Websites are essential tools for promoting products and services. This fact stands true for healthcare providers and private practices. Increasing organic traffic for a website exposes your services to more people. As a result, the practice’s revenue increases. One of the main ways to increase organic traffic for a website is search engine optimization (SEO). In this blog, we will go over the basics of SEO so you can get ahead of the competition.

Understanding Keywords

The first basic of SEO is finding the keywords for your niche. Keywords are the words people put into the search bar when they look for something. For example, someone might search, “family practice physician in Philadelphia.” When building a website, you should use primary and a few secondary keywords to cover a topic. MCS Services can help with SEO. Our services have increased clients’ website traffic by up to 26% and increased keywords by 67%.

Acquire Backlinks

Backlinks are crucial for SEO and organic traffic. Backlinks are links to your website from other websites. Getting a backlink requires more effort, but the reward is worth it. For example, the rank one result in Google has 3.8 times more backlinks than ranks two through ten. Considering that 95% of all pages have zero backlinks, having even one backlink puts you far ahead of the competition. In other words, reach out to others in the space and get those backlinks.

Start a Blog and Create Useful Content

Blogging is a helpful tool for marketing your services. It engages your audience and promotes your business. Specifically, companies who blog have 55% more traffic than those who don’t. Furthermore, creating content for your audience is a crucial marketing strategy. An example of content for a private practice could be a video explaining your services. MCS Services helps clients with blogging and social media. With our help, clients see a 51% boost in impressions.

In conclusion, understanding the basics of SEO is crucial for success. The first tip is to understand which keywords to use and the amount to use. The second tip is to reach out to other providers to get backlinks and increase your rank. The third tip is to create content to engage your audience and increase traffic.

Are you searching for an office with more utility? Look no further than MedCoShare, located in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Texas. Are you looking for marketing assistance and website solutions? Schedule with us at MCS Services today.

Sources:

https://www.onthemap.com/blog/seo-statistics/#:~:text=95%25%20of%20all%20the%20pages,page%20Google%20result%20was%2011.2.
https://www.nectafy.com/blog/organic-traffic-calculator#:~:text=But%20we%20can%20give%20some,for%20six%20to%2012%20months.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-8-2024-healthcare-seo-trends-gerrid-smith-6f3qf/
https://www.siteimprove.com/glossary/healthcare-seo/
https://healthcaresuccess.com/blog/healthcare-marketing/healthcare-seo-guide.html

Marketing is becoming increasingly vital for private practice physicians. In particular, healthcare marketing is crucial for a private practice to succeed. An important aspect of marketing is creating content. Thus, physicians need to create content for their practices to thrive. In this blog, we will discuss the different types of content physicians can create to market their practice. Furthermore, we will explore which content performs the best.

Benefits of Creating Content

There are many benefits to creating content. Content promotes your business and brings patients to your doors. One notable benefit of content creation and marketing is boosting revenue. According to McKinsey, healthcare providers focusing on improving consumer experience through marketing saw revenue boosts up to 20% over five years. Are you trying to improve your marketing? MCS Services is here to help market your practice and create content.

The Most Successful Types of Content

There are many types of content. Some examples include blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, articles, and more. Ideally, a physician should create a wide array of content to capture an equally wide audience. However, some types of content perform better than others. According to a SemRush survey, the most successful types of content are videos (37%), case studies (30%), and short-form articles (29%). Most notably, videos perform the best out of all the content types.

The crucial part to understand is that visual content performs better on average than written content. According to Forbes, 91% of consumers prefer visual content over written content. Thus, educational visual content is likely the best content type to create. However, that doesn’t mean one should only make visual content. Content like success stories and articles provide great results despite being written content. Need help deciding what to make? Schedule with us at MCS Services today.

In conclusion, content creation is vital for the success of a private practice. Additionally, physicians must understand which types of content to create. This understanding helps physicians get the most value out of their time. While the best kind of content to create is visual, written content is just as important. Thus, a physician should have a mix of both types of content to thrive.

Are you looking for a medical office space that works for you? Contact us at MedCoShare in areas including King of Prussia, Marlton, and Pearland. Need marketing assistance? Get in touch with us at MCS Services.

Sources:

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our-insights/marketing-in-healthcare-improving-the-consumer-experience
https://www.semrush.com/blog/healthcare-content-marketing/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-choose-right-healthcare-content-types-your-message-gandolf-kq3pc/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/04/02/visual-content-the-future-of-storytelling/?sh=1a6b1bd13a46
https://tech.co/digital-marketing/visual-content-marketing-statistics

Online marketing is a challenging task for private practice physicians. Many healthcare providers begin the task with a website to promote their practice. However, they might notice that their website isn’t getting many visitors. A leading method of improving organic traffic for a website is called search engine optimization (SEO). In this blog, we will discuss the importance of SEO and also some SEO tips to help raise your Google rank.

The Importance of Optimization

Good SEO raises the rank of your website on Google. A higher rank on Google raises the chances that patients will click on your website and discover your services. An analysis from Backlinko reveals that the top result on Google gets around 27.6% of all clicks. Considering that around 100 million daily Google Searches are health-related, raising your Google rank is a vital task. The importance of this task is why MedCoShare has MCS Services, a team built to help improve your SEO.

SEO Tips to Raise Your Google Rank

Healthcare marketing is different from other industries because of the various areas in healthcare. For example, SEO for a medical equipment website will differ compared to a private practice website. You need to tailor your SEO for your services because of these differences in the industry. There are some strategies to optimize a website for a healthcare provider.

1. Creating content

Content drives search traffic. Thus, creating content is an important component of SEO. One crucial part of creating content is centralizing it around keywords. Keywords are simply the words that someone enters in the search bar. For example, “Therapy near me.” Content can be anything from a blog to videos, but the content needs to surround the keywords specific to your practice.

2. Interlinking web pages

Are your deeper pages not getting enough traffic? Then create an internal link. An internal link is a link that leads from one page of your website to another. An example of this is a link to MCS Services, a branch of MedCoShare focused on helping private practice physicians with marketing.

3. Local SEO

Local SEO is optimizing your SEO to rank higher for searches in a particular area. Medical practitioners can benefit from ranking for location-based keywords. This fact is especially true for physicians with a physical location. Thus, people searching for services in your area have a greater chance of finding your practice.

In conclusion, SEO is a crucial aspect of online marketing for private practice physicians. You can raise your Google rank by creating content, interlinking web pages, and improving local SEO. Do you need help marketing your private practice? Book a consultation with us at MCS Services.

Sources:

https://backlinko.com/seo-stats
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/google-receives-more-than-1-billion-health-questions-every-day.html
https://www.semrush.com/blog/healthcare-seo/
https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-statistics/
https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-tips/

Online marketing is more important now than ever. Over 85% of searches for products and services happen online. The dense population of the Internet is too valuable to overlook. Reaching this population unlocks many opportunities for a business, especially medical practices. One leading method to reach this audience is blogging. Today, we will discuss the importance of blogging and the benefits it brings to your medical practice.

Why is Blogging Important?

A blog is a regularly updated website that provides insight into particular topics. For example, MedCoShare’s blog gives content for people interested in medical coworking and marketing. Creating content is crucial because it drives search traffic. Many people won’t search for your practice specifically. Searches will most likely relate to the services you provide. Blogging allows you to make content about the services you provide.

Many people consume blog content. According to DemandMetric, 80% of people interact with social media sites and blogs. Blogging also gives your practice an advantage over practices that don’t blog. DemandMetric also states that companies with blogs produce 67% more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog. Are you looking for help creating blog content? MCS Services is here to help. You can learn more at MCS Services.

Further Benefits of Blogging

But how does blogging benefit a medical practice specifically? Blogging benefits a medical practice for many reasons. However, there are a few benefits in particular that private practice doctors should know.

Increased Exposure
New Patients
Networking

Blogging increases the visibility of your practice. According to the CDC, almost 25% of U.S. adults use the Internet to communicate with their doctor. Blogging raises the chances that this group of people finds your practice. It also increases your reach, allowing new patients to find your practice. One pediatrician discovered that their blog and social media attracted one new patient or family per week. Blogging can also grow your network, increasing contacts and referrals.

In conclusion, blogging is a crucial aspect of online marketing. It provides many benefits for a medical practice including improved visibility, new patients, and networking opportunities. MedCoShare doesn’t only help you find affordable office spaces but can also help you with marketing. Are you interested in building SEO-optimized blog posts for your medical practice? Schedule with us at MCS Services.

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicoleleinbachreyhle/2015/06/16/the-single-most-important-reason-why-online-marketing-is-more-important-than-ever/
https://www.demandmetric.com/content/content-marketing-infographic
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db482.htm#:~:text=Interview%20Survey%2C%202022.-,Summary,look%20up%20medical%20test%20results.
https://www.kevinmd.com/2011/08/social-media-changed-medical-practice.html
https://rendia.com/resources/insights/should-doctors-blog-4-reasons-say-yes/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/business-blogging-in-2015

Marketing is an increasingly critical aspect of a medical practice. Marketing alone has the potential to determine the success of a medical practice. Thus, healthcare providers must adapt to marketing trends. Keeping up with these marketing trends is important because the digital marketing landscape is ever changing. Explore the latest marketing trends that give you an edge over the competition in this blog.

