41:27
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
healthcare, care, hospital, beam, patient, provider, teams, services, years, business, started, doctor, provide, telemedicine, tele, people, talk, company, ai, access
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Sarjoo Patel
Damon Pistulka 00:03
All right, everyone, welcome once again in the faces of business. I’m your host, Damon Pistulka. And I am very excited for our guests today if my microphone didn’t fall off and hit me again, but we have served you, Patel from teams, or beam healthcare, I was looking to take one of your other companies beam healthcare. This year. Today, we’re going to be talking about perseverance and transformation of healthcare, because he’s been doing some great things. Surgery. Thanks for being here today.
Sarjoo Patel 00:34
Appreciate you
Damon Pistulka 00:35
haven’t me. Yeah, yeah. Well, as we always like to do, we’d like our guests to tell us kind of how you got into what you’re doing today, you’ve got a varied background, between course, you’re an MD and an avid, you also got a business background, and actually an operations management and information system. So this is an interesting background for you to be doing what you’re doing. So it’d be cool to hear about how you got into doing what you’re doing. Yeah,
Sarjoo Patel 01:05
sounds good. So, yeah, I had zero intention of going into healthcare or medicine in general, like that was just never in my roadmap. And I was in the business school enjoying it. And yeah, the major was called, you know, operation management information system, or Ole Miss, and enjoyed it. And during my senior year, just had a few personal things that ended up happening with, you know, from family and friends perspective. Last couple folks, unfortunately, and the providers had a lot of impact on myself and my family members. And I just, you know, from my perspective, just thought that would be the direct way, I want to have community impact. And that’s really when I decided to pursue healthcare, like, so I was in my senior year and decided I’m going to graduate and go into healthcare. So I was working, you know, while doing some basic science classes, etc. But that’s where it all started.
Damon Pistulka 02:05
So personal experience, you decided it’s time to go into medicine. So you start down the road into medicine? I mean, that’s, after you’re that far down your educational highway already? Was it tough to kind of switch gears and go into medicine?
Sarjoo Patel 02:27
You know, not for me personally, it because to me, I mean, that is what I wanted to do. And you know, I was fixed. I was fixed on that. So but the thing is, when I actually told my parents, I kind of surprised them, you know, I and I made a visit to India and kind of surprised them saying, Hey, this is what I’m going to be doing. They first of all, weren’t even expecting me at their front door. And the first thing they asked is like, are you doing this for us? Because we don’t need you to become another Indian doctor. Right? Like, yeah, so I’m like, no, no, I’m doing this for me. So I personally never questioned it. And honestly, I actually never thought about the seven years, 11 years or whatever. You know, it’s just I honestly, I never questioned it personally. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 03:09
Wow. So you started, you started being a doctor? What were some of the things that you really learned early in your career as an MD that that kind of shape where you’re working into today with beam healthcare?
Sarjoo Patel 03:24
Yeah, good question. So, you know, I graduated in 2011, I was a chief resident, in my residency. So I always were like, even in medical school, I was, you know, like the president and always did a lot of operational in terms of oil and the management or just evolving different programs, right. But when I graduated, I was hired at a rural hospital to be the medical director. And I’m very thankful for them. And, you know, they gave me the start. And as soon as they started pre created their program, with for the hospital side, which was to improve just overall patient care locally, right, avoid unnecessary transfers, all those kind of things, which we were able to do, but honestly, it took me probably about probably about a month and a half, to realize that, hey, you know, I come from a business and an efficiency sector, and then I’m working in the most one of the most inefficient sectors. And, you know, to me, healthcare is simple, but unfortunately, we’ve just made a complicated. So, you know, I thought maybe there’s a better way of doing this. And that’s really what were the idea what came about for beam healthcare, which is, can we leverage very few simple things, right. Number one, can we leverage technology, like telemedicine to provide better access? So that was one. And when I say better access me to a specialist, are you going to your primary site doesn’t matter. Second, was, you know, in the rural communities, a lot of times you see doctors come and go right or they do some short gigs or whatnot. Yep. Can we build a team that’s truly dedicated to changing healthcare. And that’s, you know, full time part time employees versus just doing gig kind of work. So, team was the other piece of this, right? So technology was one people were the other one. And the third one was operational efficiency, meaning if we want to scale, you know, we’re just doing the status quo paper pushing is not going to work, especially in healthcare, where you’re trying to manage multiple providers, multiple different licenses, multiple different, you know, entities. So we start as a paperless company from Day Zero. But I think one thing I should mention these all these things were great on paper, it took me about two years to get a yes. Remember, majority of the conversations keep going back towards Hey, is insurance going to pay for it? And the whole thing was the whole concept of what needed to be an even if you get $0, from an insurance, right? How can you leverage all of these things to retain more folks, right, increase the capacity of what you’re able to a capability of what you’re able to do, and two types of sicker patients were able to take care of now with team based care approach. Yeah. And that took me about two years to get approved. I mean, I got plenty of nose from various folks. And their reasons.
