8:27
So you're eligible for a state support also for the, you know,
8:32
the CMS support as well. And normally to get into that,
8:37
you're probably have propensity to be sicker and have a lot of
8:42
issues aside from chronic conditions.
8:45
There's a lot of psychosocial issues that you really have to
8:48
address to be able to manage this population properly.
8:51
So the example I give for, you know, you could be sitting down
8:54
with a patient, I can talk about diabetes for hours, but the
8:58
patient is worried about they can't afford food, they might be
9:02
evicted. There's no home for them and
9:05
they're worried about paying rent until you address those
9:09
issues would be they're big stresses for the patient to pay
9:12
attention. It's like how And also how do
9:14
you expect me to say, well, these are all the following, for
9:18
example, diets you have to be on for diabetes and like, I can't
9:21
afford that, you know, I really can't afford.
9:23
What are you talking about? So then you got to be more
9:25
innovative and and that's a funny learning I had, you know,
9:29
I'll give you a story. Is, is at every juncture you
9:33
have tons of learnings where, you know, one of our
9:35
nutritionists taught me. I never knew that there's a
9:39
quote UN quote healthy menu at every fast food place, but there
9:45
is. It's like, you know, you could
9:48
come up with you go to McDonald's, you can make some
9:52
choices healthier than others and any other fast food place,
9:56
they have that. So that actually made a big
9:59
difference when we talked to our patients.
10:01
You know, you say here's some options because most of us, I
10:04
was one of them. You know, the folks like really
10:06
healthy and fast food didn't go hand in hand in the same
10:09
sentence, but it's there now. It's healthier, maybe not as
10:14
healthy as you want to get, but working within the realms of
10:17
their world and what's accessible to them, you can help
10:22
them make better choices. Right, right.
10:24
And then from those, you know, from all those experience kind
10:26
of took all those learnings and insights kind of, you know,
10:29
seeking really trying to answer one question, what do patients
10:34
want? This is how we came to find well
10:37
be. So today you know when we talk
10:39
about well be where we are now, we're like the largest
10:42
independent home based Medical Group in the country and we're
10:46
providing transform transformative outcome based
10:49
care for Medicaid Advantage. We're about 150,000 plus
10:53
patients, 9 States and revenue little over $3 billion.
11:00
Now taking all of that, all of those learnings is when I say
11:05
what do patients want, right. Today if you look at our system,
11:09
we have one-size-fits-all. If you have problem A, you know
11:15
the solution is B and if you have this issue, you go to that.
11:19
So it's more of a very rigid workflow type of stuff.
11:22
But in humans that doesn't really work, right.
11:26
So we're trying to attend to their to their unmet needs and
11:29
there's a lot of those unmet needs.
11:31
If you ever go to the hospital, I don't wish you on anybody, but
11:35
let's say you go to the hospital, you probably have to
11:37
tell your story to six or seven different people before you get
11:40
admitted. Now what happens is just telling
11:43
the story over and over again. You tend as a human to emit a
11:48
lot of information because you're tired of saying the same
11:50
thing over and over again. And with that, you emit
11:54
important information that could be, you know, pertinent to the
11:57
care that you should receive at a hospital.
12:01
The other thing that we found in our systems today is that at the
12:05
time when people are sick, fragmentation gets worse.
12:11
So we have a lot of fragmentation in our healthcare
12:13
system today, but when you're sick, the fragmentation gets
12:17
3X4X worse. What do you mean by
12:20
fragmentation? Like they're only remembering
12:21
parts of this of their health story.
12:24
Yeah, well, no, it it remembering you as a body part.
12:27
So meaning that let's say you're, you're seeing a
12:29
cardiologist and a gastroenterologist and a
12:32
endocrinologist, they think of you as a body part.
12:35
So it's like now you have a cardiology problem that I really
12:40
want to go and fix, whereas there's many other systems to go
12:45
look at holistically at the patient.
12:47
But when I get to what the patients want, most of the time
12:50
we never start by what are your wishes?
12:54
What would you like for your care?
12:56
How is your care? How do you want your care
12:58
delivered? We're mainly actually telling
13:01
the patients what they should do versus knowing what they're
13:05
unmet knees and try to match it with the services that we have.
13:09
So that's interesting. Yeah, I go to a doctor.
13:13
I sort of expect them to kind of guide and and run the show.
13:16
What would be an example answer that I could give back to a
13:20
doctor about what I want from my care?
13:22
I mean, at a base level, I just, I want to be healthier and I
13:25
don't want to be here, but like what?
13:27
What would be some feedback that you get from your patients on
13:30
that question? So.
13:31
Some of the things that when you ask like an open-ended question
13:34
would be, let's say what are your, what are your healthcare
13:37
goals? What, what do you, what, what do
13:39
you want? So you could bring it down.
13:41
So that's very broad. And then you bring it down to,
13:44
OK, I have a patient with let's say severe congressive heart
13:48
failure. I know that this patient
13:51
probably based on the stage of their chronic illness when I
13:55
asked him, what are your goals? And this patient comes back and
13:58
tells me, you know, I want my, I want to be around for college
14:03
for my 2 year old grandson. I want to be around for that.
14:08
I'd be like, OK, that's a great goal.
14:11
But with where you are, we probably have to readjust
14:15
expectations and it could happen, but we got to readjust
14:19
and and you start the conversation by really having
14:22
them understand their disease process and understand how these
14:27
chronic conditions were evolved over time.
14:30
Because we in medicine, we can manage symptoms for chronic
14:33
illnesses. We can decrease the slope of
14:36
progression of a chronic disease.
14:38
But I can't prevent it from going, you know, if there's
14:41
nothing else and if you live to be 150 years, you will die from
14:45
that chronic condition eventually.
14:48
So that's kind of, you know, level setting of what are the
14:51
chronic conditions. However, we tend to go and to
14:54
say, Yep, your diabetes is very well controlled and stuff.
14:57
We never talked about what else, right?
15:01
Or your diabetes is not very well trauma and try to control
15:03
it today. But what are your goals?
15:05
What are your personal healthcare goals and how does
15:08
that fit in your life goals? So the the whole model is
15:19
complete care at home. I think you've actually
15:21
trademarked the term complete care.
