Education and Integration

Today we dive deep into two of our eight pillars of One Health's approach to healthcare, emphasizing education, integration, and preventative care. The importance of educating patients on their health conditions, treatment plans, and preventative measures to empower them in their healthcare journey is non-negotiable for our providers. We ensure every patient leaves our facility with a complete understanding of their health situation. The need for integration between primary care physicians, specialists, and hospitals to ensure seamless communication and coordination of care is evident in our healthcare system today. We as primary care specialists are advocates for our patients and spearhead their care by helping to navigate a confusing healthcare system. The value of preventative healthcare in promoting longevity and reducing the burden on the healthcare system is something we at One Health are very familiar with; it is our duty as your healthcare provider to not only make your day to day a better experience, but to increase longevity for our patients. The challenges of navigating the siloed nature of the current healthcare system is something no patient should do alone and the need for a patient-centric, integrated approach is what we fulfill for all of our patients.

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Liam

Welcome to the One Health Modern Primary Care podcast. One health is a value based primary care platform that enhances the patient experience, improves the health of individuals and populations, and reduces medical costs with a laser focus on provider wellness and care for all. Today, Doctor Cook and Doctor Sara we dive deep into two of the eight pillars of One Health's approach to health care, emphasizing education, integration and preventative care.

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Liam

Let's jump in.

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Dr. Sharawy

One of our pillars that is gonna go well, is education. And I want to speak to education as it relates to the patients that we take care of. So all of us are consumers of health care. Some more than others. I'm a large consumer of health care and I think with any other industry you can easily pivot to other choices.

00;00;56;17 - 00;01;14;16

Dr. Sharawy

If you don't feel like you're getting what you need or you're not educated on what you need. Go to a restaurant. You know if you don't get what you feel out of it, well, you're not going to go there again. Sometimes in healthcare, you're kind of stuck, okay. And, and your choices can oftentimes be limited for a variety of reasons.

00;01;14;18 - 00;01;38;23

Dr. Sharawy

So at one health, it's extremely important that as we again, I say and I'll say it again with humility, are humbled and privileged to be able to take care of the patients that we serve. We have to make sure that when that patient comes in and is trusting us for something that's pretty big in their life, right? Oftentimes it's so big that it's life or death.

00;01;38;23 - 00;02;04;22

Dr. Sharawy

Sometimes. that when they come in, we interact, we take care of them to the best of our ability. They should be able to leave that clinic with an incredible understanding of number one Has my problem been addressed? Number two, what are the solutions that we've come together? And number three, what are the things that I have to do, in, in order to get from.

00;02;04;25 - 00;02;24;17

Dr. Sharawy

The reason why I came into resolution, the other part of that is, is to educate people on what I call the longitudinal type care. That's preventative health, extremely important. We we use words like gaps in care in those things. So that a lot of the reasons for that is because we don't do our job to educate our patients.

00;02;24;19 - 00;02;41;13

Dr. Sharawy

The importance, you know, why is it important that you go get that colonoscopy? We talk about things like gaps in care. Well, part of the gap is lack of educating folks on the importance. And I tell folks all the time, if I'm seeing you at age 40, you're healthy. You might say to yourself, do I need to even go to the doctor?

00;02;41;15 - 00;03;06;07

Dr. Sharawy

But we want to make sure that we take care of your 40 so you can keep walking and doing things only at 80, and some of that is involved in preventative health. Okay. A lot of it is. And so educate, educate people on proper nutrition education. I mean, why do you need to tell me to get a pap smear, on the, the way that the protocol states, why is it important for you to get a colonoscopy to prevent almost uniformly prevent your risk of getting colon cancer, devastating disease.

00;03;06;09 - 00;03;29;23

Dr. Sharawy

Those are examples of many that we do that the only way to do that is to educate our patients, educate them in multiple forums, okay? Always educate them when you're in that sacred room with the patient, okay. That's a sacred relationship. But also give them tools that they can actually reach out, in, in and learn and be a, advocate for their own health.

00;03;29;26 - 00;03;39;13

Dr. Sharawy

That's what I see education, as being as it relates to the patient. And of course, it got many, many other, aspects of it.

00;03;39;15 - 00;03;59;02

Dr. Cook

Let's go to integration, because, one of the pillars that we have at One Health is we can't waiver from this integration. And it's the one that's not understood as well as others, and especially from the patient standpoint or the consumer standpoint. I see we we use integration in multiple ways. But you think about health care we talked about before, it's multidisciplinary.

00;03;59;04 - 00;04;19;06

Dr. Cook

You may see a cardiologist. You may see a urologist. You may see a nephrologist you know, you may end up in the ED. You may end up in the hospital right now. All those typically happen in silos. And the patient often finds himself wandering between the one to the other. we can communicate often between the physicians, but it's much more transactional.

00;04;19;06 - 00;04;38;29

Dr. Cook

I think you have mentioned before, it's much more transactional. So what we see with integration is you start from that, that primary care, that want a primary care specialist in the the patient relationship and then things blossom from there. They will need to see a specialist. We have beautiful and wonderful specialist in this country, that do phenomenal work.

00;04;39;01 - 00;05;05;22

Dr. Cook

But one of the things that we find that raises costs creates confusion. may go against the length of life or human experience is the lack of integration between that that primary care specialist and the patients relationship and the connectivity and what's happening outside the office. And so us as primary care specialists there a, you know, OB family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine being integrated in with specialists differently.