Damon Pistulka 06:18
So when you say approved was this, you’re still with the organization and for them to allow you to go out and try some of this stuff? Or?
Sarjoo Patel 06:25
Yeah, so I initially I was an employed physician, and they were, you know, very supportive of all of this down the road. And, you know, they let me transition to my own company. And then they were actually thankfully, they were our first pilot program. Wow. 10 years plus later, they’re still with us. That’s
Damon Pistulka 06:42
cool. That’s cool. So when this go back to the beginning, you talked about healthcare is one of the most inefficient industries. So what are some of the examples that you saw early on that said, Wow, this is just sticking out in my head that we something we can change?
Sarjoo Patel 07:09
Yeah. So when you think about inefficiencies, you know, I think a lot of times people automatically think about, like, machines or product and those kind of things, right? Yeah. But to me, it’s the input you put in and how much output you’re getting, right. And if there’s a huge energy consumption, but a very little output. That, to me, is inefficient. What exactly is that number, I think is probably very variable by sector, I’m assuming. To me, the amount of administrative burden is one, the hoops that the hospital admin has to go through the physicians have to go through, right. And then also, we know, you could still have a fantastic place. Fantastic people in the rural communities. But still, it’s gonna be hard for you to recruit because they want to stay in the city. Yeah. Right. So now to think that I’m going to pay a provider or specialist to come once a month or once every couple months. And we think that is an efficient way of providing care? Absolutely not. There’s still delays in care. They’re still adverse outcomes in patients. And you know, I mean, honestly, I was in here in Madison area. And I didn’t know until some of my 89 year olds said, Hey, you’re going to take care of me at this hospital? I’m not going to cross that beltline. I’m like, what is the Beltline? And that’s our main highway, like, you know, like to them, they did not want to be, you know, transferred. So anyways, to me, efficiency is, you know, how you provide services, but also when you’re able to provide it, right there. Yeah, yeah. So it really be there from an access perspective. But then also, efficiency to me is also from a quality perspective, you could still provide service, but it’s actually still a good service. You know, is it someone I mean, the question I have myself asking every time would I want my mother or father to be taken care of, with me at this facility? And if the answer is no, then Well, the answer is no. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 09:07
That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Because you’re, you’re you’re uncovering a lot of things here. So let’s, let’s just fast forward a little bit. So you start you start down the idea of with beam. And what what were some of the things that you wanted to start out trying when you when you came in with beam? Well, first of all, explain beam a little bit. So we understand. Yeah.
