How Telemedicine Can Transform Healthcare Accessibility and Affordability

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It’s time for Sandy Springs Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: This episode of Sandy Springs Business Radio is brought to you by Mirability, providing unique IT solutions, leveraging cloud, AI, and more to solve business problems. Here’s your host, Erik Boemanns.

Erik Boemanns: Thank you for joining us today. Yeah, I’m happy to be here. And my guest today is Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh of Ask Me Your MD. And so I wanted to welcome you and thank you for joining us today to talk about yourself and to talk about the business. And, you know, just to share with everybody some of your thoughts. But yeah, maybe just a quick introduction of yourself.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yes. So I am, as you stated, Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh. I am a board certified family medicine physician, the CEO and co-founder of Ask Me Your MD incorporated, or AMY MD for short. And I’m excited to talk about the solution that we came up with. That seems extremely intuitive and very helpful, but the objective is to bring accessibility and affordability to care.

Erik Boemanns: That’s great. Yeah. And that’s obviously a super important thing in today’s world. And so I’m curious maybe what motivated you to start a MD, should we call it a MD?

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yes. Yeah. We should. We should. So it was actually my co-founder’s idea. She came to me and she said, I want to make the world’s best doctor chat. And I had been going through something that I’d never gone through in my life around that time, 2018, my father was hospitalized, and I just so happened to stay over at night with him. And what ended up happening was he had a emergency overnight. He was vomiting blood. And when I saw that and I assessed my dad, I was like, okay, he’s showing signs of obstruction and this is a condition that could need emergency surgery. He had just gotten out of ICU, so of course I was very concerned. I asked the nurse, please call the doctor. She did so three times and the doctor never came. And so it was with my knowledge of knowing who the head internal medicine physician was called her on her cell phone at 2:37 a.m. because that was the time that I thought, something is happening to my father. I don’t know which way this is going to go, so I will never forget that time or that day. And she immediately got his care rendered. And I felt like, this is the power of the knowledge that we doctors have, that so many people watch their loved ones pass away because they don’t know what to do. And so I was like, even though the simple idea of having a doctor chat, having that easy access, giving it to you, just like my sister has to me saying, hey, your niece has strep and she doesn’t have to make an appointment with the pediatrician, doesn’t have to waste time calling anybody else. And this is a simple text message, that simple knowledge that we have to render the care in such efficient manners. That’s what we wanted to add to the idea of the world’s best doctor chat.

Erik Boemanns: Gotcha. No. That’s amazing. And I completely can understand that need to have that access to a medical professional, especially to your point, it can be very hard for if we don’t know the head of the department to to get in touch with somebody who can help. And I think myself, I had similar situation with my father in the hospital, and he spent days there because they were waiting for, you know, the right people to come see him so completely understand.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yeah.

Erik Boemanns: Um, and of course, the other side of that is often it’s not about that. I don’t know who to call, but I may not. I may feel that I can’t afford to call them either. Right. I might be able to afford to go see that doctor. So I think you have an approach there as well. Maybe talk a little bit about the affordability side that you’re bringing. Yeah.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: So that was extremely important. So I’m from here, College Park, Georgia, born and raised. Um, and it’s a middle class, you know, lower class community. Now it’s being gentrified. The city’s bought up a lot of land around there. Um, the airport has extended its reach, and so they’re they’re gentrifying the area. But prior to in the late 90s and mid 90s. There was a lot of disparities that we saw between the health resources that we could get versus those that I would see when I was bust up to here. Sandy Springs. So I went to North Springs High School. Shout out Spartans! Um, and just seeing the differential was something that I never, you know, left my mind in pursuing my career as a physician. I remember in writing out our objectives because we would always write out like, what is your why? What is your what is the reason you want to pursue this career? And one was to go back to my community and make sure I am availing myself or my resources and knowledge to them. Um, to close those health gaps. And so affordability was one of them, like Sandy Springs, you know, median income versus that of College Park, especially during those times, were quite wide. And so the affordability piece was very important for me to make it a no brainer. And also to the people that could afford you’re paying every single year. You’re paying maybe 50 to $75 more for your health insurance premium. But does your access really change right? It doesn’t. Does the benefits actually like expand that from what you were getting the years prior from your health insurance? It doesn’t. And so now we have to implement something where we’re lowering the barrier for those who are insured or uninsured to not only care, but specialist. That was very, very distinguishing from all of the telemedicine solutions that we saw in the health care industry.

