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Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! Saul Marquez with the Outcomes Rocket. Welcome back to the podcast. And I am here in sunny Nashville, Tennessee for the ViVE event with the amazing Naveen Kathuria. How you doing, Naveen?
Naveen Kathuria:
Doing well. Great to see you again.
Saul Marquez:
It’s great to see you again. Let me tell you guys a little bit about Naveen. His name probably sounds familiar because he’s been on the podcast, and today he is with us as the CEO of GoCheck Kids, the leading digital vision screening platform for children. Naveen brings deep experience leading healthcare organizations that serve vulnerable populations to his leadership role at GoCheck Kids, which is helping children thrive and pediatricians succeed by streamlining vision screenings into one efficient solution. Naveen, tell us what inspires your work in healthcare.
Naveen Kathuria:
Yeah, so Saul, I mentioned this when we last spoke, but I’ve been in healthcare for about 20 years. I’ve been an investment banker, management consultant, attorney and always fixated on solving complex problems within healthcare, and innovation has really intrigued me in terms of how to solve those problems. And you’ve heard all sort of like the common terms that are used around lower-cost care, improving access, leveraging technology. And that’s really where I’ve been focused, which is how can we leverage technology to provide high-quality care at low cost to populations that don’t have the ability to generally access this type of care, and so that’s where technology feeds into that. So the past companies that I’ve worked at in terms of digital support for family caregivers in terms of telebehavioral health, has really been focused around, how do we improve access to this type of quality care, leveraging technology, reducing the cost, keeping them out of the uncomfortable settings such as hospitals. And so, and I’ll get into this, but GoCheck is really sort of at the forefront of all of those different common themes.
Saul Marquez:
Thank you, Naveen, I appreciate that. And it is ultimately about meeting patients where they are. With parents working and kids in school, and oftentimes these remote areas, whether it’s urban without a car or rural, with the hospital four hours away, there’s got to be a way to get healthcare where people are. So talk to us a little bit about what you guys are up to there, and in particular, you recently joined GoCheck Kids as a CEO. What inspired you to join the company?
Naveen Kathuria:
One of the things I learned early on is when you’re thinking about incorporating innovation, you have to take all stakeholders into mind. So oftentimes solutions out there think about, this is going to be massively beneficial to the patient. But they don’t think about the provider, they don’t think about the administrative staff, etc., and those people are so fundamental to being able to effectively integrate a solution. And so what really intrigued me about GoCheck is, first of all, solving a massive problem. The massive problem is vision impairment within kids, which is the number one disabling condition. Second of all, it’s leveraging technology that’s native to people. And so what we have is we have a device that latches on or that attaches to an iPhone. Everyone has a familiarity with that iPhone, and then we have the ability to provide vision screening within 30 seconds to a minute. If you take a picture of a kid’s eyes and then you’re able to assess for risk factors, for conditions like amblyopia, and again, with vision impairment being such a high factor in terms of the well-being of kids, it’s something that again, it’s native to the user. It’s easy to integrate, you can train people to use the phone and have a 30-second to a minute sort of screening, and then we’re really keeping the provider, the administrative staff, in mind because it’s easy to train them on something that they’re familiar with using and easy to take a picture within 30 seconds to a minute. And so that’s what really intrigued me about us, is really solving a massive problem and having a mission that I align with, so, you know, the mission of every child receiving pediatric vision screening really resonated with me. And then that last part that you touched on before with vulnerable populations, who are more vulnerable than children? And so what we’re really doing is providing meeting people where they are. So within rural populations and urban populations, so federally qualified health centers, schools, head starts. I want to work with Native American tribes, we’re working with health systems, so all over to be able to incorporate this really effectively and easily to these types of settings where they can take a quick picture and be able to assess and refer people to the appropriate provider.
Saul Marquez:
Sounds like a great platform, Naveen. You’ve said that less than 40% of kids under the age of five have had their vision test. Why aren’t most young children getting their vision tested and what’s the benefit of doing so?
Naveen Kathuria:
Yeah, so I think if you think about when kids are going in, oftentimes where we integrate sort of our eye screening solution is an annual wellness visit for a kid. They go in there, there’s limited time, you think about Medicaid populations, I mean, the average visit is, could be as little as seven minutes. Within that time period, the staff, who we have to consider, has to incorporate all these different sort of tests, including vision screening. Typical vision screening tests take over five minutes. Ours takes, as I mentioned, 30 seconds to a minute. So timing, do you have the time to be able to take that vision test? And then adherence, we focus a lot in the screening side on kids age 1 to 5. To get them, if you think about like your typical wall chart, right, where you used to have vision tests, it’s hard to get a kid to focus on that. And so we have something where it’s much easier for someone to actually be able to view the screen. We have lights and sounds where they’ll get the kid to focus. So adherence time and then incentives. So regulations in some states mandate this and other states don’t, even though it’s widely recognized as acceptable practice. And the reimbursement, so some states have reimbursement, some don’t. And so those three areas I think are the main reason, which is time, adherence, and then incentives.