Sarjoo Patel 09:31
And before I get to let me tell, you know, so the concept was, like I said, wanted to leverage all these things to improve care in these hospital settings. Right. So that was the initial thing. The roadmap is always where what we become now that was always on the roadmap, and I’ll talk about it but I think it would be really good for everyone to kind of hear so you know, I was Yeah, calling or whatever you want to call it. I had all these ideas written down and working on things working on things. You know, it was Um, July I think June, July 2013. I was driving down to go to the hospital, you know, Backroads of rural America, right? One lane this way, one day this way. And I’m going this way, I see a SUV going hit the shoulder, and they overcorrect. And they come right at me. And they literally miss me by like nanosecond or whatever, right, and I see this, this car just flipping in the back, you know, in my mirror. So, you know, unfortunately, I mean, I was the first one on the scene, and I’m going and I’m helping the individual who unfortunately wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and passed away, you know, in the middle of the street. But I was, you know, working on her doing CPR and everything. And, you know, we’re a bunch of bystanders who couldn’t, they were shaking, they couldn’t do anything. They tried to help, you know, and then later on, just to during that event, I’m seeing I heard a voice that scream, saying, Dr. Patel, what I found out was that individual that I was helping was actually the significant other of my hospital team member, you know, so, that story. The reason I want to say that is, it was a near death experience. I go back to work, right, a few hours later, I’m attending meeting in some other hospitals later, etc. And I’m just looking at myself, I’m like, This all happened, I nearly died, you know. And the only thing I did was go to meetings while someone else has lost their loved one. And literally, Nana, you know, those couple of seconds? And what did I have to show? If today was my last day besides, yes, a guy who pursued his dreams and went to healthcare? Well, great, but like, how did I truly help the community? You know, like, what did I do for it? So to me, unfortunately, like, that was the wake up call that hey, get on it, are you going to do something or not? So then, you know, later 2013, early 2014 beam started. And if I was to describe beam is, you know, we provide telemedicine virtual services as doctors right in rural hospitals and clinics and also bigger hospitals and clinics now as well. But while we’re, you know, providing general and specialty services to overall improve access, quality care, and and, you know, just tackle health equity, urban or rural doesn’t matter, right. I mean, that’s the reason we have ruled out healthcare domain from the get go. That’s why we have urban healthcare as a domain from the get go. Like that was always the plan. Right. And if I was to explain what telemedicine is, I think everyone knows that now, post COVID. Right. But I think the one thing I want to make sure that everyone understands that in the hospital setting, we were taking care of patients, admitting them from the emergency room. So meaning I’m having this interview, I have access to your electronic health record, I’m putting all your orders in everything, documenting and I’m able to listen to your heart, your lungs, look into your ear everything remotely. The most important piece in all of this and I think people forget is is the patient interview. Yeah, the patient feel heard. They don’t really care if I’m on a robot or an iPad card, or on the side because they feel that they’re being heard. Right. So. So anyways, we’re examining the patient. We’re admitting them, we’re admit putting them to medical floor. We’re taking care of ICU patients. So we started not with the coffin, cold telemedicine. We truly started with complex telemedicine, right. And once again, none of this is new beam does not get the credit for it. I need anyone in the last couple of decades. Right? This is 100 year old thing. You know, NASA Lockheed Indian Health Services back in the 70s tried a satellite based telemedicine program. Right? There’s tele radiology is one of the oldest one. So anyways, it’s just affordable and scalable now. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 14:02
Yeah. It’s incredible. Because long winded answer, no, no, it’s awesome that you did. It was awesome that you did it. Because, you know, you’re talking about being able to talk to me, sitting in the middle of a small Montana hospital with a doctor that would never well, highly unlikely would be working in that hospital in a specialty field that’s given me care that I can only get if I went to an urban setting someplace else and the special hospital. Yeah. That’s crazy. It’s cool. Wow, that’s got to be incredibly fulfilling to be able to help these people that wouldn’t have had that same help before.
Sarjoo Patel 14:53
Yeah, no, I mean, you know, I would say when we first started that whole concept, right going from legs is probably Adding services in person to that. Yeah, back in 20 1314. Even half of our team wasn’t ready. They did not believe that. And I don’t blame them, right. So I absolutely don’t blame them. And but the thing was, and I said, Hey, whoever wants to do it, they could do it. They don’t want to do it. That’s okay. Just observing, we go from there. So initially, me and one of my colleagues, we did like 90 days of mock drills before we went live. So it wasn’t like we like, hey, here are a couple of robots or iPad cards or whatever. And we’ll do a video conference and call it a day. But know it from operational perspective, we needed to make sure it functioned well, and the patient Biden was there nursing Biden was there, you know, and it was efficient. And what we found was patient Biden was there from day zero, my first patient literally was a 90 year old patient in the ER, you know, and I roll in, and she looks up there. And she’s like, is that Dr. Patel up there? I knew her from before. Yeah, no, but her and I never lost connection. So she broke the ice on day one. And then I had another patient on the floor, some 50 year old, who had a stroke and got the MRI result, I went back and told her, and you know, her and her husband, very well educated folks, you know, they’re visiting, and they said, hey, you know, we would have never gotten a provider to come and tell us until maybe the next day or so. Yeah. So and you know, having someone who’s actually actively monitoring their data, and come in and talk to them, they didn’t care if I was on site. Now, that being said, if you’re one of the doctors, we’re doing the electronic health record this side and not paying attention, like, you know, that’s not going to work.
