TRANSCRIPT 🔗
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 0:04
Hi everyone. This is Eddie Kreshi. I'm the founder and CEO of Rainfall Health, and today's podcast host at Rainfall Health Podcast. Today we'll be discussing the how-to gap. Healthcare nails those should-dos, but misses sometimes on the how-to, and that tends to cost money, dignity, and trust. Today, we'll be having Dr. Charlotte Yeh joining us, who has spent 30 plus years working on every aspect of healthcare, emergency physician and chief of EM at Tufts and Newton Wellesley, and regulator at CMS Boston, payer side medical director, and most important, most recently the chief medical officer at AARP Services. She's now the chief experience officer at Cherish and the founder of Yay Innovation. Her focus these days is in the part that healthcare tends to skip-not what patients should do, but what they're actually supposed to be doing. Charlotte, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Grateful to have you here. Let's just jump into it. Healthcare is so good at defining those should do's. We have so many brilliant, amazing executives, physicians who care deeply. But when we skip those how-to's, it affects the patients, it affects the families, it affects the caregivers, and that leads to frustration at best, and at worst, it can cost a lot more than that. And it has those cascading effects that we've experienced as patients, and that results in ER visits. It results in non-adherence and misdiagnoses. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. And just from the top of the call, I wanted to bring up the fact that Edelman Trust Barometer said that most most U.S. adults think that corporations and leaders are actively looking to block access to quality care, which is which is just an awful thing to hear. As folks who are in the healthcare system are colleagues who care so deeply, so start us off with how do you think we got here, and does this track with what you've seen and what you experience?
Speaker 1 2:27
So thank you so much. And first of all, I just want to thank you for the privilege of being part of this podcast. I'm just delighted to be here. So you raised some really good points, and I'd like to step back and say, we live, and currently are in very challenging times. Or maybe the better way to say it, we're living in very interesting times, and it's a time of great polarization, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of anxiety, an overload of information, and it's all contributing to this. As you said, this profound loss of trust, right? If this is in 2025, 61% of adults talked about all these healthcare corporate institutions, even NGOs, are actively intervening in my ability to get quality care. Even scarier to me is in the 2026 settlement survey. Only 21% of adults believe the next generation is going to be better off than today. That is pretty scary. So this is the context in which we're living: highly divisive, lots of misinformation or incorrect interpretation of information. But there is good news, and the good news is these same surveys say you can earn my trust, and you can earn my trust if you understand me and my lived experience. If you have one empathy for my issue, B you have direct experience for how I'm living my life. Three, if you have knowledge of people like me and your recommendations having worked for them, if you say it in a way I understand, you don't try and change my opinion, but you expose me, you teach me, you build the confidence, and you make it convenient. So we have that opportunity. Now, when we think about the clinicians, you mean you're absolutely right. We care deeply about our patients. We know the right things to do. And when we sit down with our patients, you know, we say, "I know exactly what you need to do. Here's how we're going to manage, and we tell you all the should-dos. And yet, if we want to translate for. From what you should do to I get you, I got your back. I can tell you how you're going to do it. That is where we can begin to earn the trust and the support and the compliance, frankly, of our patients. So, if you like, I can give you kind of two examples. So, one, and this is for those of you who need the evidence. You need need this scientific literature, the research. I love that there was a journal article published last year about diabetes self-management and how much time does it take. Well, they looked at every paper published from 2014 to 2024, and it turns out that if you've got diabetes and you and we all say you should be self-managing your diabetes, this is going to give you better outcomes, you know, better long-term outcomes, fewer hospitalizations, et cetera, et cetera. It can take you take as much as two and a half hours a week in Germany, and all the way to one study talking to diabetes educators who estimate it's about four hours a day to follow your diabetes self-management. Now, if you are a working parent, if you are a single parent with two kids, if you are, you know, traveling, trying to care for your grandkids, you know, any number of reasons, do you have four hours a day to give up?
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 6:37
Absolutely not.