Local SEO

A rising marketing trend in recent years is local SEO. Local SEO is SEO that targets searches based on the location of the person searching. For example, someone might search “family practice near me.” Searches like this are common these days. For reference, Semrush states that “open now near me searches” rose by 400% from 2019 to 2021. Additionally, Intrepy states that about 8 of 10 patients who visit a medical practice found the practice through Google search.

Thus, local SEO is a crucial trend to adapt to, and improving local SEO is easy with MCS Services. Learn more about MCS Services here.

Video Marketing is the Best Form of Content

Educational videos are very effective at engaging your audience. Video content makes your brand more reputable and promotes your practice. Furthermore, video marketing is significantly more effective than other forms of content. Sources say that people engage with video content ten times more than written content. In other words, people are more likely to engage with short-form video content than written content. Thus, adapting to this marketing trend is crucial to stay on top of the competition.

The Value of Self-Scheduling

Patients highly value self-appointment options. Self-appointment is a convenient option that gives patients flexibility in their scheduling. As a result, many people look for self-scheduling in medical practices. DemandHub states that 80% of patients are more likely to select providers with online scheduling options. Furthermore, a survey from PhysiciansPractice reveals that 95% of respondents booked appointments online or would if they were available.

If you are trying to update your website to adapt to this trend, MCS Services is what you need. The team provides graphic design solutions and website updates to keep your practice competitive.

In conclusion, digital marketing trends are constantly evolving. Thus, staying up to date with these trends is crucial for success. These trends include local SEO, video marketing, and self-scheduling options. Are you looking for marketing solutions for a private practice? Please schedule a consultation with us today at MCS Services.

Sources:

https://www.semrush.com/local/blog/local-seo-statistics/
https://intrepy.com/local-seo-for-healthcare/
https://www.braincandy.in/video-marketing-vs-content-marketing/
https://www.demandhub.co/articles/patient-self-scheduling/#:~:text=Patient%20self%2Dscheduling%20is%20a,provides%20patients%20with%20the%20flexibility.
https://www.physicianspractice.com/view/online-appointment-scheduling-a-missed-chance-to-boost-patient-satisfaction
https://intrepy.com/9-biggest-trends-in-healthcare-marketing-in-2023/

One of the most important aspects of a private medical practice is marketing. Marketing is what drives business for a private practice. Thus, investing in marketing is crucial to growing a private practice. An easy and accessible way to market a private practice is through social media. Social media is an area of near-limitless potential for many private practices. In this blog, we will discuss the influence of social media on marketing and how it can grow a private practice.

The Rise of Social Media

Social media is a valuable industry for low-cost and effective marketing. Reports show that 70% of small businesses use social media as a part of their marketing efforts. Furthermore, 25% of internet users use social media to find new products. Thus, social media apps have significant marketing potential for small businesses and private practices. But how can you use social media to grow your private practice?

Using Social Media for Growth

One of the most effective methods of using social media for growth is content creation. In the case of private medical practices, creating educational content can improve reputation and promote the practice. Specifically, visual content like photos and videos are very effective for educating people. According to Walden University, photos and videos are 81% more effective than news and articles when educating people about a service or product.

Additionally, it is crucial to post content multiple times a week. Many social media apps favor accounts that post more often than less often. On top of that fact, content variety is vital to keep patients engaged. But the big question is, how much can social media affect patient engagement in a private practice? A LinkedIn post reveals that engaging social media content can lead to a 20% increase in patient appointments. With MCS Services, creating social media content is a simple task. Learn more here.

In conclusion, social media plays a crucial role in online marketing for private practices. Many people use social media to research medical information and even healthcare providers. The main way to leverage social media for practice growth is content creation. Content creation should be frequent, variable, and visually stimulating. The result is an increase in patient engagement and appointments. Having trouble running a social media account or creating content? Schedule a consultation with us at MCS Services today.

Sources:

https://fitsmallbusiness.com/social-media-marketing-statistics/
https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12019&context=dissertations
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nearly-8-out-10-patients-research-doctors-social-media-target8sales-vz5af/
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/social-media-statistics/#source
https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/private-practices/draw-patients-your-practice-right-digital-footprint

In This Episode:

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In this episode, we welcome Dr. Michaela Mocanu, a nephrologist with an impressive background. Dr. Mocanu, a graduate of Carol Davila University of Medicine & Pharmacy in Romania, completed her Internal Medicine residency at Georgetown University Hospital and her Nephrology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Today, she shares her expertise on nephrology, kidney disease prevention, and the innovative approach of her direct care practice.

Audio Transcript:

Ronak 0:00

On today’s episode we have Dr. Michaela Mocanu. Dr. Mocanu attended Carol Davila University of Medicine & Pharmacy in Romania, where she received her medical degree. She completed her Internal Medicine residency at Georgetown University Hospital and her Nephrology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Mocanu, welcome to the show.

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 0:19

Thank you so much for having me here. I’m super excited to be here and talk to you.

Ronak 0:23

Awesome. Yeah, so just jumping right in, explain what Nephrology is and what you do, and what inspired you to choose a specialty.

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 0:32

So, nephrology is the branch of medicine that focuses on taking care of the kidneys. And the kidneys are vital organs. As you know, they help us control our bodily fluids, they help us control our blood pressure, detoxify our bodies, control our electrolytes, and we really could not live without them. So as a nephrologist, what I do is I help people live longer, healthier lives by improving their kidney function, or slowing down the progression of their kidney disease, or controlling their blood pressure, which lowers their risk of stroke or heart disease in itself. Let alone the risk of progression of kidney disease and also something that people don’t know is I can also help prevent kidney stones. So as a nephrologist I am surprised that most of my patients don’t know that a nephrologist can help prevent kidney stones, as well as the urologist will help manage the complications of kidney stones that take out the kidney stone. And as a nephrologist, I carefully look at the urine and the risk factor somebody has for forming kidney stones and I can help with lifestyle interventions and new medications for.

Ronak 1:51

So like, what are some common ways people get kidney stones? And do they come to you when they’re in pain? Or just tell us a little bit more about that.

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 2:03

Thank you for asking that. Most patients who come to me for kidney stones have passed several kidney stones throughout their lifetime, or they have been referred by the urologist or by a friend. So what we do in situations like that, we take a very thorough medical history to kind of get a sense of what their risk factors for forming kidney stones might be. And then we look at objective data such as we collect 24 hours to 48 hours, the first set of urine that we collect the best is to collect 48 hour urine. So it improves with accuracy. And we look at various substances in their urine that put them at higher risk for forming kidney stones. And that’s how we can tailor treatment individually to every patient because every patient is different based on the risk factors or their family history, and their lifestyle habits in themselves.

Ronak 3:13

Yeah. So Dr. Mocanu, tell us a few ways that people can prevent kidney stones.

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 3:18

Yeah, so I think that general principles that would apply to everyone would be one is to stay very well hydrated when we have a history of kidney stones and when someone has passed several kidney stones in their lives. Number two, limit salt intake is very important. And surprisingly, don’t avoid calcium in your diet. Unlike the general thought that calcium leads to kidney stones in that when taken in the diet, it actually is quite the opposite. Normal intake of calcium is advice for patients with kidney stones, and just eat your fruits and veggies to keep a healthy microbiome. In general, this would be like the minimum things that anyone can do even without having tailored lifestyle interventions or tailored treatment for kidney stones and just doing that can prevent kidney stones in general.

Ronak 4:23

Does exercise have any role in this? Or is it 100% diet?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 4:27

Well, exercise may have a role in this if we get very dehydrated and don’t drink enough.

Ronak 4:31

Okay. Got it. And how does diabetes and high blood pressure impact kidney function?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 4:37

Diabetes has, and thanks for that question because the majority of my patients suffer from both diabetes and high blood pressure. Both are big offenders of the blood vessels. So diabetes affects primarily the small vessels in the kidney. And you may recall from school that the kidney has his tiny filters called glomeruli. And they’re formed by very, very tiny blood vessels. So diabetes affects those tiny filters that help us absorb reabsorbed protein back in our body. So first it filters the protein out, and then it reabsorbs it in our body. And with time, people with diabetes tend to lose protein in their urine. And this protein that is lost in the urine can be very toxic to the kidney, leading to inflammation and scarring. And that’s how overtime it leads to kidney disease. Now, high blood pressure as opposed to diabetes tends to affect larger vessels. We don’t typically see so much protein in patients affected by high blood pressure alone. But both of them are lead causes of chronic kidney disease in this country.