Damon Pistulka 16:32
Yeah. Well, that’s it. I mean, when you think about the efficiency, that you can provide health care, you doing it in a virtual setting, and it’s got to be even compared to a doctor, that’s gotta walk down the hall, go to the other, whatever they’re doing throughout the day, you’ve got to be able to do with the right assistance and everything else, you’ve got to be able to do a lot more quality care in a day than than a doctor walking around the hospital. Yeah, I
Sarjoo Patel 17:03
think you nailed it, you know, I mean, you have to be that much more efficient. But you also have to be that much more customer center and quality. So yeah, you know, I tell this to all of our new and current team members, that we are in a hospitality business. You know, we should not think anything different than Disney in terms of what the expectations are. And if anything, it’s our job to make people feel good during their worst days, which is Yeah, right. Like, so we’re at one represented hospitality. And everything you do sometimes is, you know, it could be magnified because you’re remote. Right. So, yeah, yeah, that’s
Damon Pistulka 17:40
hats. So what are some of the things that other than you said, people? I mean, they really are accepting of this. What are some of the other things that you found in doing this that you really didn’t expect? You went, Wow, that’s cool. Or Wow, that’s a lot tougher than we thought.
Sarjoo Patel 17:59
Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you what was tough. You know, I mean, that the journey is always tough, right? I mean, if things are simple, I mean, that’s great. I guess I just never figured out the simple way of earning a fantastic, impactful living. Yeah, you know, I don’t know if there is one. I don’t think there is one. There may be a good, you know, opportunity businesses, but that’s very different than a socially impactful businesses at times when you’re trying to change a sector. Yeah. You know, what I found? Number one, I would say that was surprised was patient buying? Because that was the thing I was worried about the most. Right? Yeah. So that what, you know, took me by surprise. Then as the business evolved, also, the healthcare sales cycle took me by surprise, you know, it’s very slow. It meaning, therefore, folks who are ready to adapt pretty fast, but then they have to go through so many hoops to get something approved, right. And then so that once again, inefficient sector, which I think it is getting better. And the people in terms of my team, right, some of these guys, they’ve been with me since day zero, right? They’re still with me, like, you know, when they initially moonlighted, and now they’re cardiologists are infectious disease doc, but they all went through it, and they were in it for the long haul. They want to be part of a mission of changing the sector. The delivery of care, you know, I mean, they could obviously they have their full time job. Some of them for example, they don’t have to do this, but they enjoy it. They want to be part of it, you know. So I think that to me, people have surprised me the most, which has been really good. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 19:43
no doubt. So what are some of the exciting things that you see now that you’re going a efficiency wise or new technology that’s really starting to help you go wow, this is cool. We’ve got now but maybe there’s something that we’ve learned or something that we’re seeing in the future, that’s going to be a step ahead. Yeah.
