Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Ashok Gupta, CEO and Founder of Theranow, highlights the growing demand for physical therapy and the challenges patients face in accessing care. The Theranow telehealth solution uses technologies such as computer vision and AI to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of virtual care and to measure and document progress to support the clinician's work with the patient. Virtual physical therapy is demonstrating outcomes equal to in-person care and showing higher patient engagement and compliance, driven by the convenience of scheduling and remote monitoring tools.

Ashok explains, "Physical therapy is growing with experiential growth. Means you would look at the data. It's approximately 6% to 7% a year growth going long. On top of that, not only are there requirements, but this is also like a demand-and-supply situation. If you'll just look at the other side of the data, the demand side of it, where every day, like recently, I read, it was like 10,000 people are crossing the Medicare eligibility. So every single Medicare-eligible person means there's more demand for physical therapy and rehab services."

"The physical therapists specialize in different settings or different styles of treatments. So I would say virtual care can address almost 80% of all diagnoses and 100% of all patients at any time during the injury or recovery period of rehabilitation. So we do have multiple programs. We have an ortho program for virtual care. We have a neuro program for virtual care. And then we have a pelvic health or women's health program for virtual care. So we're taking one step at a time and adding different programs. The next would be the pediatrics, and then we'll be adding that as well, slowly. So we're trying to bring in experts from each field and then make sure that our program is very tailored to the patient's needs. And then obviously it's not a traditional, conventional physical therapy that you can do."

#Theranow HybridCare #PatientExperience #HealthcareAI #DigitalHealth #ClinicianWorkflow #PhysicalTherapy #Telehealth #DigitalHealth #RehabInnovation #VirtualCare #AIinHealthcare #RemotePatientMonitoring #ValueBasedCare #HealthSystems #Medicare #HealthTech #PatientEngagement #ClinicianExperience #MusculoskeletalCare

Theranow.com

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Dr. Ashok Gupta, CEO and Founder of Theranow, highlights the growing demand for physical therapy and the challenges patients face in accessing care. The Theranow telehealth solution uses technologies such as computer vision and AI to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of virtual care and to measure and document progress to support the clinician's work with the patient. Virtual physical therapy is demonstrating outcomes equal to in-person care and showing higher patient engagement and compliance, driven by the convenience of scheduling and remote monitoring tools.

Ashok explains, "Physical therapy is growing with experiential growth. Means you would look at the data. It's approximately 6% to 7% a year growth going long. On top of that, not only are there requirements, but this is also like a demand-and-supply situation. If you'll just look at the other side of the data, the demand side of it, where every day, like recently, I read, it was like 10,000 people are crossing the Medicare eligibility. So every single Medicare-eligible person means there's more demand for physical therapy and rehab services."

"The physical therapists specialize in different settings or different styles of treatments. So I would say virtual care can address almost 80% of all diagnoses and 100% of all patients at any time during the injury or recovery period of rehabilitation. So we do have multiple programs. We have an ortho program for virtual care. We have a neuro program for virtual care. And then we have a pelvic health or women's health program for virtual care. So we're taking one step at a time and adding different programs. The next would be the pediatrics, and then we'll be adding that as well, slowly. So we're trying to bring in experts from each field and then make sure that our program is very tailored to the patient's needs. And then obviously it's not a traditional, conventional physical therapy that you can do."

#Theranow HybridCare #PatientExperience #HealthcareAI #DigitalHealth #ClinicianWorkflow #PhysicalTherapy #Telehealth #DigitalHealth #RehabInnovation #VirtualCare #AIinHealthcare #RemotePatientMonitoring #ValueBasedCare #HealthSystems #Medicare #HealthTech #PatientEngagement #ClinicianExperience #MusculoskeletalCare

Theranow.com

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Dr. Javier Szwarcberg, CEO of Spruce Biosciences, is developing drugs for rare diseases with a primary focus on Sanfilippo Syndrome Type B, a devastating genetic neurodegenerative disease affecting children. The source of this condition is a lack of an enzyme, which results in a buildup of a toxic substance in the brain. The company's drug is an enzyme replacement therapy administered directly to the brain to bypass the blood-brain barrier, and clinical trial data is showing a strong effect on the toxic substrate in the brain and a meaningful benefit on cognition.

Javier explains, "It's a devastating, profoundly affecting disease whereby children are typically born normally and born asymptomatic. And over time, they develop an accumulation of a toxic substrate throughout the body, but primarily the brain. And because of that, it eventually results in a fairly young age, usually between two and a half and I would say three and a half, in symptoms starting. That toxic substance builds in throughout the brain and starts affecting initially learning behavior. Sleep patterns are very much affected, whereby children don't sleep at night and sleep during the day, and they're very hyperactive. And sometimes the diagnosis is confused, and there's no clarity as to what is going on with the child, early in the onset of the disease."