Ronak 5:58

Got it, got it. So you started your private practice in our King of Prussia location just a few months ago, what’s your experience been like so far?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 6:10

So far, I love it. So let me tell you a little bit more about my practice first and foremost. So you understand because I have a different setting in my practice than most nephrologists in this area and in the country altogether. I run a direct care, hybrid model of practice. What that means is that I accept patients that are covered by Medicare Part B. And all the rest of the patients in the practice follow that direct care concept, which is nothing but concierge without paying that membership monthly fee. So what that means is that I have the advantage of having more time to dedicate to my patients, I spend more time with my patients, my patients have direct access to me via a HIPAA compliant line. So if they have burning questions, let’s say they can just reach out to me directly without any intermediary to answer their question. And it gives me there are the biggest advantage to me, as a physician of running this practice is that it makes me feel like I’m really practicing medicine the way I imagined that medicine should be practiced, I dedicate enough time to every one of my patients, I get to learn more about my patients, I have a fewer patient population. So I get to learn all about them. And I get to know them very well. And the biggest advantage to the patient is that their physician actually dedicates them more time. I can get to learn about all their conditions. And I feel that we have a better patient to physician relationship, and we can establish that trust relationship that sometimes is impossible to achieve when you’re in the traditional setting where you have to see, let’s say, four to five patients an hour. So overall, I’m very happy with how this new model I wouldn’t say new, it’s not a new model. But how this model works. For me and my patients right now. It’s very rewarding as a physician.

Ronak 8:42

So you said you don’t do a monthly model. So are you just charging hourly?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 8:45

For patients, yes. So for that question, yes, I’m charging right. I have a special fee for the initial visit and a special fee for a follow up visit. But for my patients with Medicare, I don’t charge anything extra. I just go by the Medicare fee.

Ronak 9:04

Okay, okay. Make sense. Yeah, I know this is a novel thing where just concierge care in different specialties is popping up more and more. But I can’t imagine it being like, easy to educate and to get new patients. So what’s, how do you market your practice? What are you doing to get your name out there?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 9:26

First and foremost, I have websites. And I have a blog on my website. I would recommend that people check out my blog. It is focused on kidney disease, hypertension and weight loss.

Ronak 9:45

What’s the website?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 9:46

www.weightkidneycare.com. And on my website, I also have a special page dedicated to helpful education materials that are free for patients to use. And I gathered those from different conferences at which I participated. And I use them frequently to educate my patients. For instance, I had a patient just the other day, their question was, okay, so how much protein is good for me? And to give them a very adequate answer, of course, this is a special situation with chronic kidney disease, when you follow the key legal 2024 guidelines for that, then I gave them the answer for that. But then the patient had a visitor with him. So the daughter had a question, how much protein should I have? And you know, it’s rude not to answer. So I actually had to look up information for that. I found that on the Harvard nutrition website, and there’s one of the listed education materials on my website, the health, my healthy plate, and the Harvard nutrition source.

Ronak 11:06

So that must take up a lot of time to write, to research, to write, and then to post everything.

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 11:14

I enjoy it. I feel like it gives me the opportunity to learn more. And it also gives me the opportunity to kind of prepare for my patients to kind of find a way of better explaining to them what their condition is and how I can help them best. So it’s a win-win for everybody.

Ronak 11:38

And I know you’re a physician affiliated with mainline health, how does that help with your marketing?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 11:45

It helps a lot because I am on them. I mean, easily to be found on the Main Line Health website as one of the Nephrology and obesity medicine providers there, as well as it allows me to connect with the primary care physicians within Main Line health.

Ronak 12:08

Very nice. And, going back and talking about the conferences, I know you’re always on the top of new research. Are there any advancements in nephrology that you’re most excited about?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 12:20

Oh, yes. So thank you for asking that question. Because I couldn’t be more excited at probably every single nephrologist in this country. Literally the past five years, in nephrology have meant so much there are so many advances nephrology has changed all together. It’s only like two weeks, about two weeks and a half ago, a new study was published in one of the most prominent medical journals in the world, the New England Journal of Medicine, and it was about how the newer weight loss medications such as ozempic, though people know it as ozempic magnetite, but how it can actually help with improvement in kidney, diabetic disease, it can prevent further decline, kidney function and progression to dialysis. And it can help patients live longer altogether they can help your cardiovascular risk when on ozempic. One of the biggest scares for nephrologists is having protein in the urine. As I was mentioning previously, it can be toxic, it’s like drain on the renal tubules. It can be corrosive and toxic and causes a lot of inflammation to the kidney. So by just a lower dose of the magnetite, which people commonly know as ozempic, according to this new research study, which was extremely well done, it can lower protein in urine by as much as 40%. That was amazing information. Now, there are other medications also that came up within the past five years. And there are medications that we found out that not only do they help with diabetes, but they also improve cardiovascular risk in patients with chronic kidney disease or in patients with heart failure. People may know them as flozins dapagliflozin empagliflozin. And I don’t want to get too technical here. But overall, in nephrology, the past five years, meant a lot. Not only do we have newer medications for using chronic kidney disease, but we have newer medications for using glomerular diseases, one of the most common of which is IGA nephropathy, there are two new medications that we can employ there in the guidelines that have changed altogether too. So the future looks bright in nephrology, and I hope that more people want to go into nephrology, because there is hope that we can do more for our patients that we couldn’t do 10 years ago when I graduated.

Ronak 15:12

So drugs like ozempic and manjaro are taking up a lot of headlines, I would say. So now the mainstream knows about these drugs? What are some of the side effects, because you also, for your practice, help with weight loss for patients. So what role do these drugs play in that?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 15:37

So let me explain to you how I put it to my patients, so they better understand. You see, we call them drugs, but in reality, they’re nothing but analogues of hormones our body naturally produces. And it is possible that with changes in environment, exposure to fast food, with age, maybe our bodies are less able to produce these hormones that have an essential role in maintaining happy and healthy brain gut access and keeping our weight under control. So some people may need a little bit of these hormones to help them achieve weight loss, and they’re very effective for achieving weight loss. But I don’t really like to think of them in terms of drugs simply because they are literally analogues of hormones our body make, and yes, they are drugs, but so is synthroid or levothyroxine, which we use for hypothyroid. So is insulin that we use for diabetes. So they’re in the same class in the sense that they work in a similar way of restoring hormonal balance in our bodies that help us achieve a healthier weight. So of course, it’s every medication that we use, they can have side effects, but I also believe that the side effects are coming from the fact that your body needs time to adjust to having that hormone back within the body. Because what research shows is that the side effects are typically dose dependent. And it also happens that when we take, say, a certain dose of this medication, and we maintain the patient at the same dose, with time, the side effects go away. So their body gets used to the medication and then is when they don’t feel the side effects. Like the most common side effects of this class of medications are GI side effects, because that’s where they primarily they work in the brain, but they control how fast our gut moves, what they do is they they make you feel less hungry, they help you have fewer cravings, but they also slow down the motility of your gut, so that you may feel fuller, making a full after eating, let’s say half the amount of your plate the plate in front of you, instead of eating the whole plate. So you feel like okay, I don’t need to eat any more, I’m already full, I don’t need more and you also work on the metabolism they improve our insulin resistance in our body. So they really tackle different mechanisms to help people achieve weight loss. And as I was saying the main side effects or GI related side effects like you may feel a bit nauseous if you eat too much. And you know it takes time for the brain to realize how much you ate. There’s a lag of about 20 minutes so we eat, eat, eat and then we don’t realize oh 20 minutes later it’s like oh I was full maybe a while ago and I kept eating. So one of the main side effects is nausea. Some people have, surprisingly, diarrhea, people may experience constipation. Some people may experience nausea. Some people may experience small reflux as the gut motility slows down. So the most dangerous side effects, I shouldn’t say side effect, but rather association with this medication would be pancreatitis, and in rodents, they they found that very large doses of this medications have been linked with a higher number of a certain type of thyroid cancer, but the “no no” of taking this medication to be acute pancreatitis when, especially when we think it’s related to the drug. A certain type of thyroid cancer medullary thyroid carcinoma not every type of thyroid cancer. And of course, we don’t give it to pregnant women because we haven’t started pregnant women. So we don’t want to risk complications. And there is it’s hard to enroll pregnant women in the studies, nobody would want to try, you know, they are doing studies, where women, you’ve may have heard of the ozempic babies, right? So women can get pregnant easier after being on this medication, because when losing weight, the hormonal balance in the body reestablishes, and then they get pregnant easier. So far, we do not know of major side effects of these medications on children, babies, but it’s a subject I can talk more about, because we really don’t have enough data. Yeah, we’re waiting for data.

Ronak 20:49

Yeah, no, but this was a good synopsis. And I know a lot of people are interested in learning more about ozempic, manjaro, and as it relates to weight loss.

So with your practice-

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 21:04

If I may add more. So these medications are not just weight loss medications, they literally improve a lot of health problems. Medicare has recently approved semaglutide, also known as ozempic, for cardiovascular risk protection, because people have fewer strokes or heart attacks. And you know, we’ve learned that chronic kidney disease protection, fatty liver disease protection.

Ronak 21:34

You mentioned diabetes, as well, right?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 21:36

Yes, especially diabetes, they were actually designed for diabetes. And then we’ve seen that patients with diabetes with these medications had so many benefits, such as that started with weight loss, but then we’ve learned they have fewer strokes, fewer heart attacks, improved sleep apnea, improved GERD, and a lot of things. So really, I like to think of them more than just medications. I like to think of them, like replacing a missing link in your body such as giving back your body, a teeny bit of the hormone that your body is missing, in order to reestablish that balance that was lost.

