In the twelfth episode of Telehealth Heroes, we interview Dion Rambo, the CEO of Telehealth Van in Los Angeles, California. Tune in to learn about Rambo’s creative solution to the problem of providing care to underserved communities, from the first single house call to over 5000 individual calls in one year.
Episode Transcript
Brandon:
On today’s episode of the tele-health heroes podcast, I am joined by Dion Rambo, the founder of tele-health van and shin that helps bridge the digital divide for hearts reach populations in the LA area. Dion, thank you. Welcome to the show. My man. Tell us about the Telehealth Van you’ve started.
Dion Rambo:
Well telehealth and we’ll start it about a year and a half ago. It spun from my original company that I still kind of run, Rambo House, which I’ve been over 13 years and tele-health van is primarily just M a conduit to help a lot of the medical therapy therapists, the doctors, the clinics, and especially a lot of my clients, which are the kind of the domestic violence agencies, the mental health agencies, et cetera, meet with their clients. So we’re not necessarily an Uber that people could just call us and have a van brought up to them. We’re really scheduled by the doctors themselves, our contracts with agencies themselves. And we simply go to their clients, their patients, if you will, and just add a virtual virtual access for them to be able to meet them virtually.
Brandon:
So, so tell me a little bit about this, this patient population. They have a hard time coming into a clinic. So this is a way of going to where the people are. Tell us about this population.
Dion Rambo:
Well, we call them in Los Angeles. We call them kind of the low income and unhoused, right? These are the ones who, you know, not that they don’t have a car or don’t have transportation. It’s just the likelihood of getting them to come receive the service. Isn’t the top priority on the list, you know, unless they’re trying to get their medication, it’s really not the top priority on the list. So, especially in LA, it’s important to say that this came about because of the COVID pandemic, right? Where there was no more transportation, the lockdown, et cetera. And you still had the mental health numbers were rising. The, the suicide, the deaths to domestic violence started rising. And it has to do with a lot of different factors. People were forced to be enclosed in one environment and in the minority community, which a lot of our, our clients take care of the black and brown, the special community, you know, they’re forced to now spend more time together, right?
Dion Rambo:
So they’re dealing with things that they haven’t had to deal with before. So kids are starting to understand, wait a second, wait a second, mom, daddy, you’re not as smart as I thought you were, because now they’re new. That they’re the teachers. And so now the, and then a lot of the women are forced to, especially the ones who are unhoused, therefore to now live with the violent men, just for shelter. So we’re getting a lot of these different things that started growing when COVID and kind of unbalanced unboxed to all of this, what the tele-health van did was we offered a solution where they didn’t have to leave at all. You know, when we first started creating the tele-health van, we were trying to think of, maybe it shouldn’t be a van. Maybe we should send software into their homes. And maybe, but when you consider the demographic that we’re dealing with sending an iPad to these type of homes, wasn’t a good idea.
Dion Rambo:
It wouldn’t be a good idea, right? Which is what a lot of our agency did instead. And also we dealt with a lot of the foster industry, the foster care kids who to give you an understanding of the foster care industry. A lot of them come from the foster care industry and they’re put into jails, or they’re put into young prostitution, et cetera, because they’re forced to be in home and enclosed in areas. And they’re unable to say help, help. So the vans became that place where people can leave from where they are going into the van and say, help get me out of here. Or I, this was like a safe place, completely a safe place. And that’s what made telehealth even more popular. We didn’t know. We just thought they were going to just be meeting. And our clients were just going to do duals and mental health things. Not at all these low income populations, the things that they’re dealing with psychologically, and you seeing them kind of roam through the streets, especially with the jails being closed. You’re getting more people who need to see someone and we need to make it as easy as possible for them to meet their health.
Brandon:
So let’s go back a year and a half before you launched the first van, what was the, what was the, the initial inception of this problem that you were trying to solve? What was the problem that came to you that somebody asks you to solve and, and tell me where that, that whole process started?
Dion Rambo:
Okay. Well, one of my, as Rambo house Rambo house is a religious, a communications company. And we do about 30 events a year. And these events are from new. I said, these are large events. These are 2,500 persons events. We were also in charge of like a lot of community events, everything that had to do with health and art in the communities. And these are also large events, 800 to 5,000 people. Okay. So with this happening and, and that’s having that type of reach from the political side and from the community side, when COVID hit and the, they were unable to kind of connect, right? That the mental health agencies that were funded from the county were unable to connect with the community. Right. And of course, I’m sure a lot of your clients know that’s how a lot of the billing happens, right. For them to stay open, they have to meet with them. So we became popular, right? We created something that says, no worries. Your therapist can stay at home. They’re unsure about the environments from COVID, et cetera. Anyway. And the vans kind of became this conduit in between the house was able to do,
Brandon:
So, so these social services, these different clinics, they’re there, they’re funded by the city or the state or the government to provide services to these low income and, or under housed individuals. And they get paid by how many services they provide. But when COVID hit, you saw less people coming in and it’s already hard enough to get these people to come out and it’s just made it even harder. So, right. Th th these social services groups really had to be creative and think outside the box, how do we get these people? Because our funding is dependent on it. And they come to you because you’re an expert on working with this population to come up with something. Yeah. It was the van, the initial idea, or what, what was the steps along the way to go from, okay, we have this problem to a van with a computer and it driving around is the best solution.
