Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights with Jason Povio

In this captivating episode of Taking Healthcare by Storm, delve into the world of expert insights as Quality Insights Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm engages in a thought-provoking and informative discussion with Jason Povio, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Eagle Telemedicine.

Jason discusses the vital role of telemedicine in improving healthcare access for rural and underserved communities. He highlights the importance of interoperability, chronic disease management, and specialty care through telemedicine, while sharing insights on challenges and future advancements in the field.

If you have any topics or guests you'd like to see on future episodes, reach out to us on our website.

Publication number QI-071125-GK

Transcript

 Welcome to "Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights," the podcast that delves into the captivating intersection of innovation, science, compassion, and care. 

In each episode, Quality Insights’ Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm will have the privilege of engaging with leading experts across diverse fields, including dieticians, pharmacists, and brave patients navigating their own healthcare journeys. 

Our mission is to bring you the best healthcare insights, drawing from the expertise of professionals across West Virginia, Pennsylvania and the nation.

Subscribe now, and together, we can take healthcare by storm.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Taking Healthcare by Storm. I am Dr. Jean Storm, the medical Director of Quality Insights, and today I'm excited to be joined by Jason Povio, the CEO of Eagle Telemedicine. A leading provider of telemedicine services and they are transforming healthcare access across the country.

Jason has a diverse background in systems engineering and healthcare, and he has been at the forefront of using technology to improve patient outcomes, especially in rural and underserved communities. Something that is very important and, and very in the forefront of the news. Right now. Today, we'll dive into his journey, the role of telemedicine in addressing healthcare challenges.

And how Eagle telemedicine is bridging the gap in chronic disease management, specialty care, and more. I am a huge fan of telemedicine and I think we have only scratched the surface of what telemedicine can offer, in healthcare. I mean, especially now with. The focus on chronic disease and rural healthcare.

So it's gonna be a really wonderful conversation about the future of healthcare. Jason Povio, thank you very much for joining us today. Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate it.  always happy to speak about, telemedicine and all the things that we're doing at Eagle. Good. I am too. So you have a diverse career in systems engineering and healthcare.

Can you walk us through briefly, your journey and share how your background led you to become the CEO of Eagle telemedicine and what drives your passion for telemedicine? Sure.  You know, throughout my career, I think I've been blessed. I've been very fortunate to, to work in very diverse roles.  And each in some way has really helped to shape.

Who I am as a, as a leader today, my passion for healthcare actually really began in college where I, I had the opportunity to collaborate on interdisciplinary projects with a local hospital Sarasota Memorial, actually down in Florida. It was a project out the University of South Florida I was amazed that time really the, the lack of technology that was in healthcare, and I believe Sarasota might have been one of the first hospitals in the country to kind of jump onto electronic medical records and testing out some new technologies. And that experience really sort of ignited my interest in improving.

Patient care and being part of healthcare.  Interesting. My, my career kind of took a different turn coming outta school and going into sort of traditional engineering and systems engineering. But I always wanted to try to find my way back and, uh, it was really the unwavering support of my wife that allowed me to sort of take that leap.

And I'm really grateful I did. And I started really more at a ground level with an opportunity to really study various clinical operations and collaborate with subject matter experts to bring improvements to life. Had a lot of fun doing OR assessments and lab assessments and designing and redesigning emergency departments.

All in an effort to reduce wait times, increase outcomes for patients. And, it really taught me a lot and I, i'm really thankful I had the opportunity to work at the elbow with so many caregivers involved in each of those different value streams. At one point I decided I really wanted to pursue a more clinically operational leadership role.

And so I had an opportunity to do that, and that's kind of where the fund really began. I got to really sort of spread my wings, if you will, and start to get into driving strategic initiatives to drive real change.   And in that role is when I first had the opportunity to develop virtual care strategies across a really wide catchment area where patients were really underserved especially in subspecialty care.

