Dr. Joy Bhosai, CEO at ChatrHealth and Samantha Sim

How to Improve Quality and Increase Patient Safety with Dr. Joy Bhosai, CEO at ChatrHealth and Samantha Sim, Product Manager at ChatrHealth

: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Outcomes Rocket podcast where we inspire collaborative thinking, improved outcomes and business success with today’s most successful and inspiring healthcare leaders and influencers. And now your host, Saul Marquez

Saul Marquez: [00:00:19] Welcome back once again to the Outcomes Rocket podcast where we chat with today’s most successful and inspiring healthcare leaders. I want to welcome you again and I actually invite you to go to outcomesrocket.health/reviews to rate and review today’s typecast because we have two yes. That’s two amazing guests. It’s a first but it’s exciting because there are two amazing ladies in health care doing outstanding things and I want to introduce them and then open up the mic for them to give a little more details of whatever I’ve missed. But first I want to introduce Dr. Joy Bhosai. She’s the chief executive officer and founder at ChatrHealth will be diving in a little bit more about what they do. But joy is inspired by innovations that address gaps in access to high quality care. She’s an alumni of Pomona College. A previous Fulbright scholar and a recipient of a master’s in public health from Yale focusing on global health and management she is deep into this business. Ladies and gentlemen and also at the front line with her Ph.D. she worked with Health 2.0 directing the matchpoint program which paired large industry leaders with health tech startups. You all know math. Holt he was on our show. She worked a long time with Pam and now she’s dedicated to applying innovations to ensure quality care for patients. And we also have Sam Sim. She is the product manager there at chatrhealth. Sam is passionate about applying innovations improving access as well. And she’s really passionate about doing this and her B.S. in human psychology from Boston University allows her to do it in such a way that helps make the products at chatr really intuitive with the user experience. And so without further ado I want to welcome both of these wonderful young ladies and open up the mic. Anything that I miss that you gals want to fill in.

Joy Bhosai: [00:02:17] Thank you so much for having us. We’re really excited to share some insights and dream with you and be part of this effort. The other thing I would just like to add just minor detail that I went to medical school. I’m a physician by training and I’m really excited about integrating public health innovations into the practice of medicine.

Saul Marquez: [00:02:40] Outstanding.

Samantha Sim: [00:02:41] Yeah. And for me I’m really glad you again saw we met at the Health 2.0 conference. So like you were saying we had a fun time there. So I’m excited to share more about what we do at our company and also maybe see if anyone else has any ways of thinking that they could share with us. It’s just you know it’s a good learning and I think.

Saul Marquez: [00:03:02] Absolutely Sam and Joy. Thanks for filling in the gaps there and definitely missed that major detail. Joy is a physician and her experiences with chatrhealth as a frontline physician helped in a big way and so one of the things that I love to ask all of our guests is what got you in the health care to begin with so I’ll direct that question to both of you.

Joy Bhosai: [00:03:24] So my parents actually owned a nursing home for adults with disabilities. So I grew up actually starting off. We didn’t have a lot of money so we lived in their first nursing home before everything grew really exposed taking care of patients from an early age. And I think that has always been at the forefront of my mind. It’s gotten more interesting later on in life is the intersection between all the social factors that go into taking care of it he says which I find really interesting and that’s quite a really exciting field.

Saul Marquez: [00:04:02] Super interesting thank you Joy.

Samantha Sim: [00:04:04] Sam Yeah. And for me I’m not quite I wouldn’t say I’m quite into the medical sector. I did actually recently graduate and lace up a very fresh perspective. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It’s a fun exciting time I think I think really what got me into the medical sector specifically healthteach I would say is that I was actually in school studying a lot of really deeply scientific stuff so really hard sciences so biology chemistry physics. And I think I started to miss a lot of the human perspective of things. So we learned a lot of like how did this come along and how to treat them like this. Basically I would say I was so undergrad and then a lot of nitty gritty stuff. And I guess just the human touch and things. So I was really interested in public health. And then I started learning about health tech and all the cool thing that I didn’t even know could be done these days with technology. And that’s when I really started to learn a lot more about the intersection of healthcare and technology and I’m still learning right now. So it’s an accident.

Saul Marquez: [00:05:12] I think that’s for sure and I think everybody no matter how long you’ve been in health care is always learning and Sam you’ve got the awesome leadership of Joy. And you know you get to kind of combine your your new perspectives with her experience and it’s exciting what you guys are creating right now. What would you say and I’ll leave this question for Joy. What would you say Joy should be a hot topic on every medical leaders agenda today.