15:23
Can you walk us through maybe a real world example where you've
15:29
kind of seen this, this mission of complete care at home come
15:33
alive for a patient? Right.
15:35
So that complete care, you could also call it when we try to
15:39
attend to the patient's physical, psychological,
15:44
spiritual and emotional needs at home, that's complete care.
15:50
Somebody asked me and I'll get back to you a little bit more
15:52
specifics on your earlier question, but this just came as
15:55
a thought here. Somebody asked me what's the
15:58
difference between internal medicine and geriatric care
16:05
because we provide geriatric care.
16:07
So this is a little bit highly clinical, but folks will
16:10
probably understand what I'm saying here is like internal
16:12
medicine, we, I'm an internist and a geriatrician, but internal
16:17
medicine, we actually try to tend to manage chronic
16:19
conditions and to manage the numbers and the metrics within
16:23
the chronic condition. In geriatric care, we try to
16:27
manage your functional capacity, meaning if my patient is getting
16:32
up, walking around, walkie-talkie, they're doing
16:36
their daily activities, they're comfortable, they're in no pain.
16:41
If they're doing all of that, I can actually be confident that
16:44
their chronic conditions are well controlled.
16:47
So trying to look at your functional capacity as a
16:50
surrogate of how well your chronic conditions are doing by
16:55
looking at it holistically because they all interact with
16:58
each other, right? So, you know, when I you said an
17:03
example would be when I go talk to the patient sometimes, you
17:07
know, we say, what do you, what do you want today?
17:10
What do you need? And there'd be what do you mean
17:13
you're a doctor? What can I have from you?
17:16
I said, tell me I could actually, I can change the light
17:18
bulb for you. What?
17:20
Yeah, I can't. You know, I can figure that out
17:22
for you. Seriously.
17:23
OK. And then we get into more of a,
17:26
here's all of these needs, right?
17:28
And that can get to be overwhelming, but you can go
17:31
through it, really understand it, stratify it and make sure
17:34
that, you know, here's the top things that I can help you with,
17:37
right? And then we can get into you as
17:40
a person first before we get to your chronic conditions and
17:44
disease management that we're going to work on.
17:48
So mainly asking the open-ended question with the patients, like
17:51
what do you need? You know, and we've had and you
17:54
can get several different reactions to that all the way
17:58
from shock to very specific needs that you may or may not be
18:02
able to really address or help. But just the fact that the
18:06
patient sharing that with you, that's creating the trust that's
18:10
what you need in healthcare to be able to manage because they
18:14
we have to trust that the patient will take care of, we
18:19
ask them to take care of and they also have to trust that
18:22
we're giving them the right direction to get there and be
18:25
there for their full journey in healthcare.
18:28
Do you only see patients in their homes or are there times
18:32
where you visit them sort of in the hospital before or after
18:37
you've sort of taken over there at home care?
18:40
We actually, so the main care we provide is what we call it this
18:44
tailored care at a familiar setting and that is a home.
18:47
But when our patients end up going to the hospital, go to
18:49
skilled nursing facility, or if they end up living in an
18:53
independent living or assisted living or boarding care, we see
18:57
them there. So we follow the patients to
19:00
home whatever they call home. But even in acute episodes, we
19:03
try to follow the patients to help them during their
19:05
hospitalization or if they're transitioning between hospital
19:10
and home in a skilled nursing facility.
19:13
So you'll, you'll obviously see them when they're in those more
19:17
needful situations. You'll see them at home.
19:20
Do you act as their primary care physician as well by, you know,
19:24
and visit them in the home to kind of provide that, I don't
19:28
know the routine physical or checkup?
19:30
Yeah, we, we work very closely with the primary care physician
19:34
network. So we don't like to, you know,
19:38
add another, you know, another way of managing those patients.
19:44
So we work very closely with the primary care physicians.
19:47
Now we try to provide geriatric care.
19:49
So we work very closely with the primary care docs.
19:52
Now some of our patients, they say they want us to be primary
19:56
care. We'll assume that.
19:58
But for the most part, if they have their own primary care,
20:01
we'll collaborate very closely. And then we become the eyes and
20:04
ears for that primary care in the home, because there's one
20:10
thing that's that's quite important.
20:12
When the patients come to us in the office, I'm in an office,
20:15
they come to us. They they probably will get in
20:17
there. They get dressed, they get
20:18
ready. They're all looking great.
20:20
They show up in a very clean, neat environment.
20:23
They show up to the office. You don't know how they got to
20:27
where they are by looking at them in the office.
20:31
When we go to the home, you actually see healthcare in
20:34
color. It was black and white before,
20:37
but now it's in color. You see everything.
20:40
You know, you go in and you go to their homes and you say, wow,
20:43
look, you know, your, your bed is too high.
20:46
I mean, I saw a patient where I mean, I'm not at all that I have
20:50
to admit, but I saw a patient who's a little shorter than I
20:52
am. And then the bed was high and
20:54
I'm like, how do you actually get into that bed?
20:57
You know, And literally she was like, I got to jump on the bed,
21:01
you know, so it's a risk and no one paid attention to it.
21:05
So we try to be very curious when we're in the home.
21:08
We look in the kitchen, we look in the patient's, you know,
21:11
showers and bathrooms and stuff. And we look for any fall risks.
21:15
So we try to manage like that home environment because that's
21:19
what got them to where they are today.
21:21
You know, we open up the fridge, of course, with their permission
21:24
over the pantry. What do you have?
21:26
Right? So all of this to say is when
21:30
you get in there and you try to see the patient in the home
21:33
environment, there's a lot of information that you will gather
21:38
that you're not going to see in the office.
21:40
So that's where I said you would become that eyes and ears for
21:43
the primary care in the home. And it's best when we have that,
21:47
what I call a best practice where I go to the home.
21:52
I'm not duplicating care in the home.
21:55
If things the primary care is doing, we'll build on that.
21:58
And if things that we're doing in the primary care is not,
22:01
we'll let them know here's what we're doing with the patient.
22:04
So that's kind of more of a collaborating on the care to
22:07
really get to at the end of the day, what do patients want, what
22:11
do they need and attend to those unmet needs.
22:15
And So what kinds of specialists are you sending into the home?
22:17
Is there doctors, nurses, I don't know occupational
22:22
therapists? We have, we have doctors, we
22:26
have nurse practitioners, we have social workers.