They had local facilities within their communities, but just lack that access. And  it's the story we hear all the time. You know, having to drive two to three hours to the big house, to the big city to get some of that care that they needed. I.  And so I knew we could do it differently and we made a lot of strides in that way.

And  just through that work and through networking within the industry, I had an opportunity to connect with the folks at Eagle Telemedicine and they graciously offered me the opportunity to. To come and lead the organization.  I certainly had some reservations about my ability to drive and lead an organization, and it's been an amazing five years.

 I think what drives me to telemedicine is that it's the perfect intersection of my engineering mindset. And my desire to make meaningful impact, I mean, I thrive on driving innovative change.  I believe in people in process before technology, but there is always a fit for purpose approach to technology and how it can blend into our workflows, continuing to allow for the care to be delivered.

In a humanizing way.  And so telemedicine allows me to do just that.  And I really have a sense of me personally, a sense of purpose and being able to make a, a real difference in healthcare. You get it, that technology needs to work for the people in medicine, not like the people working for the technology, which sometimes happens, right?

It does. Yeah, it does. And I give credit where credit is due, but  my chief technology officer has this mantra, and I, I, I love it, but he brought it to the organization, frictionless Care, and so he looks at. All of the workflows, and he's looking for friction. And whether it's a redesign of a process or anything from a technological perspective that can eliminate friction  that's what's driving him each day.

And it's a foundation for what's driving our approach to innovative solutions. So I love it. Yeah, I love it too. And, you know, telemedicine I'm a huge fan of telemedicine. It's a game changer. It has been a game changer, particularly as you mentioned in rural healthcare. So can you tell us more about the Eagle Rural Care Alliance and how it's helping small rural hospitals provide specialty care to communities in need Absolutely.

 I had this idea of developing multi-specialty outpatient clinic support. Remotely. Yeah, I didn't have a name to it years ago. Just a, an idea like hospitals typically have real estate, and so they have space, they have an unused space at that, and so there's an opportunity to capitalize on that. To bring access to care in these smaller rural communities for patients.

 Post, you know, post-acute episode, right? An episode of care and, and need that continuum to prevent another acute episode.  And really help to manage, you know, in many cases chronic conditions. And, I don't take credit for the full idea. It was actually, I stole it from Sprint many years ago.

 I think only for a year. They had this idea of a family plan, this friends and family plan. And, the commercials were funny because anybody, you could get to sign on to your phone plan, whether it was your mailman or, or somebody in your family.  You could effectively reduce your total expense for the phone plan.

And this was at a time when, you know, they, they were kind of expensive and so that was really cool. I thought, wow, we could translate something like that. Into this setting. And if we could get a bunch of disparate hospitals the leadership to acknowledge that they all had share commonality  in this problem with access and get them to all buy into small bites of.

Service you know, we can in aggregate really build out a very comprehensive program within a geographic region. And so we went to work putting that together and pushed it out. We had great success initially in the state of Kansas, and then just started to kind of expand from there into, into other states.

It's really rewarding to kind of see that. It's also rewarding to see that, that this approach has been replicated. So we have a couple of competitors who have kind of taken this and have launched programs very similar to that. And I just think that's great for telemedicine as a whole  is to continue to drive access to outpatient.

That's where the lion's share of care takes place.  And so that's where obviously I think some of the greatest gaps we have are. Yeah  I would agree. You mentioned early on, I think in the first question I asked you, you talked about specialty care. Mm-hmm. So, Eagle telemedicine offers a wide range of specialties through telemedicine, which I think is amazing.

From cardiology to neurology, to my personal favorite, which is palliative care. What's the importance of having such a broad spectrum of services available remotely, especially in smaller hospitals? So, you know, we're rooted , in our mission and our vision. And part of that is, is to lead. Be a leader, lead the industry in developing strong collaborative partnerships to drive access to care. And that's not just a marketing slogan. I mean, it's, it's really a part of the fabric of who we are. And in order to be able to do that, we need to have a wide breadth of access and we do so very methodically.