Sarjoo Patel 20:06
So first, I’ll say the most exciting piece is still the people in terms of post COVID. Everyone’s good with it doesn’t matter the age anymore, right? Because their smartphones, right? Yeah. So and no one wants to lead majority of the people at least don’t want to go in person if they don’t have to, ya know, like seeing the provider in person, you know, once in a while, but they don’t want to go see them every single time. But don’t get me wrong, there are complex patient who need to be seen in person, right? Like, not everything can be taken care of virtually. So, you know, I don’t know, about five years ago or so maybe more, I can’t remember. I was asked during a panel talk in terms of what do I see as the future for healthcare. It was always, you know, providers, administration, leveraging tech and AI, right. And that time, initial radiology was leveraging AI on like, chest X rays, getting to like CT scans. So instead of being defensive that they were going to take our jobs and saying, Okay, how can I actually leverage this thing? So I could expand more, right, and then also have some quality controls in place? You know, I mean, to me, it was an automatic. And thankfully, I mean, the last year or two have been just so fantastic for multiple sectors, you know. So I would say that, you know, people’s openness for tech, and now having AI obviously, it’s almost like the 1990s when you had www right, like, yeah, now that we have AI, like, just make sense. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 21:45
yeah. Well, we’ve got a client that does different kinds of occupational rehabilitation. And they’re, they’re adapting it at a simple level. But just being able to summarize a whole lot of records together in these applications now with as a huge help in efficiency and quality of the summer the summaries, because we have, you know, if you got someone that’s going through hundreds of pages sometimes and trying to summarize that, you just can’t do it as well. So when we get these complex kind of injury paid people in for the rehabilitation, it’s really an interesting thing to watch how AI can think in that in so many different levels and put it together nicely for him. Yep. No, absolutely. Cool. Cool. Well, now, you you touched a little bit on AI, what are some of the things that you see that that’s not working so well, in, in? In technology right now? That’s kind of a bust?
Sarjoo Patel 22:43
Yeah. So and let me start, right, like it. First of all, I’m a techie first physician second like that, yeah. Hard. You know, so that is all I read, in terms of on a daily basis, right? I got plenty of Smarter physicians who read all the clinical papers, right. So you know, what’s been great about tech, if it’s telemedicine, if it’s text messaging, right? If it’s AI, that once again, is providing access, right meaning physician to patient, but then also patient having various apps and things I think FDA just approved mental health app not too long ago, right? For so I think it’s direct to patient care is the access is significantly better. The one thing that we’re running going to be real we’re already running into is now healthcare becomes or the clinical service, the people part becomes a commodity, right? Meaning, my time as a clinician is not valued as much. It’s just who could put in the cheapest rate on an app. Right? And now if we say all primary care, all specialists, etc, everyone’s the same, and it’s because it’s 19 bucks, 29 bucks, I’m just, you know, giving you some rough ideas. This is where we get into a problem where we commoditize clinical services, right? And honestly, it’s on us as clinicians to write what are we willing to go down to? So I think that’s the piece that we need to kind of figure out a little bit you know, and then also patients don’t really know if they’re getting good care, okay, care, great care. Yeah. Social media reviews are fine, but that still doesn’t it isn’t gonna necessarily tell them if they’re getting good care or not. No,
Damon Pistulka 24:39
no, it’s the the people that the patients have a good experience or not more than anything. But you make a good point. If you’re commoditizing the providers time and pay for that time. You run the risk of a reducing the quality of the providers because nobody wants to do it for that that rate. There’s a lot of challenges with that, that’s for sure. A lot of things need to be thought thought about that weren’t even probably contemplated a long time ago.
Sarjoo Patel 25:15
Yeah. And so you know that. So that was one of the things that’s been brought up to us, right? When you try to compare service to service or company to company, beam is, you know, has never been the cheapest, and there’s never going to be cheapest, right? Because we don’t work with this commodity model, where you’re saying, Hey, have a doctor who’s covering 10 hospitals, right? And we’ll just pay per click. And, yeah, that is exactly what you get. You get a provider who’s not dedicated to the community, you have provider doesn’t get to doesn’t know, the nursing staff doesn’t know the community in general, right, or the hospital workflows, etc. So and, you know, our website actually just got updated. And I think there’s, on the bottom, there’s a video testimonial from one of our newer clients. And I think that’s exactly what he talks about, you know, I mean, we’re in it from our accountability side, but we’re involved at a multiple program level. Yeah, you know, I mean, that’s where we take pride in right is the level of quality. And that’s the same thing. If we transition to teams by beam, which is our direct to employer. service line. It said the same mentality, right, is based on the big picture of quality, not simply just providing the cheapest access. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 26:30
Well, let’s talk let’s talk about, we didn’t talk in detail about beam, give us an overview of beam. And then I want to also talk about teams by beam and flow. You got a few things going on. So it’d be cool, but first of all, beam health care less, what is what are you guys doing there?