22:29
We also have licensed social workers and those are the folks
22:32
that focus on behavioral health as well.
22:37
We provide, you know, all kind of services in the home.
22:40
We provide Quickmedic, which is an emergency services for the
22:44
patients at home and those are paramedics that would go and
22:47
attend to the patient's needs. When there's acute care
22:49
episodes, we have our nurses that would go to the home and
22:54
try to provide all the care as well.
22:56
So it's a multidisciplinary team that they have pharmacy support,
23:00
they have behavioral health support and try it again, that
23:02
body, mind and spirit. So we try to cover everything
23:05
for the patient in the home. If there are services where we
23:09
can't, we don't have our folks to go, We can get, you know, for
23:12
example, home health to go out and help us with physical
23:15
therapy for some time. We can have them go to wound
23:18
care centers if needed so, but our employed wellby team does
23:25
the majority of the care for the patient at home.
23:29
So, Doctor, with your track record of launching hospitalist
23:33
programs and new care models, I'm curious, what innovation at
23:37
Wellby Senior Medical are you most proud of?
23:42
There's quite few. I think our patient first
23:48
mentality is the biggest is we're building around the
23:53
patient. So we're going after, you know
24:00
patient's needs. That's one of our biggest
24:02
differentiators. So we build the tools and
24:04
resources and the staff and the training to be able to attend to
24:09
those patients needs. So that's, you know, kind of
24:13
most places you already have models that are built and you
24:16
try to make, make the patient retrofit into the model.
24:20
We're actually building it around the patient.
24:24
And in this case our patient, our families of our patients are
24:28
our patients. When we say that unit in the
24:31
middle, it's patient and family together.
24:34
So if I have to call, one thing would be that is 1 big
24:39
differentiator, providing access 24/7 to the patient.
24:44
We actually have providers that take call for the patients 24/7.
24:50
It's not 911 or it's not like, you know, call the emergency
24:57
room. It's a live provider, not an
25:00
answering machine. Pick up the phone and talk to
25:03
the patient directly. Now, there's been a lot of
25:06
studies out there when they say why, why most of us call 911.
25:10
You know, if you think of it, why do you actually, when in
25:12
need, you call 911? The main reason is you get a
25:16
live person. You got a person to talk to.
25:20
So we tried to emulate that here.
25:22
Welding, you call us any time you're not going to get an
25:25
answering machine, you're going to get a live person to talk to.
25:28
And this person is a provider, could be a doctor, could be a
25:30
nurse practitioner, and they could attend to your needs and
25:34
kind of figure out what are your needs now.
25:36
Now that's where the human element comes in.
25:39
Because for example, you can have some people say, well, the
25:43
patient's calling because Oh my God, they took an extra little
25:46
dose of their high blood pressure medication and they're
25:50
freaking out. Well, clinically, let's say,
25:54
let's assume it's a very small dose.
25:55
They took an extra 1 by mistake. Clinically may not be a huge
25:59
deal, but to the patient, it is a huge deal.
26:02
And I got to attend to that. You got to talk him through it,
26:05
explain, you know, what can be done and make sure that you're
26:09
monitoring that with them and try to help them through that
26:12
episode. So again, you know, 24/7 is
26:15
another big differentiator for us when we provide it.
26:19
And then finally providing those acute care episodes at the time
26:25
of need in the home. We can do a lot of work in the
26:28
home short of 24/7 monitoring. I can take care of a lot of
26:32
conditions that the patients have in the comfort of home.
26:37
So and I could blurb out, you know, a lot of, for example,
26:40
clinical things, but I don't know if the listeners will
26:43
attend to it. But just, you know, conditions
26:45
that normally would land you in a hospital, but I can take care
26:48
of at home, you know? Doctor, you mentioned the human
26:53
element and I'm curious because a lot of folks I talked to in
26:56
the medical field, they tell me how challenging, particularly
27:01
post COVID, it's been to find good folks to work for you and
27:07
when you find them, to hold on to them.
27:10
I'm curious what that landscape looks like for Welby.
27:15
What are some things that you've tried and found success with
27:18
when it comes to both recruiting and retaining good talent?
27:24
Yeah, absolutely. That's that's to be.
27:26
That is a challenge. It has been a challenge and I
27:29
don't think we have fully solved it yet.
27:32
However, what we're trying to do is when we bring providers and
27:39
that is all sorts of clinicians to come in and join well-being.
27:43
We're trying to provide value for the providers is 1.
27:47
We're all compassionate folks. We're all here about our
27:49
patients. So our patient first mission I
27:51
think everyone is attracted to. It's like something we do.
27:55
We're doing it for our patients. But most importantly is that you
27:59
come a well-being and you have a higher calling.
28:03
We're going to address that higher calling for you and this
28:06
higher calling by providing certain, you know, training and
28:11
education that you don't get anywhere else.
28:14
An example of that is let's call it advanced care planning.
28:19
Advanced care planning is a topic, it's been a hot topic for
28:22
the past 1520 years. If you go and look at providers
28:26
across the US, probably you might be in the less than 55% of
28:34
folks are comfortable having those discussions.
28:37
The reason is in medical school we don't learn that, you know,
28:40
we learn it day by day. But then what happens is if we
28:44
don't practice it, then that becomes a skill set that's not
28:47
built on. So we spent a lot of time on
28:50
that. We make sure our providers are
28:51
actually comfortable having those progressive discussions.
28:56
And it's really not a one and done.
28:58
It's a process is you talk about it, it might take you a year to
29:03
land as to really understand where the patients are.
29:06
Sometimes you could do it in one visit, so anywhere in between.
29:10
So that's a skill set to that we provide to our folks.
29:13
We also provide a lot of education and training around
29:18
quality of care and that seems to be again a value add to the
29:23
folks that we get. We've done a lot of work also at
29:26
the front end of trying to, you know, stratify and be able to
29:33
filter through some of the candidates from all the
29:35
learnings that we've had because the model that we had is not
29:39
that we have, is not for everyone.
29:40
It's not right or wrong. It's just we have providers.
29:44
The home environment is new. I mean, if you ask many, let's,
29:49
let's take the doctor's example, many doctors who practice short
29:52
of the folks that do geriatric fellowships, we practice in
29:56
offices, skilled nursing facilities and hospitals.