 We have a really good process here that we've fine tuned over. You know, 17 years to where we can enter into a specialty with relative ease. And it's been game changing for our partners. So a lot of what we have developed over the years has come from a phone call. An existing client that has another problem they'd like to solve and we're the partner that they want to try to solve it for.

And so as we entered into this specialty or the other, that's what drove a lot of that.  We have very few specialties that we cooked up and said, Hey, let's bring this to fruition.  Interestingly enough, one of which in the last one we've done is palliative care. It was a passion project of mine.

My wife had a cancer journey and the only physician I thought actually. Really cared and, and sort of understood what was going on and could communicate with us on a, on kind of a human level, was our palliative care physician. And so ever since that  and I had the privilege of actually managing a group at one point as well I've just been adamant that, you know, I want to be able to bring that care to as many facilities as we can.

So we started that one late last year, and starting to see it take off  is actually quite rewarding as well. But there's so many different conditions and there's actually such a blend between some of the conditions and specialties that, again, it's really important we're able to create a wide swath of access to make sure that  no patient is ultimately left without the appropriate access that's needed.

Yeah, so very important. You talked a little bit about telemedicine, helping to reduce the need for patients to travel long distances for specialized. Yes. So can you share a specific example where telemedicine has directly improved patient outcomes in rural areas? Oh gosh. Absolutely.  You know, obviously.

Care close to home is, is the big thing. And, and trying to keep patients and their family close for that care. And obviously with everything there's obviously exceptions and so there are levels of acuity or certain procedural needs where patients will ultimately have to transfer. And we're certainly thankful that we've got such a great.

Foundation of healthcare and, and those tertiary centers to where you can get that care when needed. But the vast majority of care can be managed locally. If not for the lack of access to a, a specialist. And we got examples in telestroke care where. Facilities are referred to as drive-bys.

The ambulance isn't even going to stop on their way to the center that they're gonna go to. And and that just creates additional time when we know, especially in stroke minutes is brain, seconds is brain. I mean, it's just super critical and super important.  And so we've had a, a large impact in stroke care with rural facilities. And the cool thing is, is, you know, these are facilities that don't have 1, 2, 3 strokes a day. They have one, two, or three strokes, a  a week  maybe even within a month. And we're still able to bring them, high quality stroke level care when they need it, even in those infrequent moments to really enable things like faster administration of whether it's TNK or or TPA and  helping to really drastically reduce disability rates in, in that regard.

It's one of the. Opportunities we see a great deal of success in that's really exciting is and it's unfortunate because there's just such a lack across the country and that's in behavioral health. And so our ability to provide emergency departments across the country with 24 7.

Emergent urgent access to behavioral health psychiatrists to manage patients coming in that, you know, are either reporting as self harm or gonna harm others.  and I know in the news we've all seen and heard a lot about abuse that caregivers are enduring in some instances.

And so our ability to play a role in helping to deescalate whether that's medically or otherwise  through those consultations is, is really huge as well. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if, if our listeners, my listeners really understand, like with a stroke there might be an individual who, who presents to a rural hospital and they have deficits.

Maybe they can't talk, uh, maybe they can't walk because of where the stroke is. And, If a telemedicine provider, neurologist can see them and say, yes, go ahead.  You know, and give that TPA, that individual could regain the ability to talk or to walk. And an individual who does not have that access to that neurologist over telemedicine, we'll have to get transferred to a larger hospital and by that time, the window has closed and so their disability may is permanent, so correct.

Huge. I mean, it, it is  you know, and, and in some of the rural care lines, we, you know, some take rheumatology as a quick example and I. The ability to not only support, you know, the care of that from a chronic state for patients, but the ability to help establish or stand up you know, infusions you know, it's a huge opportunity for the hospital itself, but also for patients who need that  as part of their care plan.