Sarjoo Patel 26:46
Yeah, so beam healthcare provides you know, Tella, hospitalist, and tele specialty services, as well as some of their newer service language, tele respiratory therapist and tele case management, etc. But it’s basically a comprehensive line of clinical services that we’re providing to healthcare systems. So that’s this is b2b, right? So we’re the doctors or we’re the respiratory therapist, etc. We’re providing virtual care to these rural hospitals, community hospitals, and also, you know, we’ve also done a clinic for male, right, full time tele rheumatology clinic, so that we are the providers. And we provide the clinical services. So me being there on site, the only difference is we implement a program to run it all virtually. Right? But simply put, those are all the different services and in the hospital, we provide, and then some are we provide, like, outpatient tele clinics. So let’s say you needed a heart doctor or infectious disease doctor, or for your COPD, you need a long doctor. You don’t have to go see someone in the big city, they would have a, you go to your local clinic, they’ll still do your triaging everything else, but you’re just gonna see the provider virtually. And they’re reviewing everything just like they would on a normal visit. Yeah, and you didn’t have to make that two hour drive.
Damon Pistulka 28:00
Yeah, that’s, that’s incredible. That’s incredible. There’s, I mean, there’s so many cases where that that can be? Well, first of all, the drive itself is can be difficult for the patients, but just the inconvenience of it through and and not having to do it. It’s so much better for the patient and and the provider. Yeah, absolutely. Hmm. So then you talked about teams by beam, what are you doing there with teams by beam? Yeah,
Sarjoo Patel 28:28
and you know, and actually, I forgot, before we jump into that I should probably mention, like, the whole reason I went into healthcare, like I said, was, you know, socially, it was something close to my heart, right? Yeah. During COVID, you know, obviously, we saw what the community needed, right? During that time, our team, we set a bunch of telemedicine programs, a bunch of different community hospitals to support their primary care doctors, or their hospitalist with our specialists or our respiratory therapist to help with other COVID patients. They’re in the ICU, etc. So then, this way, they weren’t alone. That wasn’t a business model for us. That was all we volunteered, the whole team volunteered for for a year, year and a half right? To me that happened. During that same time, you know what I went to Tijuana, and one of the colleagues of mine, he had a nonprofit in Tijuana and there’s four orphanages that were not getting any health care during the whole COVID. So we set up the telemedicine programs for them with the iPad cards and through our nonprofit called beam up. And you know, and we had, you know, local providers who volunteered the kiddos got access to health care Drew and COVID You know, about 120 or 140 kids. And you know, there’s no doctor or nurse over there, right. So it was it had to be easy to use the stuff yeah, hope everything your infections, like how you could use that. Tools, all the tools we choose. We’re not here to make money on tools, right, like but everything’s so easy now. So I just wanted you to know that we started on the b2b side to enterprise and all these things we talked about. But then we implemented during COVID on our nonprofit side, and there are videos on beam up dot charity that you can take a look. You know, and our goal is and then also we, I think helped in Papua New Guinea during that time with some echocardiogram readings and those kinds of things. Wow, you know, but that’s kind of the, the whole reason I kind of started, we were able to now saying, okay, you know, where I started my career, it just took about 20 years to prove it, right. Like that mission had it 2003 or whatever. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 30:31
yeah. So, yeah, so you’re, like, 20 years. So we talked about perseverance, persistence, and the things you’ve had to do to get here to be able to do this. It’s really something. Now, do you ever just look back and go, Wow, I don’t believe we’ve made it this far.
Sarjoo Patel 30:50
You know, I wish. I don’t know if I say I don’t believe it. I think I always believe it. i Well, I actually, I shouldn’t say that. I don’t think I’ve never not believed it. Right. I just kept at it and kept going. You know, I think one thing you realize is, and everyone needs to realize that no one is going to care about your mission and your vision as much as you do as a CEO as a founder. Right? Yep. And you should. Others shouldn’t care more than that. Yeah. Because that means there’s something wrong with you.