29:59
This is where we actually get our residency in.
30:03
Most of us never make it to the home and to tell somebody go to
30:06
the home, it's actually scary one to me, it's, it's a
30:11
privilege because the patients embody us in their home and we
30:15
have to be able to give them enough value for that.
30:17
So you see it as a privilege. But you know when you go on
30:21
there, it's it's intimidating. You know what you're walking
30:24
into when you when. You show up at your office every
30:27
day. You know the environment to
30:28
expect when you're going into somebody's home.
30:31
It's uncertain, right? Exactly, and like I said, most
30:34
folks will see it's intimidate. What am I going to do?
30:36
You don't know what to expect. You know, all the way from who's
30:41
there, the family that's there and their other, you know,
30:46
animals would be also who else lives with this patient?
30:50
You know, it's really intimidating and it takes a lot
30:52
of getting used to. It's not something that you
30:54
would just show up. Yep, I can knock on somebody's
30:56
door and go on there because you don't know what's behind the
30:59
door and how you going to manage it and handle it.
31:03
And again, from all of our skill sets that we don't learn that in
31:06
school. So to answer your question, just
31:09
like the things that we've done on the front end, you know,
31:11
filtering through all of this and try to have the right
31:15
messaging for the candidates that come through to explain
31:18
that this is a home environment. It's a privilege.
31:21
And if you don't see it as such, you may or may not, you know, be
31:25
happy doing what you do. So those are again, some of the,
31:29
some of the things that we worked on to try to find the
31:32
right talent, you know, post COVID and providing the right,
31:36
you know, the right training for patients is for, for a provider
31:39
is very important because all of us, we learn from the book, we
31:44
go do practice out there and we build on that practice.
31:47
So we try to meet everyone where they are and build on their
31:52
skills and knowledge as we go. Is there more scheduling
31:56
flexibility for folks that are working at Wellby versus maybe a
32:00
more traditional environment? Absolutely.
32:03
There's a lot of flexibility now when we look at productivity.
32:07
You need to be productive in doing what you do.
32:09
But you know, you could schedule, you know, you could do
32:12
your regular life around your patient care.
32:17
So, you know, let's say you have something to attend with your,
32:20
with your kids and family or something like that.
32:23
You know, with given enough notice, you can just make your
32:27
schedule packed in one area, assuming, you know, the patients
32:30
are accepting and then you'll be able to attend that.
32:33
So yeah, scheduling flexibility is there, but it needs to be
32:37
done with eyes wide open because at the end of the day, we value
32:41
when the patients tell us, you know, I'm coming in or you tell
32:45
them I'm coming in at 11. We want to respect that.
32:47
So it's just that balance between what's scheduled and how
32:51
to schedule for the future. So we'll be started either right
32:57
before COVID or in the early parts of COVID.
33:00
What? What was the exact timing?
33:02
Yeah. So the company formed as again
33:05
the the entity was formed in 2019.
33:10
We actually were trying to build around the care model all the
33:16
way until we launched and we saw our first patient in July 1st of
33:20
2020. Now it's literally at the time,
33:27
if you recall, I can't remember, we're actually all in Chicago.
33:30
There's just a small number of us.
33:32
We're all in Chicago and we heard that Illinois is going to
33:36
close down, you know, they're going to shut down the state and
33:39
stuff. And I think we did the final run
33:40
of interviews that we've had and we all said we don't know how
33:44
COVID is going to, what's the effect of COVID or this thing.
33:48
You know, at the time we didn't know what it was.
33:51
You know, it's COVID, but we don't know the implications, the
33:53
full extent of the implication. And we said back up, take your
33:58
stuff with you and we're going home.
34:00
And we don't know how this is going to affect us.
34:05
Come to find out, actually COVID was were two things.
34:09
One, COVID actually helped augment and patients really want
34:14
the care in their home because they don't want to be in
34:17
hospitals, good nursing facilities or in offices where
34:19
other quote UN quote, sick folks around.
34:23
And that was one, but also they really appreciated the care
34:27
coming to them at home. So you kind of work we're
34:30
attending on them versus they're attending, you know, their,
34:33
their attendance on us. So that was kind of, you know,
34:36
the, the, the shift that we realized post.
34:41
But yeah, we launched in the middle of COVID and I recall our
34:46
first training where we're doing the social distancing and stuff
34:50
and checking temperatures at the door folks coming in or trying
34:55
to do the training. But we had a lot of learnings
34:58
from that as well. So yeah, we saw the first
35:00
patient July in Atlanta, July 1st of 2020 and then we saw the
35:06
first patient in Illinois in August of 2020.
35:12
Yeah, really uncertain time. You, you didn't know what this
35:15
was going to turn into. Is this going to be good for my
35:18
business, bad for my business? Did we just invest all this time
35:21
and effort in putting this new company together just to have it
35:24
fizzle out? As it turns out, it was, you
35:27
know, probably a great force multiplier for you guys.
35:30
People didn't want to go into the crowded hospital systems and
35:34
be, you know, more exposed. They appreciated the ability to
35:37
have, you know, well be come into their homes and care for
35:41
them. So this this had to contribute,
35:44
you know, a lot to the the growth that you guys have
35:48
experienced over the last few years.
35:49
But even as we've come out of COVID, you've continue to grow.
35:53
How many different markets are you in today and where do you
35:58
see that going? Yeah, we're, we're in nine
36:02
states, we're about 150 a 160,000 patients attributed to
36:07
us. And our mission is to deliver
36:14
this complete care to all geriatric population across the
36:20
United States. So we want to be across and
36:25
provide the scare to all seniors and anyone in need of our care
36:29
model out. Our growth has been has been,
36:34
you know, really on an upslope it it created a lot of
36:40
challenges as well that come with growth.
36:43
But what keeps us focused is looking at the results and
36:48
looking at how patients are satisfied with the services.
36:51
Like I've never been, I've been through in a lot of places, but
36:55
we do surveys every year and through a third party talking to
36:59
our patients about, you know, how well you're satisfied with
37:02
the services you're getting from well-being.
37:04
We're like 95% satisfied or very satisfied with the services.