Speaker 1 6:38
And 50% of those articles actually said what people complained about was physical exercise, which everybody knows is important. So, if we don't say how do you exercise, how do you manage your diabetes, how to give you time management tips, do you think they're going to comply? They're going to nod and say yes, or I'm guilty, and I'm not talking to you. The second example to me is very personal. It's a personal story. My dad is 98, pretty amazing. Still lives in his own home. Well, when he was in his mid 90s, like many men, as they get older, they have difficulty peeing at some point. Okay, sorry if I'm a little too graphic here, but he had difficulty peeing, and my niece, who was living with him, he lives in Pittsburgh. I live in Boston, so I'm a long distance caregiver. Calls up and says he hasn't peed. It's 5o'clock
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on a Thursday, so of course everything's closed. I call a PCP as we should, who said, "Oh, he needs to go the emergency department. So we go the emergency department. She takes him. I'm thinking, "Oh my God, I just know they're going to put in a catheter. It'll be straightforward. Then they're going to send him home. He's 95 years old. He's never had a catheter before. Oh my God! He's not going to know what to do. Call the emergency department. I call his care coordinator and I say, "Look, my dad's going to have a catheter. He's going to come home. When he comes home, can you make sure someone teaches him and my niece how to take care of this catheter for the few days he's going to need it till all of this inflammation resolves? Okay, the care coordinator says, "Well, we don't have anybody until Saturday. Remember, this is a Thursday evening, but we'll call him on Friday and tell him what to do. I'm going. He's 95 years old. Never had a catheter. He's got a cochlear implant, hearing loss, blind in one eye. You think he's going to understand this on the phone, and do you think he's going to let a 20-something niece actually deal with something that's very personal. So I hope for the best. Next morning, the niece calls and said, "Your dad's been in the bathroom for two hours. We don't know what's going on. And it turns out that he didn't know how to manage a catheter. So if he had to do his business in the bathroom, he didn't know that you could sit down. So he tried to do his business standing up, which of course made a mess everywhere. He's too embarrassed to get any help, so he's literally washing his clothes in the bathroom, and he comes out in his robe and asks, "Can I sit down? Can I get dressed? How do I manage this, okay? This is the how to. Well, of course, by the time the nurse comes the following day, my dad has grossly bloody urine, you know, clots, blood. The nurse goes, "Oh my God, he's got to go to the emergency department. Whisks him off, and I'm going, "No, no, it's traumatic. No, goes off to the ED, and of course they do multiple studies, multiple exams. They're all normal, and then I call them and say, "Please don't send them home until you tell them how to take care of the catheter, how to tape it to the leg, how to empty it, all in a discreet way, so that the niece, you know, isn't going to invade his privacy. So we figured out the. Second time, and by the time he sees the urologist, the urologist hears bloody urine. He goes, "Oh my God, we need to do a cystoscopy. We're going to have to do this study. We're going to have to. And I went, "Hold on, can I just tell you what happened? And he said, "Oh my God, it's just traumatic. We'll take the catheter out. He'll be fine. Now I look at this two ED visits, multiple tests, multiple studies, all because we never told him how to take care of a catheter. How often does this happen? So, this is what I mean when I say: Can we translate the should-dos, the good clinical care, into how you can incorporate it into your workflow of life,
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 10:46
Charlotte. I want to thank you for sharing that story. Healthcare is always so personal for all of us, whether we're the patient, whether we're the caregiver. It's always a personal journey, and you know there was such an ordeal that your dad had to go through for this process, and so much of it sounds like it could have been prevented with those just those that one step further of patient education, right? Where where all these folks are clearly in the camp of trying to and wanting to help, but that lived experience piece of it matters just as much, and in this story, maybe even more than just the clinical parts, because if we just diagnose somebody and don't even tell them how to help themselves. Was it any good? Why are we doing these tests if we're not able to translate it into an actual measurable improvement in there? And can I also just say how it's wonderful that at least your dad had you and his niece around, and there's so many folks going through this journey alone, you know. And what we found out, especially in the last decade in healthcare, is that those social components of care do matter sometimes as much, even more than the clinical pieces, so thank you for sharing that story. I'd love to hear from your side. How do we help the audience here, which tends to be a lot of executives who are looking to improve systems and better themselves and make lives better for their patients. How do we turn this into a way to start to get that patient experience to help close that gap on the patient education, and also, like you said, build that trust and going even one step further in our call to giving patients and all of us a little bit more hope in that process as well.