Joy Bhosai: [00:05:37] This is a big question. I mean I feel like there’s so many things to work on but the thing that we’re most passionate about and I’m always thinking about no matter what kind of patient I’m taking care of is how to keep them safe so quality improvement and patient safety is going to be a huge growing topic as the years progress especially now the way the healthcare reimbursement and everything is structured so how do you improve outcomes for patients and how do you make sure the process is safe and effective. I think that’s going to be at the forefront of a lot of the old leader and helps us we gearshift agenda for the years to come.

Saul Marquez: [00:06:21] And what type of approaches chatrhealth taking. As far as patient safety that’s unique and that’s improving outcomes would you say.

Joy Bhosai: [00:06:29] Yes so we systematically work on patient safety module checklists the various tools to improve communication between not just provider but with their care he said nursing technicians anyone who really touches that patient during medical procedures. So we have a variety of tools that our main one is a use of patient safety modules or dynamic checklist that are used in the operating room. So to make sure that everything from set up to the procedure itself the surgery to when the patient comes out in recovery is effectively manage and making sure that no steps are forgotten or left behind.

Saul Marquez: [00:07:15] For sure. And in an area like the operating room when you have typically changing shifts and turn over I definitely see the importance of that. And Sam I don’t know what type of thoughts have you guys been putting into the development of these are these products or as it relates to the core issues that we face in the OR.

Samantha Sim: [00:07:34] Yes. So I think coming into chatterer health and also learning more about what technology is out there for healthcare. I think I’ve noticed that there is not. I mean there’s some effort but not as much focusing on patient safety and quality of care and it’s not often talked about which is a shame because in some of the recent studies that have been shown there is a Hopkins study as recent as 2016 that shows that preventable medical errors actually the third leading cause of death in the U.S.. So we have got big just really big statistics like that that we seem to be ignoring. I think it’s really important work that we’re doing. And just one of our main products that Joy was talking about. So the medical checklist for the surgical rules. I think that in itself is a very innovative product. I think when I first learned about it I thought it was really cool because it was something that’s really seemingly simple yet really makes a big difference. I went with physicians and nurses who have come by our booth at the conference and looked at the demo of our out. They even said so they’re like it’s seemingly such a simple idea but it’s really important because no the human mind is fallible and so are physicians. So just having a reminder of the vitals that was never never a bad thing. So it’s always helpful.

Saul Marquez: [00:08:56] Absolutely and I know we had a guest recently he was mentioning that the innovation in health care is actually implementation. And so when you have a technology as simple as the one that chatter helps provides amnio are the simplicity is what enables that implementation right. And so I think it’s pretty awesome that you guys were able to make it so simple.

Joy Bhosai: [00:09:18] Absolutely I think there was a lot of thought that went into the product. So how can we make something a year simple but on the back have lots of powerful in analysis and sort of learning that the user doesn’t necessarily have to experience that there’s somebody watching the system in place to make sure that that hurt me I think it’s been great but I 100 percent agree that implementation is key and health care and adoption because often been seen especially after working with help people know I used to map startups with industry leaders like the big pharma company that Walgreens or what have you. And you see a lot of me come by. But in the end the implementation and adoption and just the pieces missing. I think it’s truly important to make sure that your product is usable at a very busy setting. Much of our.

Saul Marquez: [00:10:18] And I had a chance to. Well Sam you walk me through the product and I saw how easy it was to just kind of look through the list and put things out put things make. I mean it was just pretty slick. So now all things haven’t been this smooth ride. At one point or another you guys have had some hiccups some setbacks Joy or or Sam either one of you. Can you share a setback that you had as a company and what you took from what pearl.

Joy Bhosai: [00:10:45] Yeah absolutely. We started out. It was back in 2012. Six years ago.

Saul Marquez: [00:10:54] Wow. You guys are veteran in the startup world.

Joy Bhosai: [00:10:58] I back that very first lesson I learned. I started when I was a mouthful. You know it was a lesson that your customer is not always here and there and that help that industry. So whoever buys the product whether it be a hospital or an insurance company or what have you they may have different motivations in your and use their power and how one of her first customers with a big large health system and they essentially know the risk management folks and leadership for super excited about getting this implemented because there has been a few adverse events that had occurred since then when we tried this first met are who are operating are the doctors the nurses didn’t see why we needed new things like that. So I think that was a wake up call for me and a very good first lesson that your customer is not always your end the end user. So what we learned from that is to ensure that you get buy in from the user. So we ask that you know the. Yeah the nurses what would you want to see on this screen. How would we better integrate this into your workflow. And after we did that version of the adoption had increased dramatically and people actually this term Mercian who don’t even want to start a case without it. So it was a very good question brought in in the beginning.