 Not having to drive long distances to do that, which ultimately we see leads to kind of a lack of compliance. You know, we all work, we all have a life, and it's, ah, I just can't get there, you know, and, at these times. And then ultimately it just doesn't contribute to driving them forward in a positive way with regards to their condition.

  I mean, we could probably spend a, another entire 45 minutes just talking about outcomes. Yeah, absolutely. So Covid pandemic significantly accelerated the adoption of telemedicine. We know that. Still operating under the waivers that were put into place then? Yes. From your perspective, what impact did the pandemic have on the growth of telemedicine?

And I'll say as a  I primarily when I'm during my clinical time, saw patients in nursing homes and also in the hospital, but, it was during Covid Pandemic that I first saw telemedicine in the nursing home. It was like, oh my goodness, we can do this here. So do you think the momentum is gonna continue now that we're in this post pandemic period?

I think we're all kind of a little afraid with the waivers going away, but then they're kind of still staying around for the time being. Yeah, that's, it's an interesting  we find ourselves at kind of an interesting intersection. Um, and there's a lot of different trends that it have, that there's data on, and it's a lot.

I think telemedicine is absolutely here to stay as a permanent pillar of healthcare delivery. I  I believe that  Unfortunately, you know, we're not aided as well as we could be by those, by our representatives in Washington. Who by all accounts, this is the most bipartisan issue in the country yet it's still proving to be a challenge to execute on permanent legislation.

Which really impacts predominantly traditional Medicare and Medicaid. But that's also a very large percentage of many of these hospitals patients. And so it is a problem that needs to be addressed and solved for the pandemic really forced rapid adoption and then let everyone see, okay, this can be done.

And then I think there was a little bit of like, okay, now that. As the pandemic eased, taking a step back  and asking what is the most appropriate use of telemedicine? Right? It's not a, hammer and everything's a nail kind of situation. It's so when, where, and when can it be utilized to really drive outcomes  and care?

And what I have seen and what I hope for is this continued adoption and approach to telemedicine as a part of a hybrid care. Model to really help address the massive workforce shortage that we have. And whether that looks like patients coming into a clinic and seeing a specialist live as a, as an initial, part of the, uh, care development plan.

And then. Rolling into  a telemedicine follow up workflow and helping to kind of manage and offset the volumes. I know for example, we, we see a ton of volume in benign hematology right now. Because oncology clinics are just being overrun with malignant situations that the benign hematology patients are, are sort of, uh, deprioritized and, and rescheduled over and over again.

And again, I think that's an area where you can bring telemedicine and access to that to help it. Just because it's benign doesn't mean the patients aren't suffering.   And so. It's a great opportunity to say, all right let's create access, let's create capacity and get patients seen and moving forward, progressing on a care plan.

So yeah, I've got a lot of hope for the future in that the pandemic was a catalyst. And so I, I'm optimistic. Yeah, you should be. I mean, that is a great example of the benign hematologic findings. I'll say, I don't know if everyone really understands.

A lot of those patients fall through the cracks. Yes. They just like can't get an appointment so they like forget about it and then maybe they have a mild anemia that just gets lost and then it's down the road and then it's significant anemia that maybe could have been treated in a very easy way.

You know, an iron infusion or something. So, yeah. Correct. So much to offer. I'm gonna shift a little bit 'cause just in kind of in researching for the podcast, I saw that Eagle telemedicine offers a variety of remote study interpretation services, which I found so very interesting. EKGs, EEGs and sleep studies.

And I will say, just in my experience. In nursing homes, we get these EKGs in the nursing home and it's like, okay. I mean, I'm not a cardiologist, I'm an internal medicine doctor, and I have been trained in EKGs, but I am no expert. So I think that this is so cool that this is offered. So how do these remote services enhance the quality of care for patients and what impact do they have on early detection and treatment outcomes?