Speaker 1 13:06
So I'm so glad that you asked that, and and I think for me the saddest part about my dad's story was I was long distance. I knew what he needed. I knew he. I mean, I most people, as you said, wouldn't know or don't have family like some 28% of adults are solo agers particularly more as you get older. I knew what to do. I tried everything to try and get that information, and we were just not set up to help you with the how tos. So my conversation back to healthcare leaders, etc. is to make sure you take the time to really understand where are the friction points in people's lives. That you can explain things in a way that's understandable. I'm an ED doc. I had tons of patients who came in with sprains, you know, hurt wrists, you know, et cetera, and right, we all say elevate the hand, right, to keep the swelling down. Well, I started seeing people come back, elevate the hand, you know, which you mean, which I always said, you know, above the heart. Well, they'd go to bed and they lie with their hand flat against their head above their heart because they didn't think about it in terms of vertical. So simple things, and this is where leaders can start saying, "How do I explain
it? How do they test it with their patients and consumers? Maybe elevation means if you think of a drop of water on the tip of your finger and it goes back to the heart, think of how gravity will bring that water back. So one is think to really understand. Secondly, we we should be looking at where the consumers are going and getting information. So I find it really interesting that yes, 70 80% of people trust their doctors for information, but a good 35% give or take, and it's rising rapidly, are going to other sources AI. In particular, to get that information. Well, if you're not paying attention to where people are going for information, and you don't understand that and speak in those terms, they're not coming back to you. So I love the fact in the Gallup survey, some 59% of people go to search AI or ChatGPT for before a doctor visit. Another 56% will check after the visit. About 14% once they do that, actually don't follow through with a visit at all. So if you don't understand why people are not using and coming back and drilling down and really having those conversations, having a consumer advisory committee, you know, on your board or on your to access to sort of talk about what is their experience, you're not going to know this. You should also be looking the way Gallup did: is where what information are they going for? I think, and why are they going? So 70 some percent are going because speed for information. There's another about 21% are going because they don't want to pay for care. 14% are unable to pay for care. But what I think is really striking is 21% of people are going to AI because they felt dismissed or not respected by the providers. That's more than the people who said I can't pay, and another 18% are going because they're too embarrassed. So how do we understand those pieces that we can then tap into and give the information in a way because we understand? I mean, if you think of GPS, it's a friction, right? Getting directions going from one place to another is a real challenge. Did we have to do change management for GPS adoption? No way, right? Because we understood the problem. We knew where people were challenged, and we made it simple and easy to follow and understand. So, this is the way we should be thinking about when we say here's the should do's, then we should think how do I put it in a form that is understandable to somebody without healthcare experience.
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 17:33
Wow, there's so much to unpack in there, Charlotte. Which is you know let's start off with the fact that you know the two main points that you're making here, which is how do we make it easy to do, and how do we make sure that the experience stays central to what we are doing as well? And the GPS analogy, I think, works so well on so many levels because we're also in the same breath talking about AI, a technology element, and something still just as complex. Getting from one place to the next is a personal journey that it's going to happen only one time, and the traffic conditions are going to only exist the same way one time, and it it needs to function perfectly every single time. Every turn needs to be accounted for. So, you know, as we're discussing, from let's take it into two directions. One is the patient side of the equation. How do we make sure that we capture the patient experience? Because and we know we can do this because we do. We have leaders that manage quality? We have leaders that manage compliance, IT, all of the stuff that exists. How do we put experience more central to the actual day-to-day operations from the healthcare system?