Saul Marquez: [00:12:32] That’s a great one to share and I think one that it’s like a lot of entrepreneurs in healthcare run into is even recently I had a friend that started a company to make EMR easier. And he just kept banging his head against the wall because the physicians were the users but the people that actually paid for it was the hospital system and just how do you bridge that you know and it’s just a common mistake. Appreciate you bringing that up Joy. So you get this list of things that the clinicians want you create team poll to make those voices stronger and then you give the list to Sam so she could code them all right.

Joy Bhosai: [00:13:13] We have a code and I don’t think she code to make.

Saul Marquez: [00:13:23] You got busted, Sam. She codes. This is really interesting. And so from a product development standpoint Sam the codings done do you get back in there and you spend some time in the OR with these clinicians getting feedback on what they think.

Samantha Sim: [00:13:40] So I actually worked a lot with implementation. And I think when you were talking about how implementation really is the challenge in health tech these days I just could not agree more because I think we have a great idea and we have great intention behind it that’s great but then implementation of the product and just working with the users we’re using is a whole challenge in itself just like what Joy said we did run into we I feel like a lot of companies went into issues that they’re trying to launch their product or trying to just implement into big or small health system. And I think a lot of it really was just sitting down and communicating with the physicians the nurses and the health leadership. The health system and see that they’re all on the same page and rather than forcing this new product on them just to make sure that we’re integrating it into their workflow so that it will be something that’s useful to them rather than just another chore that they have to go through. So that was that was the really important lesson I think.

Saul Marquez: [00:14:38] Yeah, for sure Joy would you add anything to that as well.

Joy Bhosai: [00:14:41] No I 100 percent agree. I think the beauty and how it is working and how puck is implementation. I mean I think intentions only get you so far but I think it’s the implementation and the results that you see in the end that matter.

Saul Marquez: [00:15:01] Awesome. Yeah totally agree with that. Sam tell us a little bit about an exciting project or focus that you guys are working on.

Samantha Sim: [00:15:08] Yes so one of the exciting projects that have been ongoing that we’re still working on is we’re trying to implement our products. Internationally. So actually at the conference I spoke to a few facts I spoke to lots of interesting people who came by specially during happy hour when they had a glass of wine and such and they all come out with their new ideas in their words of advice. So that was. But actually I met someone there who told me things like oh no your products are really great and indeed really great in the U.S. But I think they do even better if you implemented internationally especially in countries where patient safety is a big issue or where they have a really large volume with patients and quality doesn’t just keep up with quantity of care that they have. So I’ll let Joy talk a little bit more about the projects we have coming up.

Saul Marquez: [00:16:03] Very cool.

Joy Bhosai: [00:16:04] Sure. Yes sir we’re implementing from the work tools. India actually and the focus of that is to help cardiac care teams especially during cardiac surgery safely do procedures. So the group of doctors that we work with are absolutely amazing their nursing staff is totally competent that they have such high volume where everyone has their volume for fivefold and what you would normally see in a hospital here and there throughput is just phenomenal. And what happens is that no matter how competent a practitioner you are you are poor that many directions all at one time. So they’ve been using our tools to help make sure that all the steps are done for their patients. Not that they don’t know this but just to ensure that everything you know all your teeth are crossed in your eyes are. And that’s been really a great help to sort of assist them in doing their best job dirty doing a great job or just their first court. The other thing that I that has been really helpful and I thought about when I tell you to do a lot of work abroad and work in Kenya. I remember on the field days we had been out at a community clinic and it was pointed out to me that a lot of people who are not formally medically trained are doing very small procedures straight part standard procedure simply because the resources are not there. So one of the things that we are really looking forward to it. How can we apply the tools that help in resource poor planning making sure that at their very best there family society guidelines and standard procedures. So how do we make sure that there’s good and safe care for people and resource questioning which is really exciting. It’s something that I think we’ll be working on a bit more in the future.

Saul Marquez: [00:18:04] That is very exciting. So when did you guys start the international work.

Joy Bhosai: [00:18:08] Last year.

Saul Marquez: [00:18:09] Awesome.

Joy Bhosai: [00:18:10] Well I guess in January I guess the year before. Yeah I’m still writing down 2017.

Saul Marquez: [00:18:21] I know I’m still not there yet. We know we still got maybe another week or two before it actually register. Right.

Joy Bhosai: [00:18:27] Right. Just about a year. It’s really been something of a priority of mine. What I really wanted to do is focus on getting the module you know in tip top shape where we think that this is a good time right now. So excited to see where that goes.