37:10
So when you get that feedback that gives you is like, I'm
37:14
doing the right thing, you know, we're solving the right problem
37:17
here. We just got to double down and
37:20
keep at it and keep moving in that direction.
37:23
So, you know, all of those kind of, you know, early outcomes
37:27
when they come in, they, they, they energize, you know, the
37:31
team and motivate the team to do more of what we're doing as
37:36
we're refining where the opportunities are.
37:42
What is it that you, I don't know, kind of what's the secret
37:44
sauce here? You guys innovate disruptive
37:48
like what? What's what is it that you're
37:51
doing that has allowed you to grow so quickly to this point,
37:54
even post COVID and is going to allow you to achieve this
37:58
mission of expanding it nationwide?
38:02
The big thing for us is, is we've always said if you take
38:06
care of the patients, everything follows.
38:10
That's the secret sauce. We take good care of the
38:12
patients, but then you know what's under that?
38:17
What does it mean to take care of the patients?
38:19
I kind of hinted to those earlier, what does it really
38:21
mean? It's not chronic disease
38:23
management, it's not utilization management.
38:26
It's literally attending to the patient's body, mind and spirit.
38:30
And that's what sounds like what's missing.
38:33
If you put all those together and you manage those patients,
38:36
you know, aside from everything else I outlined, you know that
38:39
the tools and resources and the services we provide and
38:42
everything else, I really believe good care is what's
38:47
producing those results. It's that holistic approach that
38:53
you keep talking about, body, mind and spirit, focusing on the
38:56
whole person rather than, hey, you know, my left pinky hurts.
39:01
It's more like, let's take a look at the whole person.
39:03
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we've had, we've had
39:06
multiple cases where, I mean, I'll, I'll briefly tell you a
39:10
story of a patient where, you know, we try to manage her
39:15
clinically. I think we have excellent,
39:16
excellent clinicians. I came on to the care of this
39:20
patient towards the end, but very, very sick, very frail.
39:24
And this patient is sitting in a fetal position.
39:27
And even if you uncover her, she is screaming in pain.
39:33
She's got pain everywhere. I mean, your heart drops like,
39:36
Oh my God, what can I do? And, you know, I really looked
39:40
at the patient and and I said, OK, it's my mission that I will
39:44
do anything you want. And this patient looked me in
39:48
the eye and she said, I'm not sure you can.
39:52
I said, try me, right? I thought, she's going to come
39:55
back. And if I was probably in her
39:57
position, I'd say I need a lot of pain meds.
39:59
I mean, she's in so much pain, right?
40:02
Like looking at her, she's really in agony.
40:06
Come to find out, she has only one thing that she wanted.
40:10
She had, she had a relationship between her and like her
40:14
daughter and her son really have a very, you know, a very rough
40:22
relationship. All what she wanted is for us to
40:26
help mend that relationship so she can see the family again.
40:31
Now, I'm not going to bore you with the details.
40:33
That was her wish. We worked on it had a
40:36
tremendous, you know, teamwork here to get that.
40:39
We mended that. Now, guess what?
40:41
Once that the daughter and the son walked into that room, you
40:45
can see tears in her eyes. You can see that she has no
40:49
pain. She literally was trying to sit
40:52
up in bed, which she hasn't done in a very long time, trying to
40:56
sit up in bed, tears. And you know, and then
40:58
subsequent to that, you know what happened, she actually kind
41:01
of said, I'm actually ready to go.
41:04
I, I would like to get some Hospice.
41:06
She's that sick. And believe it or not, a week
41:09
after that she passed on comfortably, But that's the one
41:13
thing she needed that, you know, there's that emotional obstacle
41:17
and social. Once we addressed that, she was
41:22
able to say, I, I result, I'm good, I'm, I'm ready to pass on.
41:28
That's pretty. Powerful, yeah.
41:30
And it goes to show the the importance of the spiritual and
41:33
the the emotional side of things and addressing, you know,
41:37
physical care too. I'm kind of curious to hear
41:39
about the partnership that you've formed with Aetna and how
41:43
that's really helped well be. Yeah, we have ethno is actually
41:50
our first contract that we've had and we've established what I
41:57
call a true risk contract. What we're saying is we're going
42:03
to manage those patients and we're going to be at risk for
42:07
the population that we have. But we're not only going to do
42:11
it, we're going to do it at a high quality.
42:13
We're going to guarantee for you to have a for our patients a
42:18
four-star rating or higher. We've been able to deliver in
42:22
all of that. So that relationship has been
42:24
very fruitful because we're fully aligned.
42:28
Aetna wants their members and to us, our patients to be getting
42:33
the best care possible and we're able to deliver on that best
42:37
care possible to the patient. So that relationship has been
42:41
very collegial, coordinated very well.
42:45
And this is the the place where I would say 1 + 1 = 3.
42:49
So that was more of an augmentation of the services
42:53
thinking of of health plan as health insurance.
42:55
I actually kind of commanding health plans like Aetna and
42:59
others that we we contract with is looking for certain services
43:03
to really help their members. That's most health plans try not
43:08
to do that because it's a lot of work and it's something they
43:13
don't take on. But Aetna was able to take that,
43:16
you know, head on, it's like, OK, if you're able to provide
43:20
better services to our patients and elevate the care they get
43:24
while able to provide on this quality, I mean, there's nothing
43:29
else that that could match that. So it's been very fruitful from
43:33
that standpoint. Nice Doctor.
43:37
What's a serious challenge that you've had to overcome, whether
43:40
it's personal or professional or maybe it it combines the two?
43:44
How did you get through that and what were some lessons you
43:46
learned coming out the other side?
43:49
Yeah, it's been. It's definitely there's been
43:54
multiple challenges here. One of them is I actually would
43:59
give kudos to to my family because you know, kind of
44:03
working with the with this population and trying to put
44:06
this model of care together, it took its toll on, on the family.
44:12
I actually give a lot of credit to my two daughters that I'm
44:15
very proud of. They're, you know, 16 and 13 and
44:21
also big support from my wife because that actually, you know,
44:27
without enough support to give me the time to be able to spend
44:32
and be able to, you know, work with the team very closely and
44:38
spend the time on the road and all go to all these states, meet
44:43
all the the patients and the providers and everything else.
44:47
That was a typical challenge. And that was, you know, in the
44:50
middle of of COVID and could have actually been, you know,
44:53
catastrophic had it not been the support.
