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Cast. This is Chanel Banger with the Becker's
Healthcare podcast, and I'm recording live at the
21st annual Spine Orthopedic and Pain Management Driven
ASC plus the Future of Spine Conference. And
right now I'm sitting with doctor Musa, the
CMO and owner of Algon Anchorage Interventional Pain
Clinic. Doctor Musa, thank you so much for
joining me today. Well, thanks for having me.
Perfect. Well, to get us started, could you
please,
share a little bit about your background and
organization?
Alright. Sure. So I'm a board certified anesthesiologist
and interventional
pain physician,
and my practice is actually a multidisciplinary
practice in Anchorage, Alaska, where we focus on
treating pain by the whole spectrum
of care. We provide primary care services.
We provide depression treatment with our psychiatrist and
TMS therapy
as well as virtual physical therapy in addition
to comprehensive pain management.
Perfect. Thank you so much for the introduction.
Now moving forward,
in recent
years, health care costs have increased dramatically.
How has that impacted your work?
Well, increasing costs have been a big problem,
and it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It
happens to the point where we are seeing
it at the point of care
simply experienced by patients where we have patients
who have insurance, who pay premiums every month,
but yet when they come to my office,
they have these co pays instead of just
being 5 or $10.
Some patients may have to pay $50 or
a $100 or their entire visit cost upfront
before they hit their
deductible with their plan. And oftentimes, it can
come as quite a shock where the first
time they learned that they still have to
pay additional
money is at the doctor's office before the
visit.
So it's affected our team where we have
to
really ginger and delicate with that conversation.
Otherwise, it can really erode patient trust in
the health care system.
Absolutely. And kind of building on that, based
on your experience, how has the patient provider
dynamic changed over time?
Yes. So
before,
it used to be very paternalistic
where patients trusted the physician and health care
process
implicitly.
They knew their doctor didn't care about money,
that their doctor only want them to get
better.
Now patients are really jaded. They've been burned
by
their medical bills going to collections or
seeing physicians who only spend 5 minutes with
them and charge them a lot of money.
So now as a doctor, we have to
rebuild that trust by really reestablishing
the doctor patient relationship.
And in our practice, that starts from the
top down where
we look at our patients, not as just
patients, but as people where we listen to
them. We give them a full visit. We
listen to their complaints. We listen to what
brought them into the office. And rather than
just treating them like a algorithm, we treat
each person as an individual,
their complaint as something unique to them. So
we make a customized care plan that really
incorporates all aspects of pain management.
Absolutely. And kind of shifting gears a bit.
From an organizational
standpoint, do you have any strategies in place
aimed at helping bring in new patients or
to improve retention?
Yes. So
because health care costs have gone up so
much as phys as physician offices, especially as
private practice,
our staffing costs have increased significantly
as well. So it's really important that we
leverage technology to
cover the gap between decreased staff and increased
patient demand and accessibility
to providers. So we utilize
our EMR electronic medical record and multiple avenues
of communicating with patients via text message, email,
electronic document signing,
televisits. So we can leverage technology so patients
can interact with our clinic. So if they
don't need to speak to a physician face
to face, their request can still be answered
whether they send us a text message,
a email, or and especially log on to
their patient portal, which gives them a lot
of their own information. So quick access to
health records,
such as last procedures,
imaging. They can see all of that on
the comfort of their smartphone without having to
call the clinic. So it gives patients a
lot more control in their care and allows
them to be much more invested in their
entire treatment plan.
Got it. And that brings us perfectly to
my next question.
Understanding that a large part of health care
is customer service based, how does that patient
experience impact your staff,
and have they felt the effects of degraded
level of trust in health care workers?
Yeah. So that that's
a very important question and issue that goes
back to trust because
a patient
is a patient, but they're also a customer
now. So as a physician, you're now their
provider. You're treating them, but you also have
to make sure you meet their expectations. So
it's a really
delicate balance where now, again, we focus on
the person, making a personable interaction
where all of our staff from the moment
you're greeted from front desk to the moment
you meet the medical assistant who takes your
vitals, you meet the provider, or you meet
the checkout staff, everybody's greeted with the salutation
as mister or missus. We smile. We make
eye contact so we can let people know
that we actually see you. But at the
same time, we have to balance it because,
you know, a doctor's office is not Burger
King. You can't just tell your doctor, oh,
I went on Google and I have this
diagnosis on the ABC. You need to explain
to the patient that, yes, we are in
the information age and everybody
possible
comprehensive care that you can receive. So it's
a delicate balance of listening to patients, making
sure they know that they are heard, but
also realizing that
the customer is not always right because this
isn't fast food. This is health care, and
we spent many years trying to figure out
how to treat patients. So we take your
complaints into
account, but we really focus on providing you
the best care possible.
Got it. And looking ahead, if the macroeconomic
challenges of health care do not change, how
do you anticipate the industry will evolve?
So that's the $1,000,000 question in the US
and health care in general
is that
insurance costs are increasing,
but insurance doesn't necessarily mean access to care.
There are plenty of patients who have insurance,
but they can't see a doctor for 3
months. They have insurance, but they can't see
a specialist, or they can't receive the medication
because their insurance plan will only cover a
different type. So we're
if this trend continues, we're going to see
the development of a 2 tier system where
there will be people who have insurance,
but they don't have access so they receive
sub standard care. And then you'll see another
trend where you have people who have access
and means where it's going to be more
of a concierge model where they're going to
completely forego insurance for the common complaints so
they can have ready access to physicians and
receive the care that their physician prescribes them,
not the care that their insurance company
allows them.
Got it. Well, doctor Musa, I wanna thank
you for your time today. But before I
let you go, is there anything else that
listeners should know?
Well, at Algonquin Interventional Pain Clinic, we are
truly the leaders at providing cutting edge and
compassionate care to both
regular patients, to our veterans, and all of
our people who enjoy active lifestyle. And I
would encourage anybody who requires medical care in
Anchorage to really check us out because you
won't find a better place to receive care.
Absolutely. Well, doctor Musa, I wanna thank you
once again for your time today and for
joining me on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. All
right. Thank you so much.