I mean, they're huge. you know, To play off of some of what you said is that a lot of these diagnostics are performed with the patients present in a hospital or nursing home or other, and they don't. Have the specialist or capacity for them to be either read or read in a timely manner?

I recall a program we stood up in rural Washington, uh, a little over a year ago. And when I saw the numbers come across, I actually had to call just to confirm. They had a backlog of 10,000 EKGs that had not been,  and I, again, I'd said, I, I don't, I'm not sure how can that be?

Is this an accurate number?  And so I just think about all those patients that have not had a potential effective diagnosis.   and started any care that might be required. And it's just, it's sad. And so we thought, hey. We can do something about that.

 We started looking across the different specialties and opportunities for providing interpretation services across the different diagnostics. I think the largest. Specialty we, or the, the most we do in any one specialty is actually MFM. I think I've lost count at the number of ultrasounds that  can be reviewed and interpreted there.

But super important, especially think about MFM as being able to detect certain things within that cycle, which is so important to get mother and baby on track for the most normal birth as possible.  Given, you know, whatever the findings might be is critical.

And then again, being able to do that in a rural community. And actually interestingly enough, it's, I think it's one of the specialties that has the least amount of physicians in the country. And so we do have some larger urban settings that have benefited from our capacity in that particular specialty as well.

And just again, very critical to catch things in a more timely manner and being able to actually affect and impact two lives.   it's really important. And we're happy, we're happy we expanded into that space. And, and interestingly enough, and as a physician yourself, you may be able to acknowledge this or not, but we actually have a large population of our physicians that really enjoy doing this work specifically.

Yeah, I will say, I was thinking about during my residency, I trained at a small community hospital and at the end of our day, typically we'd change over to the night person at seven. So usually at five o'clock things started to calm down and we had to go to the heart station where they did all the EKGs for the day.

They did all the stress tests and. There was a stack of EKGs that were done. And I mean, this was when, when, you know, a paper, I'm not gonna, I gonna do myself. But we had to sit there as residents at five o'clock and read all those EKGs and I was like, I hope, like, I really hope I was really sharp. Right?

Like, I don't think that's happening now, but I can understand there's something very soothing about it because. I don't know if people really understand. In medicine, when you're talking to a patient, there's so many things that are kind of going through your head. You wanna make the patient feel comfortable, you wanna make the patient feel heard, you don't wanna miss anything.

You wanna make sure you diagnose them appropriately in a timely manner. So much. And so those EKGs are, I can see how there were some physicians that would enjoy that and that's great. That's great. Do what you, it's a, it's absolutely. I, you know, with the, it's funny, the EEGs, like in neurology, I always explain that neurology's like four different specialties in one.

We have physicians that only want to practice general rounding neurology. We have physicians that only wanna do stroke work. We have physicians that only wanna do outpatient clinics. And then I always say we have those that only wanna read the squiggly lines, and that's all that, that's all they wanna do.

 And so it's really, it's really neat. We're able to fulfill a an opportunity for physicians, but also patients alike. And it's funny you talk about that. I ran a sleep lab many years ago and I used to see the, it used to be one to two feet tall stacks of studies that had to be read, and the doc would come in on a Friday and just close the door and and go through 'em all.

Yeah. You know, and it's like, yeah. Patients are getting their diagnosis now. Yes. So something that I'm very interested as an internist is chronic disease and the current administration, you know, make America healthy again, is also very focused on chronic disease. And telemedicine has a potential to transform chronic disease prevention, management treatment.

 And I think, you know, kind of as you said, maybe even have that hybrid model.  For individuals, how do you see telemedicine being used not only to monitor patients with chronic conditions, but also help prevent these diseases and improve treatment outcomes, particularly in remote or underserved areas?

It's a great question. Um. We've talked about this quite a bit. We have yet to sort of venture into the remote monitoring space, although we see that we're probably gonna get there, , at some point.   it's an interesting intersection when you think about remote monitoring.