44:56
But what helped me through that is mainly more of the
44:59
transparency, the understanding. Again, I'm lucky it looks like
45:04
the patient first mentality also resonated with my family because
45:09
they're like, you know, we know you're not going out there for
45:12
quote UN quote like pleasure. You're not going out to the
45:14
beach, you know, sipping my time.
45:16
You're out there helping folks like grandpa, grandma, you know,
45:21
uncles and and nieces and stuff. So that kind of was very
45:24
helpful, but it came to a head, you know, where at a time if we
45:28
didn't have that understanding, you know, it would have been
45:32
really catastrophic. But that also helped me also
45:35
focus to say, again, looks like there's this little higher
45:39
calling and this is the right the right direction is where
45:44
we're heading. So that's kind of, you know, at
45:47
least one example of of some challenges and COVID, you know,
45:51
emotions were very high for everyone.
45:54
Yeah, yeah, Very tense time for a lot of people.
45:58
I have to imagine that, you know, from when you first
46:01
started up there in 2020 to now here in 2025, you know, almost
46:06
five years later and considering the insane growth that you guys
46:12
have seen that you've probably had to change sort of your
46:16
leadership style, right. It's one thing is required of
46:19
you. When you know you, you first
46:22
start and you're a bit smaller and as you continue to level up,
46:26
you kind of have to put yourself in different roles, different
46:29
positions. There has to be less of you
46:32
wearing so many hats and more of you being able to delegate to
46:35
folks. Is that align with your
46:37
experience? Yeah, it definitely does.
46:40
And I, and I also believe that there's, there's kind of a, what
46:45
we call a startup leadership and then there's a scale and
46:49
replication leadership style. So in a start up mode, you're,
46:54
you're rolling up your sleeves, you're in the middle of
46:56
everything and you're literally in the day-to-day and you're
47:01
diving kind of, you know, micro macro in any given day.
47:06
But this, you know, knowing that this is not my my first rodeo,
47:11
if you will, in a start up in a scale situation, kind of built
47:15
this from the beginning where you got to hire the right team
47:20
mates that could help you scale and replicate.
47:23
So doing that from the beginning helped out.
47:26
So I didn't have to change on my colleagues for their leadership,
47:31
you know, kind of hired the right folks who I knew they're
47:35
going to help me with that scale and replication once we're done
47:38
with the building. So it's mainly kind of really
47:41
delegating and finding the right team that could help you get
47:44
there. And this is absolutely A-Team
47:47
sport. It's not a one person.
47:50
Yeah, there's in any given day, I'm learning, you know, 60 or
47:55
70% of things that I didn't know before learning from others.
47:58
But having an eye out where you start with a startup mode and
48:03
you might have a, a subset of, of leadership styles and or
48:10
skills and knowledge that you would require and building that
48:15
looking at the future, that was very helpful to the point where
48:20
having had in the clinical leadership a lot of changes, it
48:24
was like all built in as we went and that was a lot less
48:28
disruption to everyone. So that helped out tremendously.
48:32
You were really set up for success from the beginning, it
48:34
sounds like. It wasn't like this was a couple
48:37
of founders and, you know, sort of duct taping things together.
48:40
It was we've got a vision from the outset of what this is going
48:44
to become. Let's get the right foundation
48:47
in place from day one. Exactly.
48:50
And you know, I think we had it right because our, our, our
48:56
venture capital that that actually helped us into launch
49:00
this all what they have is all their portfolios around
49:04
healthcare. So that was very helpful having
49:07
ACEO, who's a physician as well for the company that helped
49:10
tremendously where, you know, myself and the CEO were fully
49:15
aligned. We know what to go after and
49:17
when, you know, so that that's kind of, you know, again, set
49:22
the stage, right. So we're looking out to the
49:25
future knowing that, you know, we've all been through all of
49:28
these experiences, taking those insights and what we call that
49:33
take the insights and well behind them because you could
49:36
come with an experience from from a certain, you know,
49:39
background. It doesn't fit here.
49:42
And we learned that early on. It's like, don't bring your old
49:44
experiences, bring them to highlight them.
49:48
And let's see how we can actually well behind them within
49:50
the model of care that we're actually building.
49:54
Well be eyes them. I like that.
49:56
Define what that means. What does it mean to well, be
49:59
eyes? Something.
50:00
Well be eyes it to make sure it fits with our initiatives that
50:04
it fits within our culture. You know, we have a patient
50:07
first culture, we have a culture of transparency.
50:10
We got a culture of openness and we have a culture of of you
50:15
know, manage patients 1st and then think later.
50:19
So you go on there, you take care of the patient and then you
50:22
build processes afterwards, you know, it's like the patient care
50:26
takes precedence over everything.
50:27
So that would be kind of, you know, the general example around
50:31
you got to well be eyes it and there could be an experience
50:34
where it worked in a in a certain situation and
50:38
circumstantial and it's worked very well.
50:41
How can I take the bits and pieces that that actually fit
50:44
within the model that we have without totally look out of, you
50:48
know, without, you know, saying, oh, this doesn't fit here, We're
50:52
not going to think about it. We take all comers, all ideas,
50:55
all thoughts, all innovations. Let's take those, curate them,
51:01
if you will, and just say, yeah, this, this, those pieces we can
51:04
actually put together to create this new chassis.
51:07
That's called a Welby chassis to build on.
51:13
Doctor, you know, a lot of times I talk to founders, C-Suite
51:17
executives, and they rely heavily on a particular daily
51:23
ritual habits that, you know, they they go through every day
51:28
that keep them centered and on track.
51:30
Do you have anything like that? Yeah, I've, I've improved over
51:36
the past five years on those. A little bit emolished, but
51:41
there is few things that I, I live by is that, you know, I'll
51:49
start there and then I'll give you those rituals.
51:50
So, you know, I think of leadership more of a building
51:53
your team. You give them directionally
51:55
produce results. Those are the top three
51:57
definition of my leadership. You build your team and then you
52:00
give them directionally produce results.
52:02
So my, my hygienes are, I always have weekend hygienes where I'm
52:07
looking back at the week prior and see what's coming ahead the
52:12
week after. So that's kind of more from a
52:16
managing a day-to-day and managing the calendar.