Ronak 22:18

Makes sense. And a really good synopsis and I apologize if my questions are a little basic here. You’re the expert here. So where do you see the field of nephrology heading in the next decade?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 22:35

Oh, as I said, I’m super excited because there are a lot of advances in nephrology. Nephrology is a very complex field. And there are many factors that can affect kidney function or from diabetes, hypertension, but there are autoimmune diseases that affect kidney function. And there is polycystic kidney disease. There are kidney stones, there are lots of factors. And every single one of these field’s transplantation, in nephrology, every single one of these fields has seen significant advancements. You may have heard, just because I just mentioned transplantation, you may have heard of xenotransplantation being on the pages of the magazines recently, right. So there have been advances that they’re working on an artificial kidney they’re working on or optimizing these machines that provide dialysis at home. And, of course, in terms of medication. Our hope, as nephrologists, is to have sufficient medications, to postpone progression of chronic kidney disease or to improve our patients chances of healing from a specific disease to keep the patient in remediation. And here there have been tremendous advances and there are new medications. I can think of at least five of them right this moment. And we hope that with more research and better research being conducted right now, we will learn more about how to best help our patients. And of course there is AI and I have no idea how AI will change the nephrology world and will be contributing to changing nephrology as well as entire medicine. We would be better at diagnosing diseases with AI, hopefully.

Ronak 24:52

Right, changing the world. Can you share a memorable patient’s story that significantly impacted you?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 25:00

Sure. I’ll share a story of one of my first patients in this practice, many memorable patient stories, whether being here or at the hospital, but this was one of my first patients seen at this practice, a very, very young man in his 30s, who came to me for uncontrolled elevated potassium levels. And as a nephrologist, one of the scariest electrolytes besides sodium is potassium, because potassium can kill somebody when it’s very high. Literally, it causes this abnormal heart rhythm, and somebody can die from it. So there was a big concern, his primary care had to be concerned because this man was young, he was on medication to lower his potassium level. And every single time he would take his levels by having a normal kidney function, his potassium was high, he had to go to the hospital to the emergency department, he was sent a couple of times to the emergency department for high potassium, he had seen like, at least two nephrologists, before coming to see me and at least two endocrinologists. And after several visits to the ER, he was very worried that, you know, young men can die from high potassium. So I took a very thorough history, and I couldn’t really find any cause of high potassium in his particular case. And I looked at all his labs, repeated the labs, and then I looked at his physical exam, and this is a body builder. So what happens is that potassium is an electrolyte that tends to stay inside the cells. And bodybuilders have a lot of muscle mass. So what he was doing, he was very nice as a very nice bodybuilder, he would pump his fist repeatedly when going to the lab to help the phlebotomist, the lab tech, draw blood and find a blood vessel for him. And by just doing that he would cause his potassium shifts from inside the cells outside the cell, which is what we were measuring in the blood. So I simply had to advise, hey, when you go there, just don’t do that. Be relaxed. Don’t pump your fists, don’t contract your muscles. Even before you go there, no need to fast and then his potassium, you know what they have? And it was absolutely normal. So he was taking medication. Fortunately, he was not very adherent to taking that medication. He was keeping it. He was not taking it as prescribed. Because he could have been dangerous to him if taken as prescribed because he actually had a normal potassium level. He hasn’t had high potassium in a year. They haven’t bothered him yet at all for it. He was very happy. At least this stress went away. And let me share another happy story because that belongs to my weight loss patient group. So I have this patient who had terrible back pain and she was scheduled for surgery, neurosurgery for her back. And she was scheduled for surgery a month ago, and she called me to tell me. Hey, Dr. Mocanu, I lost so much weight, I went to see my neurosurgeon. They said that I don’t need surgery anymore. I was very happy. I’m very happy about that.

Ronak 28:19

That’s amazing and like two success stories! So I know you mentioned your website before. So can you just repeat it so patients can find you?

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 28:27

Yes, they can look me up on my name, or they can find me on the Main Line Health page, provider page. Dr. Michaela Mocanu and they can also look for my website at www.weightkidneycare.com. I know it’s kind of a long website.

Ronak 28:50

But it’s simple. www.weightkidneycare.com. Perfect, thanks for joining!

Dr. Michaela Mocanu 28:54

Thank you so much for having me here. Very nice talking to you!

Ronak 28:57

Awesome. Thanks.

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Blue Ocean Health DPC

In this podcast, Dr. Ryan Gannon, co-founder of Blue Ocean Health, a direct primary care (DPC) practice, discusses his background, the journey to founding Blue Ocean Health, and the benefits of the DPC model. Dr. Gannon emphasizes the advantages of DPC over traditional primary care, highlighting the direct patient-provider relationship that allows for more personalized, timely, and comprehensive care. He explains that DPC practices typically offer more extensive preventive care and patient engagement, contrasting this with the often fragmented care in traditional models. Dr. Gannon discusses their holistic approach to chronic disease management, nutrition, and exercise, illustrating how DPC can lead to better health outcomes without significantly higher costs.

Audio Transcript:

Ronak 0:00

Dr. Ryan Gannon and Dr. Matt Kavalek are the founders of Blue Ocean Health, a direct primary care practice based in MedCoShare’s King of Prussia location. Today we have Dr. Gannon with us. Thanks so much for joining today and tell us a little bit about your background.

Dr. Gannon 0:13

Thanks for having me here. Geez, where to start? I grew up in Connecticut. That’s where I’m from originally. And I became interested in medicine, I played soccer from a young age my dad forced me to when I was younger, hated it, grew to love it. And that’s because he’s from Ireland. And I think my interest in medicine really stemmed from trying to figure out where I could gain any competitive advantage from a young age. And ultimately, I did some research and work with genetics and college, I ended up going to St. Michael’s College in Brighton, Vermont, and really love the theory and the knowledge of the actual genetics and the science component of it. But absolutely hated the day to day pipetting and troubleshooting experiments. And ultimately, when I really considered my options and my interests, I thought medicine would be a really good mix of combining the science with working with people. And I like to think I’m a people person, and I thrive off of that type of energy and interaction, ultimately came to medicine. And I guess we can talk a little bit about Blue Ocean health and how direct primary care came to be. But that ended up coming a little later.

Ronak 1:32

Yeah. How’d you meet Dr. Kavalek?

Dr. Gannon 1:34

Yeah, so Dr. Kavalek, my current business partner, we were randomly roomed together in medical school. So we’d like to joke that that was the one thing our medical school did right. We went to New York Medical College, that was a great experience. And I’m just joking about that. But somehow way, shape or form, we both filled out some questionnaires. And they roomed us together based off of that. And found out pretty quickly, we both had really similar interests, mainly being nutrition, weightlifting, we both had a fairly strong background in that. And then we were roommates ever since then, and ended up doing med school together, and then ultimately ended up both attending Chestnut Hill family medicine for our residency program.

Ronak 2:22

Nice. Yeah. And this is an audio medium. So listeners can’t see you right now. But basically, you and Dr. Kavalek are like amateur bodybuilders, is what I would like to say.

Dr. Gannon 2:35

Yeah, the whole medicine thing is just a cover of we’re both we’re both trying to make it in bodybuilding.

Ronak 2:43

And you mentioned when we were talking a couple of weeks ago that, was it with Dr. Tia that you worked with before or there was somebody in longevity medicine that you had a stint with?

Dr. Gannon 2:55

No, that’d be great. I’d love to speak and work with Dr. T at some point. We had spent a summer working with Andy Galpin, Dr. Andy Galpin out of Cal State Fullerton. And he, that’s kind of an interesting story in of itself. That was at the end of our first year. And, both Dr. Kavalek and myself, quickly realized going through med school, it wasn’t exactly what we thought it would be. And I’m, you know, a lot of people know, and for those who don’t, in medical school, the amount that you get in terms of nutrition, training, the things that really interested us is absolutely minimal. If none, I think we had one class on nutrition. And that just really, that didn’t make sense to me, because, I always viewed that as the foundation of health or at least an absolute pillar of it. We end up finding Andy Galpin, I think mainly through searching online, he was really gracious to have us out there for a summer and expose us to a lot of the research he was doing with world class athletes, he’s one of the country’s leading researchers in terms of muscle biopsies, and since then he’s absolutely expanded and really just trying to put push high quality information out towards athletes, as well as individuals how to better improve their lives. But that really helped to expand on our views of what health encompasses as a whole and what would that look like if we continue down this path of medicine, which we’re sure is still a little bit unsure at the time, but he really helped to shape our views.

Ronak 4:36

Nice. That must have been an amazing experience. So just shifting back to what you’re doing now. You run a direct primary care practice. How’s that different than a traditional primary care model?