Erik Boemanns: Got it. Yeah. And that’s what I was curious because obviously telemedicine has grown, especially because of Covid. But even before that, it was starting to make an appearance. Um, and that is very convenient for the minor things. But but also to your point, there’s never a specialist there. So. Yeah. Is that maybe a little expand a little bit on how you distinguish there?

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yeah. So, um, a lot of the post, uh, hospital time with my dad, he needed, you know, infectious disease, cardiology, all of these specialists that had wait times of two and a half months, on average or more, and that’s just the norm. But if I called the office and said, hi, I’m Doctor Marsh. I’m the, you know, concierge physician for George Kelly. Um, we need an earlier appointment. Voila. All of a sudden there is access there. And so this was a part of the platform where we were like, oh, we can actually advocate for the patients to get the care that they need and the access a little bit faster, especially for specialty care. But let’s just go beyond that. We have a network of friends that are endocrinologists, radiologists, all of these specialties. Let’s let them know what we’re doing. And they joined us and they said, yeah, we can give those consultations. We do it to each other. We text each other even when we’re like in the hospital and working in the hospital, we’ll like text a kidney specialist or nephrologist and we’ll be like, hey, this is the, you know, the kidney function test. And like, what do you think about this? Or what would you do? You know, and I did that with my dad. I screenshot and took a picture of what they were giving my dad in his hospital stay, and my friend whose infectious disease was like, this is exactly what I’d choose. And that peace of mind. Um, that is just it’s invaluable, right? And so that’s what we wanted to bring on to increase the value of what you get for $35, you can talk to a GI specialist or a cardiologist about yourself or your loved one.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah, well, $35. And so, yeah, I don’t think you can see that price maybe with a copay. Right. For for your regular provider. Maybe.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Maybe. Yeah. These days, average co-pays, like they range from like $20 all the way to $120, depending on your plan. Yeah.

Erik Boemanns: And never a specialist. So that’s the other side. Yeah. Right.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Probably no less than $80 for a specialty copay. Yeah.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah. And I know that was something that you wanted to work on, was reducing that overall health care cost, right? Because if I don’t have if the reason I’m not getting care is for financial reasons, then obviously my care only gets more expensive later. But, um, so maybe talk a little bit about how your approach that, that cost from the health care side, from the patient, from the provider side.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yeah. So for the patient side, of course, there’s the direct lower cost that you can compare to your usual out-of-pocket pay for an in-person visit, say, at the urgent care. If you don’t have an established primary care provider or, you know, for those specialists like it is much, much less of a financial barrier. Um, and then for those who are insured, of course, it’s less than your copay, right? And so it’s good to run, you know, these questions and concerns and inquiries across to the specialists at a lower cost. And so that direct low cost to the patient. That’s one of the ways. The second way is a little bit more subtle. So, um, to kind of understand the way that the money flows within the healthcare industry, you have to understand the health insurances are the big boss. And Medicare, um, they’re the big payers. They’re the ones that are, you know, fronting the higher cost of care. And so they will do anything to share those costs or to decrease those costs for their business. Um, and so when we see that when physician groups are submitting medical notes that have all of this documentation to get paid, sometimes the health insurance company, they’ll see that document and they’ll say, we’re not going to pay you for everything that you did. You didn’t document X, Y, and Z. You know, it starts to get into the weeds of, of kind of back and forth conversation of pay me.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: No, we’re not going to pay you this. And and that could go on forever. So what I saw and said was, what if we didn’t even have to have that conversation? What if we made this very simple for you, health insurance company, you pay us a subscription, we render the care and you get to have our specialists access for your members, which then specialty claims, oh my, they’re like two and a half to three times that of a normal visit. And so they begin to see the value proposition very quickly. And that direct contract then less money for them processing all of that paperwork, less money for us having to have a company that we pay to send the processing of all of those medical notes. So an entire billion dollar industry side to health care that drives up cost is now being avoided. And we’re having a direct financial conversation with the health insurance that over time, will decrease the amount of care that you see, because now they’re paying us directly, not at the regular rate, which is three times as much, but they’re just giving us that consistent lower subscription for you to have access to us. And so that’s also a way that we’re decreasing costs within the health care industry overall.