"Yes, it's a genetic disease that's inherited. There's a missing enzyme responsible for the metabolism of this toxic substrate, which I talked about, called heparan sulfate. So when heparan sulfate builds up in the brain, it causes inflammation and neurotoxicity, ultimately resulting in neurodegeneration. Think about it as a disease that is very similar to what you end up seeing with Alzheimer's, whereby the toxic substrate in Alzheimer's is between neurons and outside of the actual cell. In this case, in this disease, the toxic substance, which is different than the one that accumulates in Alzheimer's but builds within the neural cells. Yes, so that's very well-known and very well-characterized."

#SpruceBio #SanfilippoSyndrome #MPSIIIB #CureSanfilippo #RareDiseases #EnzymeReplacementTherapy #LysosomalStorageDisorders #BiopharmaceuticalInnovation #ClinicalTrials #RareDiseaseResearch #HealthcareInnovation #PrecisionMedicine

sprucebio.com

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Dr. Javier Szwarcberg, CEO of Spruce Biosciences, is developing drugs for rare diseases with a primary focus on Sanfilippo Syndrome Type B, a devastating genetic neurodegenerative disease affecting children. The source of this condition is a lack of an enzyme, which results in a buildup of a toxic substance in the brain. The company's drug is an enzyme replacement therapy administered directly to the brain to bypass the blood-brain barrier, and clinical trial data is showing a strong effect on the toxic substrate in the brain and a meaningful benefit on cognition.

Javier explains, "It's a devastating, profoundly affecting disease whereby children are typically born normally and born asymptomatic. And over time, they develop an accumulation of a toxic substrate throughout the body, but primarily the brain. And because of that, it eventually results in a fairly young age, usually between two and a half and I would say three and a half, in symptoms starting. That toxic substance builds in throughout the brain and starts affecting initially learning behavior. Sleep patterns are very much affected, whereby children don't sleep at night and sleep during the day, and they're very hyperactive. And sometimes the diagnosis is confused, and there's no clarity as to what is going on with the child, early in the onset of the disease."

"Yes, it's a genetic disease that's inherited. There's a missing enzyme responsible for the metabolism of this toxic substrate, which I talked about, called heparan sulfate. So when heparan sulfate builds up in the brain, it causes inflammation and neurotoxicity, ultimately resulting in neurodegeneration. Think about it as a disease that is very similar to what you end up seeing with Alzheimer's, whereby the toxic substrate in Alzheimer's is between neurons and outside of the actual cell. In this case, in this disease, the toxic substance, which is different than the one that accumulates in Alzheimer's but builds within the neural cells. Yes, so that's very well-known and very well-characterized."

#SpruceBio #SanfilippoSyndrome #MPSIIIB #CureSanfilippo #RareDiseases #EnzymeReplacementTherapy #LysosomalStorageDisorders #BiopharmaceuticalInnovation #ClinicalTrials #RareDiseaseResearch #HealthcareInnovation #PrecisionMedicine

sprucebio.com

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Zach Shultz, Senior Director of Product Policy and Solutions at EnableComp, describes the challenges of revenue cycle management in healthcare with a focus on the strategic importance of full-time equivalent (FTE) allocation. Hospitals could improve their bottom line by outsourcing complex, low-reimbursement claims, such as those from the VA so that in-house staff can focus on higher-value commercial claims. Despite the emergence of AI as a significant factor in automating the review process, human intervention is irreplaceable for quality assurance, managing escalations, and resolving complex claims.

Zach explains, "I think that, especially serving the post- COVID landscape that we exist in today, staffing has become a kind of delicate thing. If you think about the rate posts or during the post-pandemic period, it was really hard to staff revenue cycle offices or staff business in general. Now, you kind of fast-forward to 2026, and maybe it's not as difficult as it was, but I think hospitals and businesses want to make sure they're very precise and strategic in how they utilize resources."

"Obviously, keeping overhead at a manageable level is really important to growth and success. So I think it's an invariable value that should always be discussed, particularly when it gets into the complex claims space, as we do. The work comps, the VAs, and claim types like that may take or require a little bit more manual intervention. It's super important to determine whether it's worth taking on these things myself or if outsourcing them is justified so I can focus on things that maybe have a slightly higher yield."