52:18
So I'm sure I'm prepared for everything that comes during the
52:21
week. The other thing is I, I, I'm
52:24
very keen on data and analytics. In the heat of battle, you have
52:30
a hard time trying to look at numbers and I probably anywhere
52:35
between an hour and a half to two hours a day.
52:37
I go in and I look at all of our dashboards, all of our numbers
52:41
and everything just to make sure that one, I understand it, one,
52:46
it makes sense and what are we going to do about it.
52:49
So trying to do that the those are kind of, you know, from
52:54
weekend hygiene and data analytics.
52:58
Then I spent a whole lot of time, this is weekly and it
53:03
happens during the week of, you know, what am I doing
53:07
strategically? Am I really heading the right
53:10
direction myself? So I got to reflect, say, OK, is
53:13
this the right direction? And then the other half of that
53:17
time I spend on the people that we have.
53:21
Did I invest enough in the people?
53:24
Those are kind of, you know, the big things that always top of
53:28
mind for me and I keep repeating those on weekly basis.
53:34
So the time that you spend looking at the dashboards, I'm
53:36
curious if you can think of a specific example, whether it's
53:39
recently or not, you're looking at the data, you see a red flag,
53:44
you see something that draws your attention to it.
53:46
What's the actionable step that you take?
53:50
Well, there's one that happened, you know, just this weekend.
53:52
So I'm looking at the dashboard and again, I look at it every
53:55
week and I looked at it and it's like this looks very different.
53:59
Something went wrong here. It's really off, totally off.
54:03
Like what is what's going on here?
54:06
So of course, my mentors in the past, they said do not reach out
54:10
to your team on the weekend. They need their time.
54:13
And you know, but here I am, I'm struggling.
54:15
What do I do? I mean, there's those things I
54:17
try to, to really discover the reason for it myself.
54:20
I could not do that, but I was able to hold tight till Monday
54:23
morning and literally picked up the phone and spoke with the
54:27
data person responsible for it. Come to find out this person was
54:32
probably 2 steps ahead of me is like, Yep, we realized this.
54:34
We just got a new data dump is going through our curation.
54:38
And I think so that's kind of the action is I tend to ask a
54:42
lot of questions, a lot of clarifying questions just to
54:44
make sure we understand first of all, is it accurate?
54:48
And if it's accurate, then what's the intervention?
54:50
Another example would be, you know, you could wake up one day
54:53
and say, wow, look at this. You know, we have we have a big
54:56
gap here between where our goals, where our goals are and
55:00
where we sit and the action. For me, there is like, OK, on
55:04
our team meetings on Monday, OK, guys, here's what I found.
55:08
What should we do? So it's more of a team approach
55:13
to solve the problem. I could highlight it, but I
55:16
think the team is much smarter than I am.
55:18
They'd be able to figure out solutions that I haven't
55:20
thought. If that's true, then you've
55:23
hired well. You said the team is much
55:25
smarter than you are. Yep, that's the goal.
55:28
They are. You know, in my experience,
55:30
sometimes our mistakes become our greatest teachers.
55:34
I'm curious if there's an early moment in your career that maybe
55:37
seem like a set back at the time but actually propelled you
55:41
forward as you look back on it. Yeah, this was actually early in
55:45
my teaching years where as a new physician coming in, you know,
55:53
trying to practice medicine in the hospital as a hospitalist, I
55:57
thought I could do everything. I thought no one else knows what
56:01
I know and I can actually provide the best care to the
56:05
patients only by myself. And that actually got debunked
56:11
very quickly. In my first four months of
56:14
actually practicing, I crashed, crashed because I wasn't able to
56:18
accomplish anything by myself. Literally I felt like I failed
56:22
my patients. I couldn't do it.
56:25
And to me that was that was the juncture where team is the way
56:30
to go. I got to work with the team even
56:33
though it's not my own team. To give you an example, in the
56:35
hospital, as a hospital, as you go in, you could go in
56:39
Incognito, go in, see your patient and come out and write
56:43
your note and your orders and leave.
56:45
What I found it to be more helpful after that incidents
56:48
like, you know, I got to get this, there's a lot more people.
56:51
The nurses spend more time with the patients than I do.
56:54
They know them probably more than I do.
56:56
I could spend 30-40 minutes an hour, but they're like had them
56:59
for the full day. There must be some insights in
57:02
there that I could learn to help with the patient care.
57:05
So I actually started going. I go on the floor.
57:11
Some nurses, most nurses loved it.
57:13
Some actually called me out and I was like, guys, could you
57:15
round with me? I'm going to go see the patient.
57:16
Can we go together? Can we do this?
57:18
And then they will say, OK, I'm I'm, I'm distributing meds.
57:21
I'll wait. I'll wait till they do it.
57:23
So the biggest learning for me was that by myself, I can't
57:29
accomplish anything, but by the numbers and by having the team,
57:34
there's a lot more that could be accomplished and learned from.
57:39
And that's kind of early on. And I took it.
57:42
I've been doing it all along. Here is you really got to rely
57:47
on your team delegate, but also, you know, you can delegate and
57:53
check, right? But you got to delegate to your
57:57
team, give them that trust. And like I said, a smart team
58:01
will outsmart you in a very beautiful way.
58:05
And that brings me tons of comfort to have the folks
58:08
actually, you know, accomplishing also their goals
58:12
and what they want to do in their careers.
58:15
So team, team is is the theme. Here yeah, it.
58:20
Are there any books or podcasts that have been particularly
58:24
helpful for you and kind of learning some of these lessons
58:28
that that our audience might be interested in checking out?
58:33
No podcasts come to mind now, even though in our team meetings
58:36
we actually share a lot of podcasts and we have like learn
58:41
and share. So they come in with different
58:42
podcasts. There's several, but there's
58:46
there's a book that I read, which is actually it's a
58:48
leadership book. Some folks, if I read it now,
58:52
the title evades me, but I can see it in my library here.
58:58
It talks about all of the seven little stories, leadership
59:02
stories. One of them talk about, you
59:05
know, Marie Curie, the other one about NASA story, another like 7
59:11
little stories of leadership that every time I go back to
59:15
that book, you know, every few years, like read a story or two
59:19
because there was a lot of learnings from it.
