Hello everyone. I'm Ryan Mohamed, a writer for Becker's Healthcare.
Thank you so much for joining me today on the Becker's Cardiology and Heart
Surgery podcast. As I speak with Dr. Jorge Sao md,
Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin,
and the medical Director of the Heart and Vascular Service line Fred Health.
It's so nice to meet you. How are you today?
I am doing great, thank you.
Absolutely. Well, to begin,
could you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background?
Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I am Jorge Sao. I am the,
uh, chief of the Division of Cardiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
I also serve as the medical Director of the Heart and Vascular Service line for
the Froedert Health System. Uh,
both Froedert and the Medical College are part of a clinical integrated network.
Uh,
I have been in this position for the last four years before I was
the chief cardiology and the co-director of the Cardiovascular Institute
at North Shore, um, University Health System in North Chicago.
I was there for five years. I was trained as a cardiologist.
I am an interventional cardiologist. I still practice, see patients in clinic.
I spend time in the cath lab,
but I spent approximately 50% of my time administering both
the division of cardiology and the heart and vascular service line
at Trader Health System.
Amazing. Thank you so much for that introduction. And you know,
the first real question I wanted to ask you is, with all your experience,
what are the top three biggest issues in cardiology today, do you think?
Well, yeah, that's a great question. You know, we,
we all know that we have, uh, significant challenge challenges,
and we have had many of those over the years. Obviously,
those include grow our core business, uh, cutting costs,
uh,
manage the care across the continuum of
patients, try to bring as much value to health systems as possible.
But you're asking for three, probably more relevant as as of today.
Um, and I would say, uh, those that affect not only cardiology,
but are affecting our, our healthcare, uh, systems and, uh,
and those affect cardiology and, and we're seeing a lot of that. So labor cost,
uh, it is very important. Uh, it has been in our system.
It is all across the country.
And as labor cost increases and the margins of
hospitals and health systems shrink significantly,
there is less capital for investment. So,
um, I would say that, uh,
for the next many months we're going to be seeing a,
I would say, uh,
lower growth in our cardiovascular business because of less available
dollars, uh, which are being spent now on, um,
paying, uh, uh, labor, uh, at, at the higher, uh,
cost. Um, I mean, that is true for, uh, for everything,
for nurses, for techs, for, um,
everybody that works in the hospital. Right? Um, and if you add that to,
you know, to, to inflation, now we are paying labor,
um, higher costs.
Now we are paying also higher prices for many of the things that we're use in
the hospital. And, uh, unfortunately we cannot raise our prices, right? So,
again, unfortunately hospitals are seeing that shrinkage of their margins that,
uh, will affect capital investment. I would say that that's important. Um,
uh, another one I would say, uh,
it is equitable access of to care. Uh, you know,
we have great therapies, we have great drugs, uh, and I could mention, you know,
some of those that are really transforming the way we practice medicine.
Some, some medi medicines that we give to patients with heart failure,
hgl T two inhibitors, for instance, that are, are, uh,
proving to be just medications as good as, as, you know,
20 years or 30 years ago, statins were to lower cholesterol,
but not everybody has access to these medications, right? So, uh,
what is it that we can do to, uh, offer, uh, access,
uh, to those that need it most? So I would say that that is another,
another important, important problem. Um, so,
um, for me, uh, in, in the months to, to come in, the year to come,
it's going to be all about, uh, having, uh,
offering access. Uh, but with the constraints that,
that I mentioned, uh, before, right? We would not have,
we don't have enough staff, We don't have enough providers,
and that's going to constrain our, our, our throughputs.
Yes. Thank you so much for sharing that insight. And to go more in depth about,
you know, cardiology and heart health.
How do you see heart health evolving over the next 18 months or so?
Well, again, it, it depends, right? Uh, and I am speaking more as a, as,
as a health system, as a division, as as a division of cardiology. So what,
what I think it is that, uh,
we will be spending a lot of hours trying to figure things out
on, uh,
providing the right care in the right place,
um, the right time for patients,
definitely doing this at the lower cost, uh,
with a very constrained workforce. So I,
I think that is going to occupy honestly, a lot of our waking hours.
We, we, we are currently doing that.
There is tremendous demand for our services, uh, in, you know,
southeast Wisconsin. Freighter health System is a sy of,
of, of quality. We were, uh,
we are ranking the top five health systems with invis for,
for heart and vascular. We're definitely in the top decile as a health system,
uh, invi.
We re recently were also ranked one of the top 20 hospitals by
Watson on IBM for cardiovascular care, et cetera.
So patients really want to see us. Now, the, the question is,
do we have enough capacity in terms of
the space and, and,
and the team members that are part of our, our care team, uh,
to, to provide the care that patients are requiring? And as I said before, it's,
it's not only nurses, it is, it is technicians and anesthesia, for instance.
It's, it's critical for us. So, uh,
as we have all these stations and all this procedure,
all the procedures or heart surgeries that we want to do,
we're struggling finding, um, being able to staff our, uh,
procedural platform, our ORs are, um,
C B I cs, uh, so we can accommodate the, the,
the patients and, and the demand that exists for our service.
Thank you so much for sharing that. And before I let you go, doctor,
last thing I wanted to ask you is what are you most excited about right now?
And also what is making you nervous in the field?
Yeah, you know, uh, I am,
I am very excited about cardiology in general, right?
I would say it's probably the specialty within medicine that it's always
inventing itself. It's the area in,
in medicine that it's always focusing a lot of innovation.
So we have fantastic therapies that we can offer our patients,
whether it's heart transplant, whether it's ecmo,
whether it's complex coronary interventions, whether it's structural procedures,
electrophysiology procedures.
We have newer drugs that are making our patients with heart failure live longer
and so forth and so on. So I think, um, this is a wonderful time,
uh, to be practicing medicine in terms of the innovation that we have
at hand and the innovation that continues, continues to be,
uh, developed. Uh, so that,
that is exciting and I really feel privileged to be working in this space.
The, the things that give me anxiety are still, are, uh, economic certainties,
right? As I just pointed out. Um, I, I think that,
uh, we can only be as good as, uh,
our health systems are doing well financially as we can
control costs in. So,
in such a way that our hospitals and systems and medical groups and medical
schools continue to meet their margins. Um,
so some of the economic certainties honestly, are, are
things that, uh, worry me most. And,
and one of my passion is just to be able to provide health
care, uh, to all right. And, uh,
we see that there is still a lot of inequity in the, in,
in access to care in general. Uh,
so offering optimal care to
all members of our communities is something that I am passionate about,
and I just hope that we can continue to move the needle in that,
in that direction.
Absolutely. Well, this was such an insightful conversation,
and I wanna thank you so much for sharing your final thoughts, Dr. Cato.
That is all the time I have for you.
So I wanna thank you again for speaking with me and to both listening. Uh,
if you wanna hear more about Becker's Healthcare, please visit our website,
becker hospital review.com. Thank you so much, Doctor.
Thank you. Bye-bye.