You have. The device itself, the technology, you've got obviously a network that it typically needs to be connected to so that you have a constant stream or at least a timely, frequent stream of information diagnostics This is where you see some ai. Currently being applied doing like initial read or monitoring, looking for anomalies and other things to help bring things to the attention of caregivers.

And then ultimately you need to have a  physician or appropriate caregiver. To ultimately understand what is being relayed and what changes to the care plan need to be implemented to avoid or avert a decline and continue to have the patient on the path to progression.

Right? And so it's an interesting blend and while we're not currently playing in the continuous monitoring space from a technology perspective we are having conversation or having had conversations where we can bring the capacity of our physicians and plug them into a remote monitoring operation.

And so there's some, there are some interesting potential partnerships on the horizon with some healthcare, it organizations that are doing diagnostic and remote monitoring for patients, and that's where their expertise lies, and whether it's the technology itself, the algorithms and whatnot, but they don't, they're not a service.

Facing organization, they don't have the caregivers. And that's where we can potentially partner with them to close that gap and ensure that the appropriate specialty and caregiver is helping to drive care based on what's being monitored and reported. And I think this is be game changing for chronic disease management.

You think about. Glucose levels, blood pressure and the things that that leads to when those aren't controlled as they can be. And the ability to modify care plans whereas therapeutics or diet or whatever it might be, and have more timely conversations with patients about.

Those changes to drive towards a more desired outcome is tremendous. I mean, I think unfortunately in the underserved and more rural communities, I think there's a different level, I wanna say lack, but I don't want to be disparaging. There's just a different level of health education in some of those communities as there is in, in the urban counterparts.

And so the ability to bring this type of information to them in a more timely way and have more meaningful or context rich conversations with them about their chronic disease and how to better manage it goes a long way. I mean, it means fewer ER visits, better adherence, better quality of life, lower cost of care.

And then I think ultimately, if. Implemented well and studied over time.  I believe, would show a reduction in disparities in chronic disease outcomes. That's exciting. I look forward to hearing about that. Most definitely. So, while telemedicine is great potential, we always have to talk about challenges.

So technology access, regulatory barriers, patient trust. Waivers expiring. What do you think are the current biggest challenges in the telemedicine space and how is Eagle telemedicine working to overcome them? I think one of the bigger challenges, and I've been saying this for like a couple years and, and we know things in healthcare can move slow, but I think it's interoperability.

You have. So much technology coming at you within the umbrella of virtual care, telemedicine being able or well, being able to ensure that all of that technology plays well and providing an optimal experience, an appropriate level of connectivity into existing systems.

And being leveraged in a way that is facilitating care without creating one more sort of friction point for patients and physicians and nurses.  Simple example is we all know about the electronic health record. We, and everyone needs to document within that health record.

Well if. You're in a telemedicine visit, you need to also have appropriate audio, video technology, which in most cases is not integrated into the electronic health record. So it's a separate disparate technology. That has to be utilized.  And so it creates a gap in the ability to report certain and important metrics as it relates to the episode of care.

And so though, does that mean well, that then means somebody needs to manually document and, and this, that, and the other, and so it just, it creates an additional burden and because of this lack of interoperability. We also see challenges with efficiencies in and how things, well, things work together. Every time you have to plug something into something else, there's an opportunity for something to not work. So we're keeping it help desks pretty busy in some instances in that. And, and so I do think, you know, there's opportunity to partner with hospitals on how to optimize their existing technology approaches.

There's a lot to, to say for advocating for standardized policies. In regards to that, one of the approaches we take at Eagle and it puts a heavy burden on our physicians  and I can't thank 'em enough every day, but we are technology agnostic. Our physicians take on the burden of navigating in and out of these various technologies.

Could we take the approach of this is our platform and it's gonna have to be integrated into. your system in order for us to be able to provide care, we could, but I think we would find that an inability to effectively meet many of the rural hospitals where they're at.