Erik Boemanns: Got it. Yeah. And I think that’s a great point, because it is such a complicated market that people don’t realize that it’s like me, my doctor and maybe some health insurance. Right. But yeah, it’s never that simple. Um, but it makes me curious. I want to pivot a little bit to AMD as a startup as a you know. Oh yeah. As the company. And so. Obviously you’re a co-founder and you’re bringing this to market. But it sounds like at first I thought maybe you had a two part market, right, that you had to attract patients and you had to attract providers. But it sounds like it’s a three way if you’re actually going to the insurance as well.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yeah. Yeah. Um, we can we can even call it a five way. Okay. There are so many verticals because physicians and patients are at the core of providing health care and rendering healthcare. Right. So we’re the two key ingredients. Um, the others that are already, you know, having a group of people together that they want to render this care to, we want to bring them in the conversation just to do exactly what I said, which is to decrease overall cost of care. So, um, we have leveraged just our peer connections. We haven’t done any formal recruitment for any of the physicians. This is literally word of mouth. This is me and my co-founder getting out there telling people about AMD as a startup. Our first big break came in 2020 2nd November. I remember I was invited to a dinner that CVS health was having, and they were starting to want to increase the knowledge of clinical trials within communities of color. And so as people of color, myself and my co-founder, Doctor Sara mission, you know, she’s South Asian, I’m an African-American female, and we are connected to our communities. And so they saw that and they said, you know, we would want you to come on board and help us to educate the communities that you already service. Absolutely. Great. So now we get free co-branding with a multi-billion dollar industry leader, and we began to now be on the face of television and radio and emails that were sent out for CVS health. And so people began to know our name and associate us with a trusted person within the health care industry.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: And so that was the start, I would say, as a startup, that was one of the key pivots to us being really known, even to the world of investors and other health tech startups. Um, so then we got invited for collaborations and other partnerships, and then we went into an accelerator and got our pre-seed revenue, you know? And so it was it was quite the the journey over those next two years, just building and implementing new technology, um, and including AI, because everyone needs to think about that and strategically do it. But back to your point. Um, our our friends came with us, and that was like we went from two physicians to 12 physicians, and then all of a sudden 26. And now we’re at 51 doctors that have signed up to render care on AMD. Um, but it was through those key partnerships that we were able to do that, get our eyes in the community. Yeah. And become trusted. And now having the conversation with the health insurance companies, with employers and other corporations of medium small businesses to let them know you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to give health access to your employees. And so that’s another vertical that we work on. And some more to come. But yeah, right now um, our B2C model that’s rapidly increasing. Um, and then the B2B. Yeah, the focus is the health insurance companies for now.

Erik Boemanns: Got it. Yeah. And every one of those adds a complexity right to to your effort. So.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Oh yeah.

Erik Boemanns: So doing it times five. Right.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Right.

Erik Boemanns: But at least to your point you’ve got some good partners to, to create that momentum and, and to get that brand that co-branding recognition. So.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Exactly.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah. And you mentioned technology and you mentioned AI. Which one do you want to talk about first? Because I think both of those are interesting as well.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: I think both are very interesting. Um, I would just talk about technology and where I see, you know, technology going within the health tech industry. Uh, especially for telemedicine. Um, a lot of us have, you know, gotten very used to the video component, of course, sending over videos and pictures and other kind of key, um, evidence that we can utilize in making our health assessments. Um, but yeah, that has gotten to the level of where we now need to incorporate AI, because a lot of that data from those pictures and videos, um, they can be utilized in such a more high value way. Um, so I’m seeing a lot within the healthcare industry in telemedicine, where now AI is assessing the photos or they’re assessing the videos, um, or they’re doing, you know, live assessments with very innovative tools. Um, so I’ve talked to a couple of founders that have utilized AI to assess the back of the throat to make the diagnosis of strep throat, you know, without like going in and getting the test. And so that to me is incredible. It’s like it’s making that part of healthcare now accessible through just digital. Yeah. Um, so that’s that’s pretty pretty phenomenal.