Speaker 1 19:01
So, to me, one of the simplest first things: how about asking? You know, we always say, "Would you recommend a family or friend? Right? It's all NPS scores. But how many of us ask, "Where are you going for your information? Can we help you with the information? Again, if you look at Gallup surveys or you know in other healthcare surveys, what do they say people are looking up? They're looking up nutrition, physical activity, lifestyle changes, stress, sleep, the things that we don't answer when they're in our institutions or having their doctor visits, unless we intentionally remember to bring that in, they're looking at supplements, so they're looking at the things we're not telling them. They're looking at the interpretation of the things that we have told them. So, to me, one of the simplest is start asking your patients, learn from them. Where are they going from? Information: What are they looking up, and how might we help them do a better job? Have we ever thought of asking patients where you know we've discharged them from the hospital, or we're talking to their caregivers? Have we ever asked after their total knee replacement, what do you know now that you wish you had known before surgery? Then we can say, "Aha! Oh, oh! Getting to the bathroom with a total knee was more challenging, you know. And you know, they didn't really know how to use the cane or the walker just to get them started, or they didn't know. And I've seen this post cardiac patients who've had you know sternal disruptions, et cetera, because they're told not to lift weights, and they figure, well, you know, what's five or 10 pounds, 20 pounds of groceries? I could do this, and then they start with wound problems. So these, you know, how simple to say, what do I? What do you know now that you would love other patients like you to know?
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 21:07
No, that's such a powerful piece to point to. Again, again, a very specific example. You you brought up AI, and that's been in the zeitgeist at healthcare and virtually every sector, right? And what I'm also hearing is that it is a powerful tool already in healthcare. How do we make it so that it complements the providers? Because you know you are a clinician, and I think clinicians are so instrumental and will remain so in the patient experience and journey. How
do we supplement that with AI as a technology in this, you know, example that you use of GPS? That is a technology that's helping every twist and turn. But you also have this great champion as the human clinician that can is invaluable to that experience and that journey as well. So, how do we bring those things together in where we are today?
Speaker 1 22:09
So, I love you for asking that because we always talk about where's the human in the loop, but what does it mean to say human in the loop? So, again, you know, there's a couple of thoughts or examples, and the first is AI has been awesome because we can't remember everything. You know, all the data is scattered everywhere, and it is awesome that AI can pull that together, give you actionable steps, can interpret the data, put it in one place, make suggestions, recommendations, ambient listening to listen and then capture the information, so it's there from visit to visit. All of those things are fabulous. I do want to say that we should also be thinking about what's not being captured in these data sets. Yes, they may be more accurate and they can pass the MCAS exams better, you know, than or the board exams than than you know a human could, but let's not forget the other side of what's not in there. So I'll give you one example. I'm an emergency doc, and I still remember vividly this 40-some-year-old guy who comes in. Chief complaint cold on a Tuesday at 10 a.m. Really struck me. Oh, that's kind of interesting. Okay, more than happy. I take care of him. Sure enough, he has a cold. He knows he has a cold. I know he has a cold. Now, most of us would say objective findings. You know, if the AO were looking at that, you know, runny nose, you know, cough, you know, itchy eyes. Okay, so you've got a cold. Here's how to take care of it. We'd be done. But as I'm looking at him in the emergency department, I'm going. Something is off. I wish I could tell you what it is. And I stood there quiet and said, "You know, I'm really glad I could take care of you. I'm just curious. Was your doctor not available? Is there anything else? And he pauses, and then says, "Oh, I lost my job three days ago. I'm really worried about healthcare. There's no way I can go see my doctor. I don't have the money. I've lost my job, and he still looked unsettled to me. So I was quiet, paused, and he then he follows up and he said, "Actually, I have an eight-year-old child. I am so stressed about losing my job. I don't know what I'm going to do to my eight-year-old. Now, a guy cannot come in and say I am going to hurt my child. He comes in to say I have a cold, some reason that he knows he'll come in through the door. Now, whether it was his voice, whether it was posture, whether it was how he stood, how he spoke-something that we don't capture in our written databases-he looked off, and if you give him space and room, you can end up. Really understanding the context, and now the care and treatment of that cold is totally
different. And now I realized I didn't have one patient, but two, and we could put them on the right path. So I think it's really, really important that our large language models that we recognize they're insufficient for the total picture of a person. The second example is more of a flip side, where where technology can actually support what we don't know. So back to my dad. Now he's 97. As I said earlier, has a cochlear implant and a right hearing aid, and over the you know few months leading up to this, he was starting to get withdrawn, angry. He wasn't cooperating, so to speak, or he wasn't engaged with people, and he was very withdrawn. And I'm thinking he's getting dementia. You know, he's got a little cognitive decline, but he goes to the ENT, who said, "Well, you know, his right hearing is gone. We can put in a second cochlear implant, and it might help. And I said, "Well, how do I know if it's cognitive decline or hearing loss? And and the ENT goes, "I don't know. You know, at his age, maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't work. Now, I'm not a doctor now. At this point I'm a patient, patient's daughter. I go, I don't want to put him through a procedure because if it's dementia cognitive decline, it's going to be challenging. And why put him through this?