#EnableComp #RevenueCycleManagement #RCM #HealthTech #FTEEfficiency #ComplexClaims #RCMTechnology #HealthcareRCM #RevenueCycle #HealthcareFinance #StaffingStrategy #HealthcareOperations #AIinHealthcare #WorkforceOptimization #HealthcareLeadership #PatientFinancialServices

enablecomp.com

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Zach Shultz, Senior Director of Product Policy and Solutions at EnableComp, describes the challenges of revenue cycle management in healthcare with a focus on the strategic importance of full-time equivalent (FTE) allocation. Hospitals could improve their bottom line by outsourcing complex, low-reimbursement claims, such as those from the VA so that in-house staff can focus on higher-value commercial claims. Despite the emergence of AI as a significant factor in automating the review process, human intervention is irreplaceable for quality assurance, managing escalations, and resolving complex claims.

Zach explains, "I think that, especially serving the post- COVID landscape that we exist in today, staffing has become a kind of delicate thing. If you think about the rate posts or during the post-pandemic period, it was really hard to staff revenue cycle offices or staff business in general. Now, you kind of fast-forward to 2026, and maybe it's not as difficult as it was, but I think hospitals and businesses want to make sure they're very precise and strategic in how they utilize resources."

"Obviously, keeping overhead at a manageable level is really important to growth and success. So I think it's an invariable value that should always be discussed, particularly when it gets into the complex claims space, as we do. The work comps, the VAs, and claim types like that may take or require a little bit more manual intervention. It's super important to determine whether it's worth taking on these things myself or if outsourcing them is justified so I can focus on things that maybe have a slightly higher yield."

#EnableComp #RevenueCycleManagement #RCM #HealthTech #FTEEfficiency #ComplexClaims #RCMTechnology #HealthcareRCM #RevenueCycle #HealthcareFinance #StaffingStrategy #HealthcareOperations #AIinHealthcare #WorkforceOptimization #HealthcareLeadership #PatientFinancialServices

enablecomp.com

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Lon Hecht, CEO of Care2U, has designed an innovative model of providing in-home high-acuity care as an alternative to emergency room visits or hospitalizations. The process includes sending a clinician to the home within 2-4 hours, with extensive mobile medical equipment, and physician support via telehealth. Benefits include better patient recovery outcomes, significant cost savings for patients and payers, and prevention of costly hospital readmissions.

Lon explains, "My company, Care2U, and I are bringing high acuity care into the home. So think of it as kind of a replacement for ER-level care or hospitalization. When you think of home care, that's typically skilled or unskilled care. So it could be someone coming in to help you with daily living needs, or it could be some kind of skilled nursing. What we do is very different. We're sending a clinician into the home. Typically, within two to four hours, they bring in a physician via concurrent telehealth and treat true high-acuity needs. Once again, things that you would typically see in the ER in the hospital. So that's how it's different. And what's great about it is it really allows you to stay in your home, be around your loved ones, which is fantastic. And the cost is a fraction of what you would pay for ER or hospital-based care."

"There's a lot of data out there that shows people heal better at home. When you're in a hospital, there are all kinds of things going on. You're around plenty of infection. You're up all night. It's very chaotic for folks. Being able to be at home with their loved ones, pets, and others, and move freely throughout the home, really makes a difference in their recovery. So, it's been published as being incredibly positive for the care of patients."

#Care2U #HospitalAtHome #ERAtHome #CareAtHome #HealingAtHome #EmpoweredPatient #DigitalHealth #Telehealth #VirtualCare #HealthTech #ValueBasedCare #PopulationHealth #AgingInPlace #ManagedCare #ValueBasedCare #Readmissions #Caregivers #OlderAdults #Geriatric #Elderly#HealthcareInnovation #PatientCare #PatientExperience #HealthcareDelivery #MedicalInnovation #HealthcareCosts #PatientOutcomes

care2U.com

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Lon Hecht, CEO of Care2U, has designed an innovative model of providing in-home high-acuity care as an alternative to emergency room visits or hospitalizations. The process includes sending a clinician to the home within 2-4 hours, with extensive mobile medical equipment, and physician support via telehealth. Benefits include better patient recovery outcomes, significant cost savings for patients and payers, and prevention of costly hospital readmissions.

Lon explains, "My company, Care2U, and I are bringing high acuity care into the home. So think of it as kind of a replacement for ER-level care or hospitalization. When you think of home care, that's typically skilled or unskilled care. So it could be someone coming in to help you with daily living needs, or it could be some kind of skilled nursing. What we do is very different. We're sending a clinician into the home. Typically, within two to four hours, they bring in a physician via concurrent telehealth and treat true high-acuity needs. Once again, things that you would typically see in the ER in the hospital. So that's how it's different. And what's great about it is it really allows you to stay in your home, be around your loved ones, which is fantastic. And the cost is a fraction of what you would pay for ER or hospital-based care."