Dr. Gannon 4:50

Yeah. The few ways to explain it. I like to think that you get the best of a primary care experience without the headaches both from the patient provider perspective. And the other thing I typically tell patients is, if you think of primary care in terms of the spectrum, on one end, if you had concierge medicine, sort of like an on demand type of medical care that if anything’s going wrong, you can contact instantaneously, someone’s going to get back to you. versus the other end, purely within the system, you may be stuck waiting for several weeks for an appointment. If you call you might be waiting half an hour, 45 minutes, maybe an hour longer to get a return call you’re not, you’re rarely ever getting all of the doctor, direct primary care isn’t really a unique and good solution. I think it really balances the best of both those worlds. So it’s a direct relationship between the provider and the patient. As an example, with Dr. Kavalek, and I, we don’t have any other staff members that work with us. So patients directly have our number, if they have an issue, they text or call, we get them in quickly, within a day, certainly within a couple of days or the week, depending on their schedule, something concerning is going on. And the main benefit of direct primary care from the providers perspective, from our perspective, is that it truly gives us the time to sit down and get to know someone. So I don’t care, you could be the best doctor in the world. But if you’re part of a traditional practice, a sick visit may be anywhere from 5, 10, maybe 15 minutes is pretty gracious, you’re getting out there. But there’s only so much you can do. And my biggest fear would be, that’s where mistakes happen. And it’s just not quality care. So it’s a great model that really affords us the time to actually sit down, get to know our patients. And it’s just an entirely different experience, when it’s a comfortable environment, things aren’t rushed, and you really get to know someone which makes a world of a difference.

Ronak 6:59

Yeah, I mean, I would say one of the issues that I deal with is, if there’s a long wait time with my primary care, I end up just going to urgent care nearby. And the problem with that is you’re going to usually get a different doc or a PA every single time. So they don’t really know you, they don’t know your history. They are just basically trying to take care of the symptoms that you’re telling them.

Dr. Gannon 7:28

100%. And I have so many thoughts on that, I think where medicine is at, mainly primary care in the country right now is that everything is so fractionated. And there’s just too many hands in the pot. So for the majority of things that should really be handled by a PCP who knows the history of the patient, any particular medical conditions, what’s worked in the past for certain symptoms, if they’re new, if the recurrent and urgent cares, absolutely have value. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be here. But they arose because we lost that connection between the PCP and the patient. And I think, a big part of what we’re trying to do is restore that trust. I think there’s a pretty big distrust with medicine as a whole, but especially primary care. And ultimately, it’s just become so fractionated. That’s one of the major issues we’re trying to address.

Ronak 8:28

Yeah, no, absolutely. A critic would say that a concierge model is basically, doctors for rich people. And then I kind of looked into the pricing and found out that’s really not true. So what do you say to people that are more critical of doing something that’s more concierge care versus the traditional health care model?

Dr. Gannon 8:54

I think first and foremost, people always have autonomy. And I like that in a market, whether it’s medicine or anything else, there’s always options. So for those who choose to utilize their insurance for primary care, more power to them, I think that’s great. I think for the individuals who are looking for a bit more attentive care, someone who has the time to really get to know them is responsive in a very timely manner, and has from what I’ve seen, or there’s a saying that once you’ve seen one direct primary care practice, you’ve seen one direct primary care practice because it’s truly reflective of the individual, their personality, their particular interests as a person, their areas of medicine. But it really has been shown to improve health outcomes number one, and which is first and foremost, the most important thing but number two patients don’t have to break the bank. In my opinion be concerned from a financial perspective being how affordable the rates tend to be. As an example, most direct primary care practices tend to structure the pricing based on an age tier with the idea that medical complexity increases with age. And just as one example, for patients who are 20 to 44 years old, that’s $50 per month with us, and that covers all aspects of care, including the communication, whether that’s through texting calls, emails, video visits, as well as in person office visit visits. So there’s no additional co-pays, there’s no additional service fees, we could talk about, like ancillary services, at some point that is an additional fee, but that it’s also very affordable. So ultimately, depending on the person, it may not be a good fit from a payment, financial perspective. But we really cater a market towards I certainly wouldn’t say it’s the affluent, I would say it’s meant to be for the average person and the average family. And we, it’s really hard to even describe our patient demographics, we have individuals who are having a really, really tough time but choose to have their care with us, we have individuals who are really affluent, and choose to see either Dr. Kavalek or myself over a concierge practice. It’s a little bit all over the road. But ultimately, it’s sort of an experience that you kind of only get to understand and grasp and feel it once you’ve done it.

Ronak 11:48

So what’s your pricing after the age of 44? And the reason why I ask is I’m 44. Now I’m turning 45. Yep. So I want to lock in this price. Before my birthday.

Dr. Gannon 11:58

Yeah, so 20 to 44 is 50 per month, 45 to 63 is 75 per month and 64 and over 100 per month.

Ronak 12:07

Okay, so still not too big of a jump. I think that’s very affordable. So let’s talk about access to care. You mentioned that you and Dr. Kavalek are available by phone by texting. Is it 24/7 isn’t nine to five, like, what are your hours? Like? What’s the process like?

Dr. Gannon 12:28

In one sense, we’re truly on call all the time, which is why some Doc’s have a hard time. Maybe they’re interested, but they don’t necessarily want to switch to direct primary care. Because of that. I often get either texts, it’s mainly text, most of our patients really like texting. Sometimes I’ll get some late night texts. I’ll typically respond, I don’t consider it a bother anything. Our etiquette is that we’ll always get back to you within 24 hours. Having said that, we’re always back within a few hours. If it’s an absolute emergency, it’s always 911. If someone’s calling me late at night, I’m gonna pick up but God forbid, there’s something that they’re concerned about they’re like, hey, do I should I go to the emergency room for this particular issue? I’m concerned. And I think it’s just huge to have some guidance. You know, everything’s okay. Right now, I’ll see you tomorrow, or nothing to be concerned about from that perspective. If someone’s calling me it’s 10:30-11:00 pm at night because they need their medication refilled for next week. Maybe that’s a discussion and just in terms of the etiquette. And there’s always a little bit of education with that. But having said that, I’m more than happy to answer most texts, depending on how late it is from sleeping or whatnot.

Ronak 13:50

So do you guys have to alternate your vacation days? Because I can’t imagine both of you going away at the same time?

Dr. Gannon 13:55

Yeah, well, the beauty is with the two of us, we always have a doc covering the practice, right? So that’s what we’ve done in the past, having said that, as you continue to care for someone, and you really get to know them, when someone with one of my patients is texting or calling me, I have a very good understanding of what’s going on. So a lot of the times we’ll actually still, take texts or calls because it’s truly not a bother. I had a family vacation in Ireland, this last December, and in that circumstance, Dr. Kavalek did cover for me.

Ronak 14:38

That’s good that you have another partner where you guys can rotate. So what services are included in the DPC membership?

Dr. Gannon 14:47

So you can think of everything that you would get in a traditional primary care setting. As both family medicine trained physicians were going to offer. So that ranges, anything from caring for chronic disease management, most commonly being high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, high cholesterol, etc, as well as acute concerns, if someone had a, particular injury, if, a particular concerning labwork came back, and we need to work something out or do or do further testing, based on both our interests and personalities, we also work with individuals regarding their nutrition and exercise. Another big component is hormonal replacement therapy for us for both men and women. So that’s something that we both do. So pretty much everything that you get at a primary care setting, right, plus our additional interests.

Ronak 15:48

Yeah, and I actually have that family member that has joined you guys. So I know a little bit about the preventive care that you guys are doing. And I’ll say it’s pretty amazing. And like, once you reach I mean, I think it’s permanent in any age, but like, once you reach 40 and above, it’s more about prevention in my eyes. Optimize your life and your health, versus just taking care of illnesses, right? And, typically, right now, they recommend you do your annual, do you guys go above and beyond that? Or what do you recommend to your patients for preventive care?

Dr. Gannon 16:23

Oh, man, it always depends on the particular individual and their underlying conditions. So the way I think about it is I always meet someone where they’re at. This kind of touches on something that I think is also a bigger issue in medicine purely because of the lack of time. But for a lot of things, it’s not necessarily a knowledge issue. I almost think of my role is more as an advisor, as well as an accountability partner, rather than a doc. As an example, for a lot of my patients to help gain awareness into their overall eating patterns and habits, I’ll have them do a food log, where anytime they put something in their mouth, liquids, food, they’re writing that down for two weeks, and then they’re sending that to me, so we can fully review because a lot of times, it’s just an awareness thing that people, you know, we’re going through the motions, but we don’t necessarily know our habits and what we’re doing. Yeah. And I think that behavioral aspect is a huge underlying part of a lot of what ends up being chronic conditions. And that’s the basis of how I think about it. And then, of course, when someone does have high blood pressure, diabetes, or what have you, we’re going to address that. And that still speaks to the fact that again, it depends on the individual. I have a lot of patients who are turned away from various primary care practices, are there prior PCP because they wanted an alternative solution and didn’t necessarily want to go on medications right away. And, again, my view is that the autonomy always comes first in that individual decision. I’m more than happy to. There are great supplements for example, or lifestyle factors, especially for diabetes and high blood pressure.