Speaker 1 26:34
If it's hearing loss, it's fixable. So lucky again. I happened to be in health tech innovation space, and went. You know what? I'm going to get a pair of speech to text glasses, little VR glasses. Put it on to see if supplementing him with reading as well as hearing, could we tell? Well, remember my dad's 97. We put the glasses on him. Within two days, he refused to take them off. He had a doctor's visit. Totally told the doctor exactly what he was thinking and feeling, and I went, "Oh my God! It wasn't dementia. It wasn't cognitive decline. He couldn't hear. Now both myself and the ENT had the confidence that a second cochlear really could improve his quality of life, and it was worth the procedure. Had the procedure three months later, his hearing improved. You know, over 30% You know, and that was just the beginning. Well enough that we he was able to go to China and see his family. Okay, so why are we not using technology to supplement the gaps in our care and knowledge, and why are we not thinking of how we might use it to answer those heretofore unanswerable questions?
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 27:55
Wow, those are such great examples, Charlotte. And can I just say that should we all be so lucky to have, you know, more clinicians like you on our side when we we go into the the our appointments because it's amazing to have folks that care so much, not just as patients but also as clinicians, and be there for that one extra beat, that that one extra question that gets to the heart of why we're there, and you know in both examples, what I thought was so interesting is that it's that human element that is key. We have the technology, and that's part of the answer, but it
is not the full picture, because ultimately it's about that central theme of humanity, and all these other pieces help us. They're tools to help us get closer to bridging that gap. And you know, again, it's not replacing the judgment because that's still coming from the the human, the clinician, the patient, and everybody's being given the space with the technology helping and assisting and doing what it does best at the same time. While humans can focus their brain space, their time into into that more of that experiential learning does that that leads me to another thought, Charlotte, which is does that mean that we need to start retraining our clinical staff because as some of the technology becomes good at aspects of providing the care, should clinicians then be able to take on more of that human translation of the experience that technology cannot bridge. Yeah,
Speaker 1 29:52
so I I love that because I think it brings us back to full circle. So the beauty of AI technology these. Days is they can be that repository of knowledge. So historically, traditionally, you had to be the smartest person in the room, if you will. I'm exaggerating a bit to be to go into science, to be a clinician, to be a doctor, to be a nurse. You had to be the smartest because you had to know so much. Well, now that AI can take that over, now we can go back to back to trust, understanding, and applying what we know about the right thing to do, the should do, and applying it to how the person lives their life. That is translating, just like for my dad, okay, you're not having a very good quality of life. You're not engaging. I'm going to use technology to figure out what might be behind this. But as the human, I'm the one thinking he's not having the right quality. Do I want to put him through an obvious procedure without knowing that the benefits outweighed the risk for somebody who's 97 years old. Okay, that's where we can spend our time, and maybe another way for the, you know, the more academic sorts. I love that the London School of Economics had published this a few years ago, but they said, you know, the jobs of the past are built on brawn, right? Muscle, you know. But then we got automobiles, trains, airplanes. You know, we got to, you know, make work, washing machines. So work was much better. The jobs of today are built on brain, right? You have to be the smartest because there's so much information that you have to take in. The jobs of the future will be built on heart, and that should be that clinician of the future. That is the human in the loop that can successfully use AI and technology for the betterment of our patients.
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 32:04
That's amazing and so eloquently put. From the clinical view, and I think we spend a lot of time close to the clinician, but clinicians are usually part of a larger organization. They're working in a system where they're only one of so many that make it possible, and that's operators, that's coordinators, that's data scientists. It's it's so many folks that go into a single patient provider experience, and you know that leads me to ask the question that I'm a little afraid to ask, which is, are we equipped right now? It's in 2026, from an organization standpoint, to take in all that patient feedback, to take in that experience feedback, to then translate it into that frictionless experience that you're talking about, or is that something that we need to start investing in because, to your point, this is a fundamental shift in what we're doing and how we're delivering the care. Yeah.