Saul Marquez:
Interesting. So out of all 50 states, how many have reimbursement? Do you know?
Naveen Kathuria:
So for Medicaid, there’s 23 states that currently offer reimbursement. In commercial, it’s a higher percentage. Isn’t an exact percentage, but there’s still work to be done.
Saul Marquez:
But there’s enough of a market there to get after it.
Naveen Kathuria:
Yeah, absolutely.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, cool, man. Do you have any tips for healthcare providers who are interested in starting a vision screening program?
Naveen Kathuria:
You know, I’d say, first of all, at least related to what we do, which is focusing on children, because one of the statistics that’s out there is, if you screen a child between ages one and five and analyze for risk factors, you can essentially solve their problems 90% of the time. And so it’s really important to think about that pediatric population, which is where our focus is. So patient population, do you have enough of a population where it would justify investing in a technology solution that can screen for vision? And that could be ten plus children ages 1 to 6 within your practice, that would justify the utilization of equipment like this, because at least our equipment is not high cost. Is it easy to incorporate into your workflow? So again, I always think about solutions that not only think about the patient, but also think about the staff and the burden placed on them. Think about nurses, administrative staff, burnout, etc. Is there a solution where you can easily train on it and they can incorporate it into their existing workflow? And so ours is really easy to use, that’s something that was really important to me before joining this company. And then is it easy to have reporting and analytics around what you’re seeing? So for us, we have a cloud-based platform and we have EHR integration. So then you can look at that data, look at utilization trends to be able to analyze what’s happening in certain demographics within your population. And so thinking about that would be something that you’d want to know going in. So if you want access to that type of data, you want to partner with the right company that has that ability. So those are three factors that I would really consider.
Saul Marquez:
I love it. So folks, take a minute to think about your practice, and there’s opportunities to grow it. And by growing it, you’re also serving a population that much better with tools like the one that Naveen and GoCheck Kids are offering up. Naveen, super interesting technology, I love the business model. What call to action would you leave the listeners with?
Naveen Kathuria:
Well, maybe I’ll, a call to action, like a story of someone we’ve been able to impact that I think is emotional and would resonate with most folks. So we work with the health system in Colorado and there’s a child by the name of AJ, two years old, goes in for his annual wellness check with his parents. They don’t think anything’s wrong with them. GoCheck identifies a risk factor. AJ is referred to a specialist, an ophthalmologist. Turns out AJ has retinoblastoma, which is cancer of the eye, and because we were able to catch it early on, able to treat the retinoblastoma, able to solve a vision impairment, he could have gone blind in that eye as well as there was risk of death and now is living a healthy and happy life. And it’s all caught within that annual wellness visit, which again.
Saul Marquez:
With his primary care physician.
Naveen Kathuria:
Yeah.
Saul Marquez:
Awesome.
Naveen Kathuria:
With the primary care pediatrician. So that’s the type of impact you can have. And if you’re not doing those vision screenings, regardless of who you’re using, you should really consider it because it can have a profound impact. And beyond the vision and the physical impairment, think about social determinants of health, someone having depression issues, someone having bullying issues in their school. There’s all sorts of implications if you don’t resolve these issues in an early age, and the parents aren’t in a position a lot of times to be able to understand what’s going on with the kids’ vision and the pediatricians aren’t necessarily armed with the right resources or knowledge to be able to assess for this. So I think it’s really important to think about it and see if it makes sense for your practice.
Saul Marquez:
I love it. And, you know, one of the things we’ve been talking about, this whole meeting, Naveen, is getting creative about the care team, who is on the care team? I think we’ve gotten our brain around the idea of primary care as a source for checking other things. But how about the school nurse? How about a dentist? How about some of these other peripheral physician and clinical people? Why not?
Naveen Kathuria:
Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of onus is put on primary care physicians to screen for things that they’re not necessarily in a position to screen for. So working in schools, head starts, etc, is also an area where we can, again, meet people where they are. A kid enrolls in a school, in a lot of states it’s mandatory to have a screening. So why not fold this in? It takes 30 seconds and then you don’t have to, again, sort of burden other folks within the healthcare ecosystem who are already on the verge of burnout with these types of things.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, I mean, could a school nurse administer this?
Naveen Kathuria:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the training is quite simple for it, and again, because it’s a device that’s native to them, a phone. And so they just log into the phone and they’re able to take that picture and conduct that screening really easily. So that’s the feedback we’ve gotten, it’s easy to train on.
Saul Marquez:
That’s cool. That’s cool, Naveen. So folks, look, I just want to make sure that we leave you with an opportunity to open up your mind, to be creative and to think outside of the box, to employ solutions like GoCheck kids, and to think beyond the specialist. Because there’s community health organizations, there’s nurses, there’s so many people that can help deploy these types of solutions. So get creative and get it done. Naveen, I’m glad you’re doing this and it’s great to see you again.
Naveen Kathuria:
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
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