Ronak 18:23

Yeah, I mean, I think accountability is a big thing. And, the Hawthorne effect where you’d behave better if you know you’re being observed, or you think you’re being observed, I can, I think that’s something that I need, right? Because when there’s no accountability, you just feel like doing whatever, whenever, especially for me, like, if it’s a long, stressful day where I’ve been on the road, sure, a couple hours and fighting that traffic on 95. You know, the last thing I want to do is go home and work out and eat a salad. Right? So, you talked about chronic disease management. So can you tell me a little bit more about how you deal with heavily diabetic patients or high risk patients with heart disease?

Dr. Gannon 19:10

Sure. So, for one, one impression, I certainly don’t want to give is that. Sometimes, we have people seek us out because they’re under the impression that as direct primary care providers, we’re outside of traditional medicine. And I like to think, again, that we combine the best of all worlds, so my job is to continually keep up on my knowledge base, but that encompasses both medicine but also other fields outside of medicine. And I think the best example where, what I tried to do for a lot of my diet, individuals with diabetes that I care for is, diabetes in the traditional primary care setting is often purely just treated based off the blood sugars, we often throw insulin at individuals with the idea that we’re trying to improve our numbers, right? Our lab works on hemoglobin A1C, which is the reflection of the sugars over the past three months, as well as, when our patients are checking their sugars throughout the day. The problem is that we’ve known for a pretty good length of time that if we reduce someone’s sugars, we’ll improve their microvascular complications, meaning the disease associated with the eye associated with the kidney, but will worsen macrovascular, a big vessel complication. So, strokes, heart attacks, and the reason is because of too much insulin. So on one hand, what we found over the past 50 years that we’ve treated diabetes, we’ve improved all the problems associated with high blood sugar, but we’ve worsened or we certainly haven’t improved, the issues associated with high insulin. So the main issue is, you got to get sugar out of the body. And there’s a particular diet method called the Bernstein method. So this was a doc. I think he’s in Long Island, I could be wrong, but I believe he’s in New York. And he developed a particular pattern of eating where even with individuals with type one diabetes, who they don’t produce any insulin, their bodies aren’t capable of that, he’ll have them get down to only a few units of insulin per day, which is unheard of, as well as when you look at their bloodwork their markers, so they’re A1C may be normal, so they don’t have diabetes based on their bloodwork, right, but they still for all intensive purposes, or they have really high risk of coming back up. And I think it’s such an amazing thing to see, to have individuals with type one diabetes with that tightly controlled blood sugars is unheard of even almost on insulin. But it goes to show you the power of behavioral modifications and using what we’re able to do with our own bodies. And part of that program is a lot of exercise. So I’m not going to lie, it’s difficult. And one of the things that they do is a lot of aerobic activity, which your body is able to take the blood sugar in the air to take the sugar in the blood and put it into the muscle, which is where a majority of the blood sugar is stored. So these individuals may do an hour or two of some form of cardio per day. But the ability, our bodies are this amazing reservoir. And a lot of what we do in medicine is to mimic the effects of exercise. That’s what we try to do with a lot of medications. But I think as a whole, the Bernstein method is a great tool at our disposal, that if I didn’t have the time with someone, or the ability to even look this up or look for alternative methods and educate myself. There’s zero chance I’d be able to do that in the traditional setting. And there’s certainly examples for high blood pressure. I have patients through a combination of exercise, sauna, and various supplements like taurine, garlic, cocoa powder is a great example. No antihypertensive medications were able to get them to normal blood pressure.

Ronak 23:32

Oh, wow. And I think this is the real benefit of becoming a member, right? Like you wouldn’t get this advice in a traditional primary care office. So the nutrition aspect to it, the preventive care aspect to it. It’s really not there, because if the docs are only spending, let’s say, 10 minutes with the patient, there just isn’t time to get into all these things.

Dr. Gannon 23:55

Yeah. And that’s speaking more to that, I think, not the majority, but a significant percentage of referrals purely happened due to lack of time. So do Dr. Kavalek, and I, we both started our practice directly out of residency. But in our training, if you had an individual who, if you’re supposed to see 15-20 people per day, that’s a light patient load for the day. And if you have someone who comes in and they have three or four chronic medical conditions and concerns, and you’re rushing as fast as you can, because your first patient showed up late, and there’s something acute or worrisome going on with a different patient, and then as you’re heading out the door and they say, well, what are we going to do with my knee pain, which you didn’t talk about? You purely don’t have the time, you’re going to write a referral to the orthopedic doctor. And I think the incentives are, they’re aligned differently. So the incentive and in direct primary care is, I think, to really do the best by the patient. I think the patient also has a little bit of buy in, kind of metaphorically, but there’s some skin in the game. Whereas in residency, if I had a really busy day, a lot of times, I was hoping patients wouldn’t come in. And I knew purely based off of that if I were in medicine, I wouldn’t be able to practice and that type of setup.

Ronak 25:19

Right, right. So what do you think is the future of DPC?

Dr. Gannon 25:23

I think it’s going to explode. To my knowledge when we had started. So we’ve been open about two years now, I think we were the fourth practice in Pennsylvania. I think the last time I looked there, there’s just under 2000 practices like this in the country. It’s much more popular in rural areas, it tends to work really well. But now we’re also seeing it being incorporated into more suburban areas, more cities. And I think it’s just the perfect storm, and the combination of insurance is getting tougher. I think, individuals, I think people as a whole are looking for alternative solutions, as well as just alternative models of care, and someone would be a bit more invested in their health, right. And I think all these things are coming together that this will be one of the main ways that primary care is practiced.

Ronak 26:28

Yeah, I mean, that’s pretty incredible that you guys were number four in the state. What advice would you give to docs that want to start their own DPC?

Dr. Gannon 26:38

You just gotta do it. Yeah. Sometimes I think I could give all the advice in the world. And I think I tend to be a little bit of an over-thinker and a little too much into introspection at the end of the day, you just gotta pull the trigger. The beauty is, there’s so many examples of those who have laid the groundwork. And at this point, it’s just a matter of checking off the boxes and just following the checklist. You went to medical school, you did your residency training, you’ve done things that are incredibly hard, you can certainly start your own business.

Ronak 27:11

Nice. Did you have any issues with marketing or educating patients to like this model?

Dr. Gannon 27:19

Yeah 100%, I would say that’s probably still our biggest hurdle. And we’re always willing to do the first month of care is on us. Because again, like I said, it doesn’t click until someone’s been in the chair with us, and they’ve had the time to explain what’s worrying them. They’re not immediately rushed out of the office. And then when they leave, and I text or I call them, we’re following up next week about their blood work. And then they have the aha moment, and it solidifies everything in their mind.

Ronak 27:55

Yeah. And is it just directly to patients? Or do you work with companies as well?

Dr. Gannon 28:03

Yeah, yep. So those are our two biggest demographics. So we provide both primary care services for individuals and families as well as we work with companies. So our goal is to both improve the health of the employees. I’m a really firm believer that healthier employers are likely happier employees, they’re probably more productive as well. And there’s a lot of unique ways to incorporate this within companies. You know, we work with one particular company who pays for the memberships of all their individual employees, and they get the same level of care and access to us as our regular patients. There’s other individuals that we know as well who can work from the health benefits, and that tends to be the most confusing part about it. But to try to reduce the cost of the employer from that aspect while having a really good service that their employees love. So we do both.

Ronak 29:09

Yeah and again doctor this was amazing. Where can patients find you?

Dr. Gannon 29:13

Yeah. We’re both on social media at Blue Ocean health DPC, as well as our website www.blueoceanhealthdpc.com.

Ronak 29:24

Perfect. Thanks for coming on.

Dr. Gannon 29:26

Yeah, thanks for having me.

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In this episode, Ronak interviews Dr. Rob Filler, a seasoned professional in both occupational and lifestyle medicine, with a fascinating background as a flight surgeon in the United States Navy. Dr. Filler shares captivating stories from his military service and offers insights into the challenges and trends in occupational medicine. Join us as we explore his unique experiences and perspectives on healthcare.

Audio Transcript:

Ronak 0:00

Hi, I’m here today with Dr. Rob Filler. He’s currently practicing occupational medicine, but is boarded in occupational medicine as well as lifestyle medicine. He settled down in Southeastern PA after completing residency training in Boston during the beginning of COVID. Prior to that, he was a flight surgeon in the United States Navy, where he was able to fly in military aircraft, including F-18s. Dr filler, thanks so much for coming on, and special thanks for your service in the Navy. So what was that experience like?

Dr. Filler 0:29

Yeah, so that was a pretty cool experience. As a flight surgeon, I was embedded into an aviation unit, and so I did all of the primary care for the unit. But one of the perks, so to speak, of the job, was flying with the unit. And so there’s, there’s probably no greater vote of confidence in your clearance for duty physical than getting in the back seat with someone that you cleared for duty.

Ronak 0:57

Did you serve in any of the wars?

Dr. Filler 0:58

I was in the Middle East, and I also did a non combat deployment to the West Pacific, so I got a pretty good flavor in the short time that I was in.

Ronak 1:09

Wow. Any crazy stories you can share?