Saul Marquez: [00:18:46] That is super exciting and especially when you could take best practices like the ones you’ve developed your whole team has developed and just take them abroad where there’s resource poor environments with super towns that people that are being overly burdened with the flow of patients. It just sounds like you guys are going to make such an incredible impact so that is awesome. Good for you guys.

Samantha Sim: [00:19:08] Yeah.

Joy Bhosai: [00:19:09] Thank you.

Saul Marquez: [00:19:11] And so this is the part of the podcast we’re close to the end flies when you’re having fun. It’s been a lot of fun making out with both of you. And so let’s pretend we’re building a medical leadership course on what it takes to be successful in medicine. It’s the 101 or the ABCs of Dr. Joy and Sam. So we’re going to go through four questions lightning round style. And so since there’s two of you we’re going to go back and forth. OK. You’ll take Sam you take one, Joy take one right. And so you each get two and then we’re going to recommend your books on the syllabus so you guys get to cheat. You get to one book. OK so why don’t we kick it off with Joy. What’s the best way to improve healthcare outcomes.

Joy Bhosai: [00:19:54] I think understanding process and workflow and making sure that are great when users and how that we experience the products.

Saul Marquez: [00:20:02] Sam what’s the biggest mistake or obstacle to avoid making sure that your product is useful and can be practically implemented versus something that’s really cool and nifty but not quite useful.

Saul Marquez: [00:20:13] Joy. How do you stay relevant as an organization. Despite constant change.

Joy Bhosai: [00:20:18] Sure involve. Ensures that you have ongoing improvement your product and showing that you’re making that and that you always remain relevant.

Saul Marquez: [00:20:28] Love it. Sam what’s the one area of focus that should drive everything else in any organization.

Samantha Sim: [00:20:34] Patient safety for us and making sure that that’s a priority. So patient safety and quality care.

Saul Marquez: [00:20:41] Awesome. All right. What book would you recommend. Sam go with yours and Joy. Go for it.

Samantha Sim: [00:20:46] All right. I have a very relevant one. So if you guys have not read The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande it’s an amazing book and it’s really cool because I don’t think you’ll ever understand how cool checklists are until you read that book and you won’t even know it until you read it. So.

Saul Marquez: [00:21:05] A great recommendation. I love it. Joy.

Joy Bhosai: [00:21:09] My hope is that my office here in the giving tree. I love this child’s favorite of mine. I just love the way that it is.

Saul Marquez: [00:21:19] That is wonderful outcomes rocket listeners, they have an amazing agenda by two very talented ladies in health care go to outcomesrocket.health/chatr that’s C H A T R outcomesrocket.health/chatr and you’ll get all of our show notes as well as the syllabus that we created for you. And the links to the books as well as the profiles for Sam and Joy. Before we conclude I love to just hear a closing thought from both you Sam and Joy. And then just share the best place to get ahold of you.

Samantha Sim: [00:21:53] Thanks so much for inviting. Had so much fun I hope this wasn’t too chaotic and an awesome that if there was a lot of talking going on but it was an honor and I hope that a lot of people learned at least a little bit about what we’re doing and just the importance of patient safety and the important work that we’re doing.

Joy Bhosai: [00:22:14] Yes. Thank you guys for having us here. Really it is great to see you as your community is growing and building upon a great cause. Thanks. So I guess my closing thought would be I really hope that put patient safety on the health communities radar even make it even more present. Like sandblast performances are the leading cause of death and over half the time preventable according to the CDC. I hope there are more folks out there willing and excited to work on it. And we’re going to hear from the less you ever want to collaborate on anything. And so to get a hold of it you can e-mail that info@chatrhealth.com. C H A T R health.com and my email direct email is joy @chatrhealth.com.

Saul Marquez: [00:23:07] Outstanding. And Sam is yours sam at ChatrHealth.com?

Samantha Sim: [00:23:12] samantha@chatrhealth.com.

Saul Marquez: [00:23:15] Oh, full name so and so ok Samantha and Joy this has been so much fun. Listeners again just go to outcomesrocket.health/chatrhealth. If anything today resonated with you. Reach out. They’ve invited you to collaborate. And so that’s how we do things here on the Outcomes Rocket. We break down silos get these amazing folks to talk about what they’re doing. So I just want to say thank you once again Sam and joy for being on the show.

Samantha Sim: [00:23:41] Yeah. Thanks for having us.

: [00:23:46] Thanks for listening to the Outcomes Rocket podcast. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.outcomesrocket.health for the show notes, resources, inspiration and so much more.