Download the “HLTH_Shayan Vyas audio file directly.
HLTH_Shayan Vyas: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! Saul Marquez with the HLTH podcast. I want to welcome you all back to this amazing series. You know, we’re covering so many topics that are all about the future of healthcare, and today I am privileged to have an amazing health leader with me. His name is Dr. Shayan Vyas. He serves as Senior Vice President and Medical Director of Clinical Operations for the Hospital and Health Systems Business Unit at Teladoc Health. As part of his clinical operations duties, Dr. Vyas manages the Teladoc Health Medical Group and employed physician group in addition to his responsibility for improving platform efficiency for physician throughput. Within the Hospital and Health System Business unit, Dr. Vyas is the leading physician, an extremely amazing partner, and he is advancing virtual care strategies of hospitals and health systems that purchase Teladoc health products, devices, and services. He’s an executive leader, practicing intensivist, and telehealth physician with more than 10,000 telehealth visits. Prior to joining Teladoc Health, he worked with multiple digital health vendors and patient engagement companies, and he led the launch of the first Multi-Hospital Telehealth program in the US. So with that bio, I want to welcome you to the podcast. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Vyas.
Shayan Vyas:
Thanks to be here, thank you.
Saul Marquez:
Absolutely, so we’re going to cover a lot of great things, remote health and scaling, hospital-at-home, but before we do, we’d love to hear more about you and what inspires your work in healthcare.
Shayan Vyas:
Yeah, so thank you for allowing me to be here. I’m a practicing intensivist, and, you know, I’m a big believer that healthcare is a team sport and we really need to help all of our team members deliver on their highest level. And I’m a technologist, I think technology can be a force multiplier, and the opportunity for tele-technology to change the team sport of medicine is abundantly clear to me. It can be a force multiplier that can not only fix the supply chain and the supply-demand in healthcare, but it also can improve the distribution of healthcare. And so, you know, just big technology guy, I have two boys, I’m a father, big Astros fan, so really proud of the World Series win.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, congratulations on that, man. That was a huge victory. Well, glad you’re here with us. And so as we think about different businesses and how they add value to the ecosystem, how’s Teladoc contributing to the healthcare ecosystem?
Shayan Vyas:
Yeah, so from the payer and the employer side, we’re helping them with cost savings. We’re helping their members and their employees stay healthy and get healthier, faster. Managing chronic diseases, super important, right? Diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, those are all diseases that traditionally are seen once or twice a year in the office, and they’re managed essentially by the patient. Allowing the technology to help guide patients with these diseases, including mental health, super important, right? Healthcare is a journey, it’s not an episodic event, and so from that angle, it’s really neat on the improvements that we’re doing with payers and employers. And then on the health system side, right, there is all kinds of challenges going to the health systems today and they’re a crucial part of the ecosystem of healthcare delivery, and so working with them and helping them really understand how they can virtually scale their business is transformative. Lots of challenges today in healthcare.
Saul Marquez:
Totally, and so, care-in-the-home is a very real thing and providers are going that way. Many are struggling, figuring out ways to get there, others are, it’s working out. So talk to us about virtual nursing. You know, what is it and how does it work?
Shayan Vyas:
Yeah, so virtual nursing, you know, for the last 20 years, we’ve been focusing on virtualizing the physician practice. And because of the pandemic, we’ve now seen a shortage of nursing, and that’s been exacerbated by burnout from our healthcare colleagues. And virtual nursing is allowing nurses to remotely beam in, in this particular case, into the patient room, right? So almost 60% of what nurses do at the bedside, they’re not physical. They’re taking histories, they’re answering questions, they’re addressing concerns from the patient and on the family, and that can be done virtually. So taking technology within the inpatient room that already exists, a TV, and using that as a virtual device so that both the nurse and the patient can see each other and hear each other, that is virtual nursing.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great. While this is happening, Dr. Vyas, is there somebody in the room taking vitals and like an assistant of some sort, or how does that work?