Dr. Filler 1:11

Definitely lots of crazy stories. An Iranian missile commander told us they were going to incinerate us over the radio while we’re flying in international waters. And so, it’s really interesting, I think, from a medical perspective, you can understand some of the stressors of flying, but when you’re you’re flying kind of a training sortie near warzone, and then you have a third party kind of yelling at you, it kind of gives you a much more in depth understanding of some of the cognitive task flow that a pilot has to deal with while they’re flying.

Ronak 1:50

Yeah, I mean, I can’t imagine that level of stress. Like you mentioned, there’s so many different factors, and if you’re in an active war zone, it’s just, I think that’s why civilians are so thankful, because it’s something that I think only a few people can really do and do it well,

Dr. Filler 2:09

Yeah, I think that’s one of the challenges the military faces in recruitment, is the number of people that are kind of physically fit for military services is on the decline as a lot of chronic medical conditions have become much more prevalent. So obesity is one of the biggest disqualifiers for military service, and so that’s something where our health system really needs to become less reactive and more proactive in terms of disease prevention.

Ronak 2:40

Yeah, I agree 100% so your background is in occupational medicine. What inspired you to pursue a career in that?

Dr. Filler 2:49

So occupational medicine is one of those specialties that you do not get exposed to in med school, and so in your last two years of med school, you kind of rotate through a lot of the hospital based services. You don’t get a whole lot of exposure to the services that kind of operate outside of the hospital. And so occupational medicine is classically one of those where you’re working in an outpatient setting, you’re not necessarily really affiliated with the hospital. A lot of occupational medicine physicians are employed by standalone practices or directly by employers. So I really got exposed to it in the military, kind of doing the job every day, but not not really knowing about it, until trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I left the military. And that’s when it kind of struck me like, Hey, I’ve been doing occupational medicine for the last like six years. Let me kind of continue doing that.

Ronak 3:49

Makes sense. And I mean, what type of cases or patients do you typically encounter?

Dr. Filler 3:56

Yeah, a lot of what you see is soft tissue injuries. The Pennsylvania work comp annual report just came out, and so you can see a by industry breakdown. Upper extremity injuries are fairly common, so kind of shoulder, neck, down to the hand, that represents about 30% of injuries that you see. Low back injuries are very common. Any kind of work that’s involved in the transportation sector, you’re going to see car accidents, and so you do see some more significant injuries there, but a lot of the injuries are folks that still have some residual work capacity, and so trying to navigate the injury recovery, keeping people working and kind of working at the highest level they can, is really the name of the game.

Ronak 4:52

Yeah, so I’m assuming, a lot of this must be in heavy labor jobs, right? Like construction, like you said, transportation, do you see a lot of cases in typical office jobs?

Dr. Filler 5:05

You will see some, you see injury rates are kind of present across all sectors, but the types of injuries that you see are going to be radically different. And so construction, you’re going to see, obviously, a lot of material handling. You’ll see people that are struck by construction equipment. You can always think of the Three Stooges turning around the two by four and hitting each other in the head. So you certainly see accidents like that. Hospitals, healthcare workers, you tend to see a lot of injuries involving patient care. So lifting patients, rolling patients, in some respects, construction or if you went to a warehouse job, you know the box weighs a certain amount, and it’s not going to do anything to help you or not help you with lifting, with moving people around, it’s a much more variable lifting experience,

Ronak 6:02

Yeah. So what emerging trends or challenges do you see in occupational medicine?

Dr. Filler 6:08

Yeah, I think the challenges are many. There’s not a lot of output of occupational medicine physicians. And so one of the challenges is an aging workforce in occupational medicine, residency programs. Output of occupational medicine physicians is fairly low, and one of the challenges is that there’s not a lot of exposure by other healthcare workers. And so one of the issues is that a lot of the Workers Compensation care happens by a very small number of treating providers, and when whatever that pool kind of shrinks further, that’s a detriment to folks that need care for workplace injuries.

Ronak 6:48

Yeah, and I think that’s a common theme in healthcare in general, where there’s a shortage of doctors to support, you know, the growing population.

Dr. Filler 6:58

And sometimes it’s a situation where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And so some areas where those robust medical systems tend to attract more physicians, but that comes at the expense of places where physicians are needed. And so, that’s something that Congress is going to have to figure out.

Ronak 7:16

Yeah, and I see this. I mean, this is so evident in like, rural areas, right? So when you go to rural America, there’s a shortage of so many different types of providers that a lot of them settle for no care or care from, the closest urgent care, or they have to travel, out of state or drive for hours before they can actually get the treatment that they need.

Dr. Filler 7:41

Yeah, that’s one of the things. Like, when you look at kind of the founding of occupational medicine, it started off as industrial medicine, but it largely emerged because of the transcontinental railroad. They realized, hey, we’re out in the middle of nowhere. People get hurt on the job. We need to take care of folks, to get people to keep coming out to do these jobs. And so obviously those foundings kind of created the Kaiser Permanente system, which is, I think most people have heard of, yeah, but it’s definitely kind of a re it’s a recurring trend where there’s not a lot of access to care in more rural areas. And so trying to figure out how to, how to better those, those workers, is critically important.

Ronak 8:26

Right and I think one of the emerging trends in health care right now is just preventative care. Do you see that with employers, employees, where you’re giving advice just on prevention?

Dr. Filler 8:38

Yeah, that’s something that we see quite a bit of. There’s obviously a huge trend towards wellness in the workplace, trying to be more proactive around mental health. Obviously, we spend a lot of our waking hours at work, and so work as also the funder of a lot of general health insurance. There’s kind of a complicated web where the employers want to intervene and have some captive audience time to intervene. And so trying to figure out how those interventions work is going to be the big thing. When you look at prevention systems, we are oftentimes kind of reacting to things that have already happened. And so that’s kind of in the tertiary prevention. How do you make the world more accessible for someone that broke their leg, fallen down the stairs and ended up in the work in a wheelchair? We can certainly cut sidewalk curbs and do things to make the world more accessible, but are there things that we could have done in the medical care to prevent that person from having ended up with a permanent disability? That’s kind of the idea of secondary prevention, and then looking at, hey, was there something we could have done to prevent that person from falling down the stairs? That’s your primary prevention. And so that’s, that’s kind of the continuum of space that occupational medicine occupies, is hey, we can manage the injuries. We can figure out how to accommodate people and make and minimize disability, but let’s use the data that we’re we’re collecting while this happens, and try and figure out how we can better prevent injuries, if in some situations, let’s look at seeing, can we move the needle past zero and say, Hey, let’s let’s not worry about just preventing people from getting hurt. Let’s see if we can make people healthier through the workplace. And that’s kind of the new thing with workplace wellness. And so I think a lot of that emerged from tech. And so people were looking like, hey, how do we attract workers? And so you end up with kind of clumsy ideas like, hey, we’ll put a ping pong table in the break room. And people love that. And so figuring out how to make work fun, how to keep your workforce engaged. Those are all things that HR has been involved with. Saying, hey, how do we get the most out of our workforce? How do we make it easier to attract a workforce? But even looking farther beyond that, hey, how do you minimize your group health spend. How do you keep your workforce from getting injured, and make your workforce more resilient? Those are all things I think we’re going to see a lot of effort in, kind of in the coming years.

Ronak 11:13

Yeah, so let’s take a deeper dive into mental health. How do you address mental health issues in the workplace?

Dr. Filler 11:19

Yeah, that’s really challenging. When you look at the occupational medicine literature, injury for injury, even receiving the same care, people with workers compensation claims, tend to have worse outcomes than Group Health claimants. And so one of the challenges there is the psychological overlay of work. If you don’t like your work environment, you feel you’re not well compensated, your manager picks on you. Those are all things that kind of drive worse outcomes. We see that repeatedly in the medical literature. And so one of the things that kind of the fundamental underpinning is you don’t necessarily need a psychiatrist or psychologist. You need to make sure that HR is training managers and supervisors so that they’re creating as positive a work environment as possible that’ll get you better outcomes with your work injuries. But it’ll also kind of foster that mental health. It’s much better to not create the problem than to try and treat the problem.

Ronak 12:27

Yeah, I agree. And you know, for me personally, as an entrepreneur, you work long hours, you deal with a lot of uncertainty, and it’s, how do you stay productive and also not burned out. You know, we opened our first location four years ago, and it’s been like a grind ever since, right, not just for me, but for my partners as well. And sometimes the employees can feel that pressure as well. So it’s how do we keep them happy, productive, and over a long period of time, right? So not just like doing a temporary solution, but you know, if we’re in this for the long haul, just keeping them and everyone healthy and motivated is a challenge.

Dr. Filler 13:12

Yeah, that’s definitely a challenge. And as soon as you kind of decrease the amount of resources you have to apply, if you’re Google or Facebook, that kind of the sky’s the limit for spending on things. But when you’re kind of bootstrapping a startup, the funding isn’t certain. The outcomes are a little bit less, less clear. And so it’s critically important for people engaging in entrepreneurial pursuits, you need to take time for yourself. You need to disconnect as much as you can without missing opportunities. Yeah. But I think one of the big protective factors that exist, kind of in in startup culture and entrepreneurship in general, is being able to self direct a little bit having more autonomy over what you’re doing if you’re the person, the third person in the widget manufacturing line where you you put fastener A into hole B, that’s a very monotonous position. You’re working at the pace of the assembly line. With entrepreneurship, you definitely have a little bit more free time to kind of self direct, kind of pursue interests to the extent that that’s financially feasible. And so I think that’s a protective factor.