Speaker 1 33:12
So I, I wish I could say we're there today, but I agree with you. It is going to take a shift that we're going to have to move away from a pure knowledge base solution to one that integrates that knowledge into life, and I think we're sitting at a wonderful place because if you think about it, up until now, people got their health care in the doctor's office, in the hospital, in the emergency department, and so we have our processes, we have our practice flows, etc. And therefore, as a patient, as a family member, caregiver, I know I have to adapt to the workflow of the practice, the workflow of the healthcare system, etc. Now we know that people want to be in their homes. They want to be back in their community. We're shifting care into the community, even with hospital at home, acute care back into the community, into the home. So the mind shift, which is the most important thing, is okay. We used to make patients adapt to us in the hospital. Now we have to adapt to the workplace of our patient, which is their home. And if we can integrate into the workflow of their life and translate all of this excellent knowledge and capabilities on how they use it at home, we will have better utilization, lower utilization, lower costs, happier patients, better compliance. I mean, it's not hard, and I believe that the documentation is there. You know, if you give someone. A sense of purpose in our Medicare supplemental population. If they don't have purpose, they cost us 12% more. If they're severely lonely and don't have the social support, they cost us 20% more. And if they don't have hope and optimism and a more positive view of aging, which is 40% of the population, they cost us 33% more. So these are translatable into the business case, and isn't the name of the game consumer adoption and engagement. And we spend our time thinking through that. I think we can get to a much brighter future.
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 35:43
Wow, I love the way you put that. Our team at Rainfall, we spend a lot of time with the Medicare population, and those dollars, those numbers, the figures you're talking about are astronomical. Just five procedures, and one of them is joint replacement. Can from just the Medicare lens, the spend is over $20 billion a year, and if you add 20% on top of that for completely avoidable costs, that's a four to $5 billion problem
that we have. That it's completely avoidable. It really changes the scope of the problem. And also, what if instead of spending those four to $5 billion for worse care and reactive care, if we were to invest it in better care? I think we're answering our own questions in some ways. Maybe that's the resources that we do have today that we should be reinvesting in preventative and proactive care with a better experience overall.
Speaker 1 36:47
Yeah,
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 36:48
and one of the things that you brought up really struck me is that not even AI, but just the existing technology over the last maybe two decades, including telehealth, is that maybe the the ace that we hold now and in healthcare that maybe allows us a deeper look into the patient experience? Because if they're calling from home, is that maybe the chance that's kind of under leveraged where we can actually see what the patient's experience at home looks like-is that the experience that we can now glean because they're in the setting where they spend majority of their time versus when the clinician sees them in their offices for five and up to 20 minutes versus where they spend majority of their life is that something that's under leveraged? That part of again tying it to that larger experience of the should do's and also to the full experience of the patient is that something that we should be leveraging more, whether it's through AI or whether it's just through other types of technology to improve the overall medical experience.
Speaker 1 38:04
Oh, I I think that's a wonderful. You know, it's simple enough, and assuming the patient gives permission. But you know, if you're sitting in the office or even on a common telehealth, they just sit in front of the screen and you ask questions. You know, and and did you take your medicine? How often are you taking it? What's you know, etc. How often do we say, "Can you just show me your medicine cabinet? Can you just show me how you're taking the medicine? Maybe there's a simpler way. And then when you go and see the multiple bottles, expired, unexpired, you know, what a window that can be, if you can say how do you remember how to take your medication, you know, and they can show you their checklist, their their you know their organizational skills or their lack thereof. You know, I had a friend whose father was on multiple medications that he had to take three times a day, four times a day, you know, and he just couldn't. Finally, he said, "That's it. And a few days later, he ended up in the hospital, extraordinarily sick. And they and his family goes, "I don't know what happened. He's got all the right meds. They counted out the pills. It's all correct. It's because his dad said, "Oh, I can't remember three times a day, four times a day. He put them all together and said, "I'll just take everything at noon. That way, I've taken all my meds and I haven't forgotten a thing. Now, imagine if you have the telehealth and you
say, "Show me how you're managing and how, because I'm sure. And that this is the empathy. I'm sure it's really hard to figure out this one's four times, three times. Let's see how you do it, and what can I do to help you? So you're absolutely right. Or you know, they they come on the screen and you look like you haven't showered in about five days, and then they show you the bathroom. They cannot get from the bed to the bathroom because lip stairs. You know, the door's too narrow. Or they can't get their leg over the bathtub. You can say, "Oh, you know, what if we got you a little chair that can you put over the lip of the bathtub? You can sit there, swing up, you know. And then you've got somebody who's able to take care of their wounds, take care of the care, get the exercise. That's part of their daily routine, and make it easy.