Erik Boemanns: Right. I think you you make a really good point. If if people are hearing the word AI, they’re probably thinking the chats, the, the intelligent agents. Right. And things like that. But in healthcare, a lot of those AIS are exactly what you just described. They’re they’re diagnostics. They’re looking at video, they’re looking at images. And so it’s a totally different world of AI. It is still AI. It’s still machine learning. Correct. But it’s not the the one that maybe is popularized. So if I go to a chat window on my doctor’s office and start chatting with an AI, should I trust it, right? I have a trust issue of whether I can trust a ChatGPT style right medical resource, no matter how well trained it is.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yeah, certainly never by itself. And I get this question a lot because we are a tele chat platform and we’re text based. And so even though we’re text based, um, there is the fear that, okay, you’re going to let the machine take over the conversation. So number one, that’s like a medical liability that we are not willing to take on. Okay. So you’re always going to be speaking to a human being doctor. Um, what we chose to do was utilize AI to have the information assessed on the back end to make the conversation easier for our physicians. So number one, it’s learning how they speak to patients. Number two, it’s bringing in evidence based information and letting that doctor know, hey, looks like this is a sinus infection based off of the conversation you’re having. This is the latest treatment for sinus infections. And two is taking out that bias piece. Right. So when I see you or you see me, there are these implicit biases that we can have just from living life in America. And that’s normal. It’s natural. But when it comes to care rendering, we need to be very mindful of that. And so when we take out the visual cue for those, I would say 85 to 90% of the tele chat consultations that are purely tele chat, um, we need to make sure that we’re rendering the same care across the board. Yeah, right.

Erik Boemanns: No, that makes sense. And and yeah, I think that it’s a good distinction, right? That you are talking to a human because too many of the chat agents now are not. And it’s impossible to get to one. And, and for customer service with a, you know with Amazon that’s probably fine. But for healthcare.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yeah. Not. Not so much. Yeah.

Erik Boemanns: Um, so I’m curious. Obviously you mentioned $35 earlier, and I believe that’s for whether or not you have insurance. Right? Yeah.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Whether or not we are not discriminating. Um, although, you know, we are advocating for those who are insured for the health insurance because we’re not billing them. Yeah. Um, to give us a way at a free cost. Um, and not as a shared cost, because we’re saving them more money than they’re having to pay for you to have access to us. Yeah.

Erik Boemanns: And so if we’re thinking about you mentioned using AI to reduce the bias, you mentioned the kind of that that price, whether you’re insured or not. How is that helping reach people who may be underserved today with healthcare?

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yeah. So those that you know have heard of us, word of mouth is primarily, um, in these times, the way people come on, ask me your imdb.com that is really changed their lives, their daily lives and thoughts of okay, I don’t have to save up to go to urgent care. I can actually ask my question or get treatment for these things that I’m going through. Um, and so this access actually acts as like something that prevents them from having to go to the emergency room with a simple urinary tract infection or, you know, just something that could have been treated as an outpatient. But because, number one, they don’t know an office that they can easily go to. Number two, again, the cost barrier to urgent care. Um, this has helped give them that access and maintain the level and quality of access of care. You know, with a physician directly, just like they’re, again, one of my own family members.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah, Yeah. That’s great. So if people listening today do want to find out more, where do they go? How do they find out more about AMY MD?

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yeah. So you go to ask me your MD. Com and we have a button that’s really top of the line there that lets you chat with a physician. You pay the little $35 fee and then you come on. And you, you talk to our live doctors and we get you to what you need and instruct you on ways that you can even take care of things before you require, like prescriptions. Um, and we’re coming on December. And so that’s when we have caretaker awareness, right? There are a lot of people that are caring for elderly parents or grandparents. Um, and so we want them to also utilize us as like their resource to help guide them, to help let them know you know you’re doing a good job, or if they have any concerns about, you know, wanting a second opinion. Our clinicians can help in that realm too.