They don't have very robust IT networks and systems in, in a staff that can, work on the HL sevens or fire interfaces to make all these things work. And so we take on that burden and we'll continue to do so for as long as I'm here. And so we, we look to invest in technology on our end to try to create a more frictionless experience for our physicians as they navigate these different varying technologies.

To help  drive that care. So, and then the, I think  the other thing is, is believe it or not, when we talked about Covid earlier I think there's still an opportunity to educate communities to build trust in virtual care.   There are still communities that are reticent or very hesitant want to go down that path.

Believe it or not. And we do a lot to try to help, create some educational materials, have conversations I've flown out and have met with patient family advocacy councils, answering questions and really helping to try to enlighten them is to the efficacy of telemedicine and how it plugs into their existing infrastructure and what they get from their facility on the ground.

That's. So last question, looking ahead to the future, how do you see the future of telemedicine evolving and where do you see Eagle telemedicine in the next five to 10 years? And how do you plan to expand your impact and continue supporting rural healthcare communities? Great question.  You know, at 20 specialties now, I'm not sure how many more we can potentially continue to expand in, although there are some, but I, I think we have opportunities to go deeper within specialties and expand into including.

A diversity within our, workforce now. So we're predominantly an  an MDDO organization, but I think there's a very fit for purpose opportunity to start to introduce nurse practitioners and PAs to compliment and support the great work that our physicians currently do. And, and so I see.

By doing that we will be able to go deeper into some specialties like behavioral health or grow into post discharge care and follow up on, in our hospital medicine program as an example. I think that's a big gap. Patients leave. And there's a, there's nobody, I shouldn't say nobody there, but there is a.

Less than desired. Follow up with patients to ensure that they are adhering to post-discharge instructions, getting that follow up to really kind of avoid that next acute episode of care. And I think by expanding our workforce and diversifying it  we can address that. We will continue to, expand into pediatrics.

We've got a heavy concentration within the adult side of things and the little people need love too. And then, so I'm excited that we've grown into the pediatric space within a, a handful of specialties, but I look for us to continue to grow that. And then I think one of the bigger things for us will be a very smart.

Approach to the adoption and implementation of ai. There's a lot out there right now and it's, it's moving fast and something you think, you know, three months from now changes. And so we're trying to get our arms wrapped around a lot of that, but we've got a couple of really neat strategies that'll be implemented before the end of this year.

That will help create a great deal of efficiencies for our physicians and, and eliminate the administrative burden. So we're looking to start there. With our, with AI and with our physicians, I. As opposed to looking at AI from a, like a diagnostic augmenting tool. And so we think there's a greater opportunity to just improve the overall experience, reduce that friction, reduce that time so that Physicians have a more optimal experience in caring for patients. But I think there are a co a couple more specialties we could potentially grow into. And then I'll end by saying, I we've seen our outpatient clinic grow by 40% within the last year. I'd like to see that double or triple over the next five years.

Wow. Exciting. Big things to come. Absolutely. Yes. So if people wanna find out more about Eagle telemedicine, how can they do that? Uh, stop by our website.  There's a lot of content there, case studies and other information is, you know, we try to help educate as much as we can, but there's an easy way to click to request additional info or just have a conversation.

I love. To talk. Uh, I love to share what we're doing and have conversations with people and in a way offer some consultative support whether we're your solution partner or not.   I believe in, in just giving back and giving people an opportunity to be educated more so that they make sound decisions for their patients and their communities.

Absolutely. Jason Povio Thank you so very much for joining us. We will link the website to Eagle Telemedicine on the podcast if anyone wants to find out more information. But I enjoyed this conversation tremendously, so thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Thank you for tuning in to Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights with Quality Insights Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm. We hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you found value in what you heard, please consider subscribing to our podcast on your favorite platform.

If you have any topics or guests you'd like to see on future episodes, you can reach out to us on our website. We would love to hear from you.

So, until next time, stay curious, stay compassionate, and keep taking healthcare by storm.