Shayan Vyas:
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, so first of all, the nursing shortage is significant, right? The delivery of care is no longer optimal. 90% of nurses believe the quality of care struggles because of the nursing shortage and allowing the virtual nurse to do some of the non-physical stuff, they can check the monitors that may already be in the room, they can check the IV pumps, the equipment, they can even assess the patient virtually. We’ve been practicing telehealth from a patient-physician standpoint for a couple of decades now. We know that physicians can access patients at home on a cellular device. Now, for nurses, a quick assessment, right, or answering questions. We’ve seen hospitals decrease the discharge time, meaning they’re able to discharge patients faster because the virtual nurse can start the discharge process, start addressing the family’s needs on what the patient may need at home or even the admission side. You come in the hospital, you get admitted, there’s a process that has to go through the documentation system and the virtual nurse can do that while the bedside nurse can deliver the medications, administer the medications and provide physical nursing care. And so you think about all the non-physical touchpoints that nurses need to do, this can now be done virtually.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. I can imagine it’s a great way to reduce the administrative burden on nurses, improve engagement and satisfaction. Can you expand on that?
Shayan Vyas:
Yeah, so, I mean, from the nurses’ standpoint, they want to deliver care. Maybe physically they can’t, and so now this is extending the nurses’ career by many years, not only that, but the improvement of their job satisfaction, right? So you’re, you know, floor nurses, they are, they’re just so great, and the experience that they accumulate over time, they don’t want to give that up. But maybe physically, maybe mentally, maybe other things are causing them to walk away and to allow them, it extends their career. The other opportunity is because of the workforce shortage we’ve seen this is helping the bedside nurse maybe even change to a higher ratio, a higher patient-to-nurse ratio because that virtual nurse is able to help them. And then the other thing that you’re seeing is you’re seeing new nurses enter the work field, workforce and they want help. It’s not fair for a physician to be able to consult other physicians for things they may not know or they need help in, nurses should have that same ability.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. You know, and it’s a great way to look at it. It’s sort of a flavor of health equity in itself, right? Giving, expanding some of those resources to nurses, empowering them to deliver care at the top of their license.
Shayan Vyas:
Yeah, healthcare access is a big social determinant of health, right? We know that. Our mission is to improve access to healthcare, and that’s not just the ambulatory at home, but in the inpatient. And we’ve been working for a couple of decades now to improve stroke care with the acquisition of InTouch Health, and we’re distributing specialists throughout many hospitals that may not have it. Now, this is the same concept, but it’s just nursing, the basic care of patients, and nurses are the backbone of our healthcare system, right? And so to help them, I think it’s an opportunity that we have to take advantage of.
Saul Marquez:
I couldn’t agree with you more. So as we reflect on programs like these, how can programs like these evolve? What’s the future of virtual care in the inpatient setting?
Shayan Vyas:
You know, I think it’s about time that we advance the inpatient room of hospitals, our refrigerators, our garage doors, our doorbells are all connected to the Internet. We can access so many things from our home through our cell phone. The inpatient is you know, you’re sick, you’re inside of a hospital. We need to advance the inpatient side of that, and at Teladoc Health, we’re thinking about not only the patient experience, but the clinician experience. How can, we can amplify and improve the investments that health systems are making on their staff?
Saul Marquez:
I love that. You know, and it’s fantastic to hear about how focused Teladoc is to improve the experience not only of patients, but it starts with the caregivers, from physicians to nurses, making these decisions that could really help the entire care journey, as you mentioned, that it needs to be connected.
Shayan Vyas:
Yeah, absolutely, and there’s not one physician that’s listening that hasn’t been touched by a nurse. Nurses teach physicians, they continue to help our patients. Nurses put their lives on the line to serve and care for every single patient every single day. In fact, they’re putting their families at risk, we saw that with the pandemic. It’s our given responsibility to help their efficiency, help them effectively care, safely care. Again, they’re serving on the front lines, like we need to redesign and create innovative ways to help them deliver more efficiently.
Saul Marquez:
Well, I really appreciate those closing thoughts, Dr. Vyas. You know, it’s impressive the work that you guys are up to, this angle on nursing that you’re taking. They’re crying for help, and what’s the best way that health systems can engage with you, with Teladoc, to start exploring some of these solutions?
Shayan Vyas:
Yeah, to learn more, visit us at TeladocHealth.com and follow us on Twitter @TeladocHealth.
Saul Marquez:
Amazing, listen, I appreciate your time and really, really appreciate the discussion that we’ve had today.
Shayan Vyas:
Great, thank you very much.
Sonix has many features that you’d love including enterprise-grade admin tools, upload many different filetypes, world-class support, automatic transcription software, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.