Ronak 14:24

It is. And the other thing that I find that works for me is that doing something that I love, and I feel like I can do 80 hours of that versus doing 20 hours of something where I hate. So, you know, coming into a work environment that’s fulfilling, it’s a lot easier to kind of deal with that stress and those hours because of that. I don’t think I’d be able to do this if I was, you know, in something else.

Dr. Filler 14:49

Yeah, I think when you look at physicians, kind of a similar category, a lot of people do a lot of extra reading, a lot of professional development, kind of in their free time. It’s, people always say it’s a calling, but you’re certainly called to do a lot of off the clock work and so kind of that, that drive to kind of refine your skill set. It’s kind of like professional athletes, they’re kind of always grinding, always getting better. I think you see a lot of parallels in medicine entrepreneurship in general.

Ronak 15:24

Interesting. Yeah, so talking about research, like, how do you stay updated on the latest research and the best practices?

Dr. Filler 15:31

Yeah, it’s really challenging. You got to really look for a lot of different sources with occupational medicine. Some of it is medicine. Some of it is kind of refining your business acumen, understanding the secular trends in industry. Hey, wellness is an emerging trend, and so, making sure that you’re looking at the medical literature and seeing how that interacts with the business thinking. And then you end up reading a lot of journals, the Europeans, particularly Northern Europeans, have a lot of epidemiology research based on having single payer systems. They get really good data capture of what’s a work injury, what might not be a work injury. And so it’s a lot of Scandinavian journals of ergonomics and stuff like that that you end up reading but also drawing upon, kind of non traditional sources. So I fall upon the hotkey on LinkedIn, and kind of see what the what kind of the legal thought process is obviously their thought leaders in kind of the playton side of injury and disability and work comp cases and so looking at, looking at the whole, the whole process, I think, is really critical to kind of understanding your role and where you fit in.

Ronak 16:53

Yeah, makes sense. So what are some of the current projects and side gigs that you’re working on?

Dr. Filler 17:01

Yeah, so I’d say I’m kind of a perpetual dabbler. And so I think one of the things with medcare shares is kind of the opportunity to kind of scale and try out new concepts. And so I’m doing a little bit of medical writing right now, obviously working on all the clinical positions. And then the other thing I was looking at doing was doing some independent medical exam work and chart review. And so it’s, it’s an opportunity to kind of see how other people manage cases, and I think that’s something that, as you look at other people’s work, that gives you an opportunity to kind of learn from what they did and kind of refine your own process. And so I think that’s kind of critical to being successful, it’s just kind of, you’re going to have to learn from your own mistakes, but if you can learn from other people’s mistakes too that’s all part of the process.

Ronak 17:54

And I mean, do you have time for fun?

Dr. Filler 17:57

Yeah, I was at a Reading Phillies game with my kids earlier this week. And so I think that’s one of the things you have to do is you do have to disconnect from work. It’s not healthy to work all the time, but make sure that you’re doing things that are fun, making sure that you’re keeping kind of broad interests and medical training that people always tell you that the hospital won’t love you back. So, you may love your job, but there are some thankless things that come with that, and so make sure you’re taking time for yourself. I do a lot of gardening. Stay active, fixing all the stuff that breaks around the house, working on cars, all things I think that give you a different perspective. And I think trying to have those broad pursuits gives you the ability to engage with patients and understand what part of life they’re missing out on as a result of their injury. And then sometimes, depending on folks’ education levels, being able to make better analogies, not everyone spent a whole lot of time learning about medical problems and with Latin names, and so being able to make the connections, I think, helps people understand what they need to do, and helps the healing process.

Ronak 19:19

Yeah, amazing. Well. Dr Fuller, this was fun. Thank you so much for joining and look forward to seeing you in the office.

Dr. Filler 19:26

Yeah, thanks for having me.

In This Episode:

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WellZone Medical Weight Loss

Welcome to today’s special bonus episode of our podcast! We’re thrilled to have Danielle McLane with us, a patient who visited WellZone about six weeks ago. Danielle had an unexpected but delightful experience during her visit, interacting with multiple providers in one day. She initially came to see Jade but ended up receiving care from a podiatrist and learning about the range of services WellZone offers. Let’s dive into her story and hear more about this unique experience. Danielle, welcome to the show!

Audio Transcript:

Ronak 0:00

Hey everyone on today’s special bonus episode, we have a patient of ours, Danielle McLane. She came in about six weeks ago to see one of our providers WellZone and she had a really cool experience. So I wanted to share that with all of you, Danielle, welcome to the show.

Danielle 0:18

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Ronak 0:20

Yeah, so tell us a little bit about what happened. I know you came to see Jade of WellZone and then you ended up seeing a few more providers the same day so what happened?

Danielle 0:30

So, I had a scheduled appointment with Jade and prior to my appointment, I hit my toe on the countertop in my house. So you know, I came in here still because it was a scheduled appointment, and I was limping because I was in pain. So Jade’s assistant Onnie asked me, she said, Why are you limping? I was like, “I hit my toe it’s okay, I’ll put some bandage on it or whatever.” She was like, “Well, we have a foot doctor here. And maybe she should take a look at it because it could be broke.” And I’m like, “It’s probably not broke it’s probably okay.” Then I’m like, “What? You guys have a foot doctor?” And she was like, “Yeah, let me introduce you to her.” So she introduced me to the foot doctor and her assistant. And I said, you know, I was telling her what happened and she was like, “It could be fractured.” I said, “Will you guys take my insurance?” And she was like, “Well which insurance.” I showed it to her. She was like, “We do!” So I was like, “Oh, wow, great.” So Jade said, “Let her take care of you. And then you could come see me.” So we’re walking through the hallway. And all of a sudden I hear this crack, crack crack. And I’m like, “What was that noise?” And they were like, “It’s a chiropractor.” I say, “There’s a chiropractor in here too?”

So they were like, “Yeah, so one of the ladies was getting her back adjusted.” And I was like, “Wow, that’s neat.” So I go in there, to see the foot doctor, and she gives me an x-ray. Come to find out that my toe was broken. So she bandaged me up, she wrapped me up. And she gave me a boot. After that, I was like, “Well, since I’m here, I might as well go see the chiropractor as well.” So I went to go to him and he was like, “Well, I’m heading out but you could schedule an appointment to come see me.” And we went over rates and how much. Everyone was just so friendly. And then I went to my actual scheduled appointment with Jade at WellZone. But, everyone was amazing. Everyone in these offices are just amazing. But it came full circle. It was like a one stop shop.

Ronak 2:23

Exactly. And that’s a really cool experience. And that’s why I wanted to share this with our audience. You know, you came in for one thing, but like you said, it’s a one stop shop. So we have multiple doctors. So you saw Dr. Wendy Le the podiatrist. And then Dr. Leggett as well, the chiro, so how are you feeling now? So this was about six weeks ago.

Danielle 2:43

This was about six weeks ago. And I just saw Dr. Wendy last week when I came in here to see Jade. And she was like, “How are you feeling?” I’m like, “I feel great!” So believe it or not, up until about last week, I had pain in my toe like I didn’t have it wrapped or anything but my toe was still painful. So she was like, “Give it some time. You know, it’s a bone it has to heal properly. Just don’t wear any shoes.” So I hadn’t been wearing high heels or anything. So I feel great. I feel great.

Ronak 3:16

So great to hear.

Danielle 3:17

Yes. I feel great with Dr. Wendy. Jade and WellZone are just amazing. So is this definitely a full circle. Definitely a one stop shop.

Ronak 3:28

Awesome. So would you recommend us to your family and friends?

Danielle 3:31

Absolutely! I have! I’ve recommended you guys to a lot of people. And also, I have a girlfriend that has a hydration business. They came here and spoke with Anthony because I told her I’m like, “This place is amazing.” And come to find out her and Jade went to college and work together.

Ronak 3:50

Oh, it’s a small world.

Danielle 3:51

Small world. So, she came here she saw everyone. It was amazing. She met with Anthony. And I said this would be a beautiful home for you. Like it’s everyone in here is amazing. They’re friendly. It’s nice. It’s a great environment for you. So Anthony gave her some information. And she’s looking into either this location. I believe you guys have another one and it’s Fishtown.

Ronak 4:12

Yep, we have. So we have three locations total. This one in King of Prussia.

Fishtown as well, so that’s, you know, suburb of Philadelphia, and Marlton, New Jersey. And we’re looking to expand outside this region as well. Looking and going to Texas and then down the up and down the Northeast. So yeah, stay tuned for that. But, we appreciate having you here. Daniel, this amazing story and thanks. Thanks for sharing.

Danielle 4:40

Yes, thank you guys! Thank you guys for this amazing environment in this coast space. It’s beautiful!

Ronak 4:48

Awesome. Thank you!

Danielle

You’re welcome!

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