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 40:22
That's amazing. Those are just some amazing insights. And regardless of how challenging and at times incredibly hard to hear, some of these experiences are that you shared today. I also want to say that I'm actually left with a lot of optimism, because I'm hearing there's a lot of opportunity for us to do better. And in many ways, the problems are not as hard to solve as we think. Are we going to capture everything? Are we going to fix healthcare overnight? Probably not. But it sounds like with simple fixes, we can make it a lot better, especially when we arm the clinicians with the right tools and train them to focus on the right aspects of care. And in which case, it brings back to technology is part of the answer. It's just not the whole answer, and it's about meeting patients where they fundamentally are as well.
Speaker 1 41:24
Yeah, and and using technology to help. Imagine if you just said, "Take your little you know phone, you know that we're having our telehealth conference. Just walk through your house. Oh my God, you don't have any safety bars in your bathroom. You know how easy that is. You know we'll tell you know how you can we'll send you a service. You know, just or the rugs. How you know that rug might be a tripping hazard, and what it shows is that you care and you're interested in them, and you're using technology to amplify your understanding of how they're living, which then goes back to trust, and now they're engaged.
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 42:12
That's so amazing! Such tangible feedback, tangible things that we could be doing right now with existing technology. We don't even need new pieces in place again. I think that's so powerful as the insights that you're providing here. And the other element, kind of at a macro level, at the larger ecosystem where we are, Medicare especially has been taking massive steps in this direction, especially with geriatric care and putting some of these acute surgical episodes front and center to try to make sure that we have a clear place to start and improve that experience, as well as make it broader for everyone. But you know, if we can solve some of these problems for harder to reach populations, it makes it a little bit more accessible, actually, for everyone as a whole.
Speaker 1 43:10
Yeah, exactly. And and we didn't even mention the opportunity with telehealth, remote monitoring, particularly for rural districts and rural areas, or even urban areas where it's a three-story walk-up to get to and from your apartment, or the transportation, or having to pay for parking. Imagine how we can use that to make it timely and accessible. Because again, when you go back and look at why are people going to AI, a lot of it is because they need real-time information, and they're using it for the convenience. So, if we understand that, like GPS, we can design it around convenient, and then when you get stuck, you know, least we can be there in the building to then help you with that last mile,
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 44:05
I truly think that not just healthcare executives, but every single clinician needs to listen to this episode, listen to your insights because they're that powerful. Anything else, Charlotte, that you want to share before we wrap up this episode,
Speaker 1 44:27
just you know, to always wear the glasses of your patience. Don't be afraid to ask. It's amazing what you can Learn, and that opportunity is with us, with every patient, with everything we do, and that's our clinician for the future.
Ahmed 'Eddie' Qureshi 44:54
I love it. This is to me again. It's a look at how do we just be. Better than where we are. Not necessarily critiques of where we've been. It's about how do we. We're just competing against ourselves. It's always a journey of self improvement in healthcare, and as clinician, as just people as a whole. Appreciate so much your insights, and I know there's hours that we could spend talking in more detail. Hopefully, we'll have you back on the podcast and dig into additional challenges and also specific insights where we can continue to help and make healthcare a little bit better every day. Thank you so much, Dr. Charlie Yeh, for joining us and providing your insights.
Speaker 1 45:42
Thank you so much. It was such a privilege to speak with you.