Erik Boemanns: Awesome. And so I think as we kind of wrap things up, one of the things that I was curious as a founder in Atlanta, and it’s a great thriving community here for startups, but you’ve been a couple of years in this. You have a five way marketplace, so you’re making this even more interesting to your to yourself. Yeah. Do you have words of encouragement, words of suggestions to others who are also thinking about starting their own startup similar to yours or not similar to yours, but could be completely different?

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Yeah. I’ll tell you. Like I tell my medical school students. So I’m an adjunct professor at Morehouse School of Medicine, and on the road to becoming a physician, you’re going to run across a lot of hurdles just in life. You’re going to experience things that maybe be a setback or a very challenging issue that you have to overcome. And so my advice every single time is just three words never give up. Never give up. I think it is worth telling the story about how I say that I was favored to fail because I’ve had to overcome failure in so many different ways. Even after my undergrad, I didn’t have enough money to pay for the MCAT. I had to take a job over the year after undergrad, and so I was already starting one year behind. And you see your colleagues and and classmates moving on with their lives and, you know, having the white coat ceremony, um, etc., and I’ll get to the business. I just want to go through all of these failures because each was very key in my never give up like resilience. And so that monetary barrier that again, it stuck with me. Even now, when I’m thinking about my business and business model and how I’m going to, how are you really going to give access? If you really wanted to give access, it would be free, but then there’s nothing free. And so, you know, coming up with all of these price models and assessing the situation and saying, okay, I know who holds the gold and having a very key knowledge of the industry and how the money runs in that industry is very good, but don’t give up.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: I didn’t have the money for MCAT, and then after I got into medical school, I didn’t have the money to go to the world’s like most expensive medical school temple at the time. Um, but I never gave up, so I did accrue quite a bit of debt, quite a bit. Um, and then you’re you’re going through residency. You’re getting paid, you know, for the first time, which I wasn’t complaining because I come from very humble background. And so I was still trying to never give up and continue to pay for all of those loans so they wouldn’t accrue too much. Um, but before I even graduated medical school, I failed my first attempt at one of my licensing exams. But that was the biggest lesson because I learned how I know how to be prepared for medical license exams, which I’ll have to take for the remainder of my career. And I learned that, you know, you really have to be strategic with your time because I was rushing things, trying to keep up with my classmates. And that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. So, you know, nevertheless, um, searching out your resources. Right. So I learned to search out my resources throughout residency because financially it was very strained. And so all of the resources that they had a foundation attached to every single hospital in the United States. So anyone that’s dealing with a medical bill or anyone that’s having a hard time paying a medical bill, call the foundation that’s attached to that hospital, call the, you know, financial department attached to that, because they have a level of forgiveness of which the government has subsidies for them, and they get tax credits for that stuff.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: So it there’s a solution out there. You might just have to look for it. And in your never give up journey you might come across those things and I did. Um, and then when I started the business, I left a high paying job with a corporation here in Georgia. Um and went to zero. Literally went to zero. But that was the conviction of belief that I had in the business itself. And so never give up. Even if you have to start from the, the the ground level again. Um, and believe in yourself and know that, you know, there are solutions out there. There are people out there that want to help you. Uh, particularly in the health tech industry, there are people that are focused in that vertical in that, um, you know, that industry. And so seek them out. Seek out who’s ever really, really on fire for your, um, your objectives and your business model. And then, um, you know, from going from zero to now, we’re like $180,000 in revenue. Um, in the three years we just celebrated three years, November 9th. Um, and we’re about to raise our seed round. And of course, there will be challenges. Of course. That’s a whole long road. Um, but the resilience that has developed along the path of my life, I can’t do anything but be grateful. Um. And say to my fellow tech industry or startup or people that are just in the ideation phase, just never give up and keep going. Yeah.

Erik Boemanns: Well, yeah, that’s awesome advice and I appreciate that. And so yeah. Thank you Dr. Marsh for joining us today. I appreciate you sharing about AMY MD and and what you’re doing to kind of change the perspective on healthcare and the cost. So yeah, again, thank you.

Dr. Patricia Kelly Marsh: Thank you for having me. Absolutely.