59:21
And it's called like leadership in stories.
59:24
I can, I can send you the, the full name later for the audience
59:28
or for the listeners if they need to.
59:29
But that's one of the books that that's always, you know, top of
59:33
mind for me. There's I'm currently reading my
59:38
4th book on emotional intelligence.
59:42
It seems to be a topic that I'm interested in just learning
59:46
more, more and more, because if we apply more emotional
59:50
intelligence with our patients, I think we'll learn more and
59:53
we'll be more. Effective.
59:56
That's interesting. The 4th book currently on
59:59
emotional intelligence. And so are you able to sort of
1:00:02
synthesize some of these lessons and then implement them or or
1:00:08
help teach them to the rest of your team?
1:00:12
Yeah, I try to, I try to kind of, you know, have those those
1:00:16
learnings and share two or three things that I learned.
1:00:19
And then to me, it's up to the team of adopting or not.
1:00:23
But I'll continue to remind them of those.
1:00:27
The big stories here is, again, sitting, sitting across from a
1:00:30
patient is also another intimidating thing because
1:00:33
you're like sitting with a person who has a lot of issues
1:00:36
and you don't know what to expect, especially when they
1:00:40
have family around. I don't know if you've ever been
1:00:42
in a room where there's like probably 16 family members and a
1:00:45
patient. This is real intimidating
1:00:49
because you got all of these people.
1:00:51
Instead. Look and find out what they're
1:00:53
thinking, right? And they're looking up to you.
1:00:55
So you got to respect that and you have to provide that value.
1:00:59
Knowing when to say I really don't know, you don't.
1:01:03
You shouldn't have an answer for everything.
1:01:05
Saying I don't know is good. Actually.
1:01:08
It brings more confidence. Like, yeah, OK, they don't know
1:01:10
this, but I'll follow. I'll, I'll come back with an
1:01:12
answer. I'll find out what the answer is
1:01:14
and I'll come back to you with that.
1:01:15
So but, you know, emotional intelligence, I think we don't
1:01:20
have, we don't do a lot of it with our patients.
1:01:25
And the more and more we do it, you know, we can actually glean
1:01:29
a lot more from the patient stories to be effective in their
1:01:33
care. Doctor, I've just got one more
1:01:36
question for you, but before I ask it, I want to do a couple
1:01:38
things. First of all, for everyone
1:01:40
listening today, there's probably somebody in your life
1:01:43
that would get a lot of value out of this podcast.
1:01:46
Go ahead and hit the share button, Send it to somebody, you
1:01:48
know, that's in the medical field, somebody who's in senior
1:01:52
care, home care. I think they would probably get
1:01:54
a lot of value out of what the doctor has shared today.
1:01:57
I'm also going to let people know how to get in touch with
1:02:00
you. Doctor, we've got your website,
1:02:02
which is well be well, be.com, we've got your LinkedIn page
1:02:09
which will share the link in the show notes, but Phillips can
1:02:12
just search for you. Your first name is spelled I way
1:02:15
IIYAD, easy for me to say IYAD. And then the last name Hoshan is
1:02:23
HOUSHAN. Any other way that you want to
1:02:27
direct people to either follow you or get in touch with you?
1:02:31
Yeah, er.hushan@wellbe.com, they could send me an e-mail more
1:02:37
than happy to respond to those LinkedIn another way of
1:02:40
actually, you know, trying to communicate.
1:02:45
And we also have on our website the Wellbe that we can offer
1:02:50
after the call for you to the listeners to, to be able to
1:02:53
reach out if they have any questions on Wellbe in general.
1:02:57
That's terrific. So last question for you Doctor,
1:03:00
as you look to the future, whether you think specifically
1:03:03
about well be or the larger senior home care industry in
1:03:08
general, what are some of the changes coming that you're most
1:03:12
excited about? The changes I think, you know,
1:03:17
I, you know, there's, there's a lot of industry changes in
1:03:20
general. What I'm excited about is
1:03:24
actually, so this is more of a, if you look at the Medicare
1:03:28
Advantage world, there's a lot of challenges in the world of
1:03:32
Medicare Advantage and you know, we could go through there's,
1:03:36
there's probably, you know, multiple things that you, if you
1:03:40
look at, at MA in general. So we, we know that for example,
1:03:46
Medicare Advantage plans will decrease by 2.8% national.
1:03:50
So that's going to be, you know, less care for some of these
1:03:53
patients who really love to be with, with MA and individuals
1:03:59
joining MA is like less by 6.5%, right?
1:04:04
A lot of the beneficiaries today, you know, they have only
1:04:09
about 34 MA plans to choose from in 2025.
1:04:13
It was a lot higher before. So I'd say, you know, things
1:04:18
that we're excited about is partnering with Medicare
1:04:20
Advantage health plans, helping Medicare Advantage health plans
1:04:26
really deliver the best benefits to their patients by applying
1:04:30
those care and services at the comfort of patients homes.
1:04:35
That's very exciting to me because the industry having a
1:04:39
lot of changes and we can go in details, there's the IRA
1:04:42
inflation Reduction Act, a lot of out of out of pocket expense
1:04:46
for the patients. So having, you know, aiding and
1:04:51
helping Medicare Advantage beef up those, let's call it the
1:04:55
benefits to the patients to make sure that the patients stay in
1:04:59
the care of Medicare Advantage and be able to deliver better
1:05:03
care at the end of the day to give those patients better days.
1:05:07
I think that would be that would be super exciting for me because
1:05:11
somebody has to do something here.
1:05:13
Like we can't really have a lot of control.
1:05:15
We have a voice. We don't have a lot of control
1:05:17
of regulatory changes that are taking place, but we can react
1:05:20
to them by easing, let's call it the the pain on the patient end
1:05:26
and also helping and aiding Medicare Advantage health plans,
1:05:30
you know, provide better benefits to the patients at the
1:05:34
point of care in their home. Doctor Iyad Hushan, I want to be
1:05:39
the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your
1:05:42
story with us today. I really appreciate it.
1:05:44
Absolutely. Thank you very much, Anthony.
1:05:46
I appreciate the opportunity again and hope to come and talk
1:05:50
to you soon at some point. I'd love that, folks.
1:05:54
That's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:05:57
Thanks for learning with us today.