Damon Pistulka 31:24
In business, and yeah, yeah. But
Sarjoo Patel 31:26
no, I mean, I remember when I started, you know, I mean, starting from scratch. And during that time, I started a retail store for my family. It was a Monday through Friday, I was a physician, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I was a cash register and bathroom cleaner, right? And I was starting from scratch that I started from scratch. No bank balance was less than five grand not knowing if I could pay my medical school loans the next month, or my house mortgage. You know, my accountant told me that, hey, you are Director, why are you doing all this? And I knew he was a nice guy, but not my accountant. Right. So I changed. And so I just wanted you to know, I think it was never that I didn’t believe in it. Or I believed in too much. You know that thing. I’ll just, I just stayed the course. That’s pretty much it.
Damon Pistulka 32:12
You had a vision, and you knew where he wanted to go. And you were gonna go there. Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. So now the team’s by beam, you’re helping these these healthcare facilities with full time people? Is that what it is?
Sarjoo Patel 32:30
Oh, teams by beam is a direct to consumer healthcare subscription. Right. So this is meant for the non healthcare folks. Oh, so this is for either individuals or really focused more on the employer. So you know, Construction Company, doesn’t matter, right remodeling company or consulting. COMM doesn’t matter. But this is for businesses, okay, want to provide health care, access, quality, whatever you want to call it? Right? Outside of the usual way. And you know, we’re not an insurance, we’re a medical membership subscription. Sorry, um, but that’s really what it is. And our goal was my goal was always, once we prove it on b2b side, and it’s affordable and scalable, was thankfully post COVID. All technology has been pretty good. Yeah. You know, so I think everyone could afford it.
Damon Pistulka 33:33
Wow, you that’s got to be popular in the private the privately insured companies to help to help keep costs and care high quality high and costs low cost reasonable for them.
Sarjoo Patel 33:46
Yeah. So right now we’re, I think, teams by beam, I would consider that to be at its infancy. We’re figuring it out. Right. And, for me, it’s always been don’t decide what the market wants or needs. Listen, and then, you know, not pivot but just restructure as needed. Right. So we’ve been doing beta testing for I would say, probably about two years now with it. Right? During But long story short, if you go to our website, which is teams dot healthcare. You know, there’s a subscription that starts at 2500 bucks, for example, right? Yeah, obviously, don’t quote me on the number that variable change when someone use this but anyways. But the whole concept of that is, and your initial we started, there’s this per member per month, right kind of thought, which is good. I think that’s good for direct primary care and those kinds of things. If you think about a business and I’m thinking about myself as a business, yeah, what would I buy? Like, am I gonna buy teams by being for myself, right, like for the company, right? There are companies who can’t afford the traditional insurance. They’re companies like us who do have insurance but we still don’t like the access and the hoops they make us jump through, but it’s still we need that, you know, hospital cancer and all these other stuff. Is there still value in it? So well, we may teams by beam is, it doesn’t matter if you have 10 people, 25 people, 50 people, or 75 people, people doesn’t matter to us, you start at 2500 bucks, right? In return, what you get is you get access to, you know, primary care like myself, for example, right? To do routine visits, or many years sore throat, cough, cold, those kinds of visits, you get access to mental health, for through better health was one of our partners in there are collaborators, you get access to law, the generic meds, and you know, we have a collaboration with Mark Cuban and cost plus drug company, right. And then, you know, if you think about a lot of these different services, when it goes service, text messages back and forth, prescriptions, mental health, wellness, and those kinds of things, and ongoing education that we send out. We know that like your, for example, you as an employee, your needs may be different today versus a 20 year old in the company, right? Some people want more mental health, some people may need more of the prescriptions, some people may need more services during the winter months with with their kids, right, and everything else. So the utilization from a business side, I mean, users don’t know it’s going to be all over the place, right? Yeah. And what we’re based on that 2500 bucks gives you access to multiple different services. So it’s not per member per month. And if you use a lot of it, then you just go to the next year up, right, yeah. So this way, you kind of know what you’re providing. You’re providing all the suite of services for all your guys. And if they use it, great, you could always go up if they don’t use it, you’re not breaking your bank. Yeah. Right. And then the other thing I mentioned, you’re able to order blood tests on your own, right. So if you need to go get your basic kidney, liver anemia, and all the stuff thyroid check. It’s gonna be less than 100 bucks, where you just go ahead and order it and go get it done. Wow.