"There's a lot of data out there that shows people heal better at home. When you're in a hospital, there are all kinds of things going on. You're around plenty of infection. You're up all night. It's very chaotic for folks. Being able to be at home with their loved ones, pets, and others, and move freely throughout the home, really makes a difference in their recovery. So, it's been published as being incredibly positive for the care of patients."

#Care2U #HospitalAtHome #ERAtHome #CareAtHome #HealingAtHome #EmpoweredPatient #DigitalHealth #Telehealth #VirtualCare #HealthTech #ValueBasedCare #PopulationHealth #AgingInPlace #ManagedCare #ValueBasedCare #Readmissions #Caregivers #OlderAdults #Geriatric #Elderly#HealthcareInnovation #PatientCare #PatientExperience #HealthcareDelivery #MedicalInnovation #HealthcareCosts #PatientOutcomes

care2U.com

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Patty Hayward, General Manager of healthcare and life sciences at Talkdesk, describes how a hybrid model of humans and AI is reshaping healthcare contact centers. Patient access and revenue cycle management are the primary, interconnected challenges for these centers, and modern large-language AI is being used to handle complex scheduling logic. Data analytics helps identify patterns in patient inquiries, predict demand peaks, and move care from reactive to proactive. The expectation is that AI agents will guide patients, becoming a normal and accepted part of healthcare.

Patty explains, "I think that the challenge has always been in healthcare that it's difficult to automate things in comparison to other industries. If you call retail, it's very hard to get a human. You're constantly dealing with bots or being deflected to digital front doors versus in healthcare, as much as organizations have tried to push people to the digital apps and MyCharts and different things like that, it's been difficult. And there are good reasons, and there are bad reasons for that."

"When you think about scheduling, scheduling really drives your revenue cycle because if people don't come to your organization, you can't bill them for things, you can't bill their insurance. And so your organization has problems with the revenue cycles. That's why I say they're inextricably linked, and it's very important to solve the access problem in order to solve the revenue cycle problem."

"So, making sure that you match that patient with the right provider, making sure that you have the right requirements around insurance authorization and things like that. And then, of course, letting the patient understand what their burden will be as far as the charges go for that appointment is all part of the dance, so to speak. And that really requires a large language model that can consume and understand that information. You're right, the decision trees weren't going to work as far as an AI piece goes."

#Talkdesk #AgenticAI #AIAgents #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Automation #CustomerServiceAutomation #ValuebasedCare #VBC #PatientExperience #MemberExperience #CustomerExperience #Providers #Payers #HealthcareAI #PatientExperience #HealthTech #ContactCenters #AIInHealthcare #DigitalTransformation #HealthcareInnovation #PatientAccess #RevenueOptimization #HealthcareLeadership

talkdesk.com

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Patty Hayward, General Manager of healthcare and life sciences at Talkdesk, describes how a hybrid model of humans and AI is reshaping healthcare contact centers. Patient access and revenue cycle management are the primary, interconnected challenges for these centers, and modern large-language AI is being used to handle complex scheduling logic. Data analytics helps identify patterns in patient inquiries, predict demand peaks, and move care from reactive to proactive. The expectation is that AI agents will guide patients, becoming a normal and accepted part of healthcare.

Patty explains, "I think that the challenge has always been in healthcare that it's difficult to automate things in comparison to other industries. If you call retail, it's very hard to get a human. You're constantly dealing with bots or being deflected to digital front doors versus in healthcare, as much as organizations have tried to push people to the digital apps and MyCharts and different things like that, it's been difficult. And there are good reasons, and there are bad reasons for that."

"When you think about scheduling, scheduling really drives your revenue cycle because if people don't come to your organization, you can't bill them for things, you can't bill their insurance. And so your organization has problems with the revenue cycles. That's why I say they're inextricably linked, and it's very important to solve the access problem in order to solve the revenue cycle problem."

"So, making sure that you match that patient with the right provider, making sure that you have the right requirements around insurance authorization and things like that. And then, of course, letting the patient understand what their burden will be as far as the charges go for that appointment is all part of the dance, so to speak. And that really requires a large language model that can consume and understand that information. You're right, the decision trees weren't going to work as far as an AI piece goes."

#Talkdesk #AgenticAI #AIAgents #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Automation #CustomerServiceAutomation #ValuebasedCare #VBC #PatientExperience #MemberExperience #CustomerExperience #Providers #Payers #HealthcareAI #PatientExperience #HealthTech #ContactCenters #AIInHealthcare #DigitalTransformation #HealthcareInnovation #PatientAccess #RevenueOptimization #HealthcareLeadership

talkdesk.com

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