00;05;05;24 - 00;05;27;02

Dr. Cook

I think we've been forcing this more of a transactional relationship, over the past decade, decade and a half for many reasons. But making sure the patient feels, wow, my primary care physician is integrated with the specialists. They talk, they know what's going on. I don't have to repeat myself over and over again. And if I say something here, it's connected back and and that advocate, my primary care physician is going to be a part of this relationship.

00;05;27;02 - 00;05;45;09

Dr. Cook

It's almost like a triangle. and then when they have to go to the hospital, the same thing. Often a patient feels lost in the hospital or in the emergency room. But being able to have that, that, that relationship, that advocacy for the patient there from the primary care standpoint, keeps the patient from feeling disconnected or wandering through health care.

00;05;45;11 - 00;06;11;00

Dr. Cook

we can use a lot of examples. I use this this great example. that may, make the point. I saw a young woman, she's about 42. And again, I use this as my example, but it can be used so many other physicians could use the same example. 42 and you just run a Triathalon had just moved down from Philadelphia, I believe, down to, this area in Charlotte worked for a big company, was an executive, after she came down here, she'd been here about six weeks.

00;06;11;05 - 00;06;26;29

Dr. Cook

And again, she just run, run and done well in a triathlon. She had some chest pain. She end up in the emergency room in the emergency room. They did multiple tests on her and multiple things. And from the emergency room, they couldn't find a cause, but they sent her to the cardiologist. She went to the cardiologist. Lots of things were done to her.

00;06;26;29 - 00;06;42;06

Dr. Cook

She put on a medicine. She had some side effects to, and from there they said, well, it's probably you need to see gastroenterologist. So she went for a gastroenterologist. And, at the gastroenterologist they did two studies on her and they were negative. They said, hey, maybe you need to be on this medicine. Right? And so they put on a medicine.

00;06;42;08 - 00;06;59;29

Dr. Cook

She had a side effect of the medicine now intermittently through all this, her company had Teladoc or a version of of calling the physician on the phone. And, and she was randomly calling somebody on the phone who was basically working 9 to 5 but was not connected to her, for anything. And so, long story short, she ended up in my office.

00;07;00;07 - 00;07;22;26

Dr. Cook

Okay. And, literally in about a 15 minute conversation with her, looking at her eye color, understanding what was going on, asking her a few questions, and doing a small portion of a physical exam. We found her caise and it was literally about a $15 medicine and, an appointment with a psychologist. And she called me back in about a month as a man.

00;07;23;01 - 00;07;47;00

Dr. Cook

It resolved the whole problem. I did ask her how much her little adventure through health care it cost her. It was about $40,000. Okay, now she had insurance and she could pay it, but. But by the time she reached me, she had seen wonderful physicians. But no integrated health care. Okay, no. No connected health care. And so she often said, well, why has health care and, sort of uses from that?

00;07;47;03 - 00;08;06;19

Dr. Cook

Why is health care not more integrated? You know, why did it take me coming to you to finally find an integrated path for health care? Well, when you're you're building the ship and you build it differently, you sort of piece together things that are phenomenal, you know, really unique, but they're not always integrated and the parts don't always fit together well.

00;08;06;22 - 00;08;31;09

Dr. Cook

And you can see that it's often said, you know, here in the United States, we have wonderful rescue medicine. If you're going to have a heart attack, this is place to have it. You know, there's plenty of places close by that will save your life quickly. Car wreck, trauma, lots of things, amazing cancer care. But the problem is, the length of life in America is still way behind other industrialized countries.

00;08;31;12 - 00;08;52;22

Dr. Cook

And we think about it despite all of our best efforts of doing the things we are. The care is not well integrated in few integrated care. I believe. Not only are you going to lengthen life because you can always pick up on things for the patient, advocate for them things that they may need or not need. Okay, but you're also going to be able to help them understand when and where to use the health system appropriately.

00;08;52;28 - 00;09;11;14

Dr. Cook

So at one Health, we we pride ourselves on making sure that that happens. And it's back to some of the things that we had said before. You can't be a zero sum game. It's not just about primary care. This modern primary care specialty and multiple specialists in one health is not just, oh, we're about primary care, we're going to war so far and forget about everybody else.

00;09;11;17 - 00;09;40;26

Dr. Cook

Now. It's about how do we fit that model in to an ecosystem this very complex, and very rich. But allow the patient to every day they wake up, understand? I know how I fit into that model. I'm not going to get lost because I've got this advocate and team taking care of me throughout the journey. Navigators, digital tools, we get on the list are remedies to to put a Band-Aid on a system that's not working.

00;09;40;29 - 00;10;05;20

Dr. Cook

But if you start from the bottom in the ground up and really interconnect, you need less. You still all these navigators? I think they're important, but they're important to help understand the integration correctly. Okay. And get people where do they need to get and get information back to the primary care physician specialist correctly. So they all communicate. but we've we've utilized them often to fix something that we're not we don't think we can fix otherwise.

00;10;05;22 - 00;10;27;18

Dr. Cook

And Ehab said earlier, the work we're doing is really counterintuitive to what's happening in health care. And a lot of people don't understand what I'm trying to say or do. I think most patients do that. They understand that this is what they want. and we have to every day come to work understanding. We've got wonderful specialist and these partners that are ours.

00;10;27;18 - 00;10;37;11

Dr. Cook

How do we work with them differently than we ever had before? Have wonderful hospitals, have emergency rooms. but we don't want that to be the front door for our patients. The front door needs to be here.

00;10;37;13 - 00;10;50;13

Liam

Thanks for listening. Please follow our Modern Primary Care podcast and visit us at One Health Modern Primary Care on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and X.