Damon Pistulka 36:59
Yeah, that’s incredible. That that is super cool. I’m glad we got into that. Because I think, you know, in my work, I see that that healthcare, I mean, you just look at traditional health care over the over the course of the last 2025 years. The cost have just continued to go up and up and people, you know, pay the 10 15% it goes up every year. That’s just the way it is. And employers and, and the employees just bear the brunt of that. Yeah, but this kind of care, is, I gotta believe in the situations where you start out doing it, they’ve they’ve had some pretty good, pretty good results are pretty good, happy people. Yeah,
Sarjoo Patel 37:40
I mean, and, uh, you know, I could share some stories, and I think we have it on our website for that, too. Yeah. One of our team or one of the employees, you know, the CEO, who’s one of our first beta clients, you know, calls me saying, hey, Fritz is not feeling good. He’s dizzy. He’s got a headache. He’s bleeding from his nose. I’m like, Hey, why don’t you go ahead and take his blood pressure and everything else. We had that little iPad thing at his place, too, right? Did that I did a visit with him. His blood pressure was like 190 or 120. Okay. So it wasn’t the higher number. It was the lower number 120. That was very high. Right? Yeah. And I said, Hey, you’re gonna stroke out, you need to go to the hospital. Like, this is not something I should be managing over here. Like, this is someone I saw in the ER, I would admit you for a day or two, you know, so he’s like, I, once again, insurance is of concern, like, you know, don’t want to do it. Right. So we called in stat, like, emergency medications at a local place. And thankfully, since that time, his blood pressure has now been in the 140s. You know, now he gets all of his medications for COPD, for his cholesterol and everything. And I can say this, because he has shared and he’s got a video on our site. And, you know, and also the other thing is, I think people don’t realize one of the highest risk from a mental health is our blue collar workforce. Men, you know, bold, they feel like they have to be the men, you know, man of the house, they cannot show emotion. Right? They have to be strong. And that’s how they were brought up. The problem is you bottle up so much, you’re not right, and it’s horrible for your health. And you know, I think letting folks know that it’s okay for big guys to be vulnerable, right tough guys to be honorable. And I think that’s also you know, so that they not them in terms of like that population is more open to using mental health or just reaching out and just talking about these things. And I think that’s the part that gets missed when health digital healthcare becomes a technology commodity only. Yeah, people will always be part of healthcare 100% I’m going to leverage AI and tech wherever possible. But the connection we make the hugs you’re able to give eventually when you meet in person, like for example, just directly because you Well, you know, depending on the size, we make some onsite visits, right? goes a long way. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 40:05
Yeah. And this is so cool surgery what you guys are doing. Man, I’m just so, so thankful we were able to talk with you today. If, if people have questions about beam healthcare, or companies want to talk to you about team by beams, is there a contact form on your website? Or what’s the best way for them to go? Just
Sarjoo Patel 40:29
LinkedIn? Me, I think it’s probably the easiest thing to do. Yeah, very good. Yeah. Well,
Damon Pistulka 40:34
we’ll have that in there. And you were mentioned in the tagged in the post, and I’ll make sure I get that in there. Thanks so much. I mean, wow, it. I am just super excited that we are able to talk to you today learn more from you. And man, you’re just an inspiration in this. I know this has been your thing for a long time. You’re like, oh, it’s not this big deal I’ve been. I’ve been flowering at it for a while. I appreciate it. But it is cool, dude. It is cool. So just thanks for being here today. I also want to thank the people that are listening and commenting and everything else I love that you’re there love putting the comments in. Thank you so much for that. We’ll be back again later this week surgery. Just think hang on for a moment. We’ll finish up after we’re offline. Thank you.
Sarjoo Patel 41:23
Thank you.