Dion Rambo:
You know, honestly, I had an, I had an interview one time and, and first of all, I’m honored to be here. I really do interviews only because I just really want to stay focused on my mission type of thing. And I, to make sure I didn’t start, you know, getting, you know, filling the glamorous. Thanks. I really appreciate the opportunity. So as soon as I heard of you guys, especially the doxy side, not necessarily as podcast with the doxy side, I was honored. Right. I just saw that. I wasn’t, I didn’t know how the rules worked, right? So you take someone who don’t understand how the game works. We come with all the answers because we’re w and I used my own funds, right? Rambo house was pretty successful. So to create a whole nother company, I, wasn’t afraid to put my, to bet on my understanding of what a bridge to gap.
Dion Rambo:
And that’s what kind of created the multimillion dollar company we have now, which is tele-health was because I knew that the bridge was needed. And those in the kind of a corporate side, the board of directors, the boats that were too big to move to the board of directors in these lead agencies, or et cetera, who couldn’t do it. Right. They didn’t have the budget, right. It just kind of created this niche for us to just slide in and do it because we didn’t operate on the same rules that they had to do. And one van went to a fleet.
Brandon:
That’s amazing. So you, you decided, he came up with this idea said, Hey, let’s put a computer in a van drives where the patient is, what was that first visit? Like, what did you guys learn from
Dion Rambo:
The first visit? Oh my gosh. I think there were two landmark visits. Two first landmark visits. One was when we first, I followed them myself. So the first visit that we had, I just, we just call it a pilot, I think for the first 30 days. And it was a black family who lived in a motel. So you had about five people in the family living in this one room hotel. Wow. And the van pulls up, young black kids comes down kind of like 16, you know, a little rough around the edges, just because they were living in this one room, really dirty clothes. The mom’s kinda telling behind him, curious about why he’s getting into this van drivers stands there. He simply gets in, the mother, stands on the outside and then the door opens and then she’s called to come inside with him.
Dion Rambo:
So he, she comes inside the door closes, and I’m looking and nothing’s happening. And I’m wondering, oh my God, I hope this idea is going to work. I hope it’s not, no, I’m not angry. And then he’d come out crying, both, come out crying, which is rare. These are strong individuals, right. They come out crying and they tell the driver, they told them, and sharp is there to write my client. Southern California health and rehabilitation. They’re there. They run to the family. Hey, what’s, what’s going on? You guys. Okay. Did it work out? They went, my son hasn’t had anyone to talk to in six months. And this is the first time he was able to vent his problems and we get it. But anyway, that was landmark for me because although I was, oh, I knew it would work. You know, I really, you know, no one’s ever done it before, nothing before, but I had neck like Kobe, like, oh, of course the shot was going in, but I was sitting there like little hope.
Dion Rambo:
This thing goes. And that family today, now has a house. That family went through the program. They qualified for all, from seeing their therapist and their doctors and their caseworkers every week, they kept with it because it made it easy for them while they were dealing with life and dealing with the abuse and dealing with unemployment, the van made it easy. The van was just had one consistent thing. That was one of my largest because now they actually have a home. We have, we have actually been honored for that. The one that happened most recent is we just got a contract with Hart, Don, California, like the city of heart Dawn, which is a pretty big deal about a four year deal. Every single day, they have three vans adding cabinets and cabinets of course are where homelessness. Oh yeah. So we have vans out encampments.
Dion Rambo:
And then we’re doing vans for what’s called a diversion program, which is keeping, keeping people out of jail. Right. Anyway, the vans that are adding Catlins our first visit with that is landmark too, because the woman who came was running from an abuser. And so Oracle is building our software. Oracle is building our database and they’re actually donating their time on building it just because no one’s ever done this before. So Oracle is building our database. So I just happened to be on a zoom call, Oracle. And I hear this lady walk up to this. So my, my people at any other office are talking on, on virtual. Hey, how are you? It’s okay. And she’s you see this little Mexican they going, hello? Hello. You know, and then, you know, the therapist comes onto the screen. And then, so I’m on with Oracle and it’s such a serious point, but I’m like trying to show her like, oh my God, oh my God, the vans are parked in the homeless, her coming. And she’s talking about, she’s running from a domestic violence abuser, et cetera, et cetera. But anyway, now she’s in a shelter. So that first visit that we did with the, the, the motel there in a home, and that first guest who was running from their abuser, they lived on the street is now being qualified to move into a shelter. So she just came back and told us that last week. So that’s been an awesome landmark Fox.
Brandon:
I mean, it’s, it’s such a little thing. It’s almost like no brainer. Right. But you do it. And you, you go in and you’re impacting people’s lives. And it had had, you have just been like, oh, Hey, this is the way it’s done. You know, this new way. Those people probably still be in a hotel or that woman’s still be in an abusive relationship. But by the little things that you’re doing, simple solutions can make a huge impact in people’s lives, which is amazing.
Dion Rambo:
And I shared the information. So it’s, I don’t really look at it. Like, it’s my billion dollar idea. Like Oracle calls us, Oracle calls us it in the mirror and they call it, they called us a, they call us a like, we’re launching a software company or something that all think we’re. But to, to us in our office, when we’re sitting around the board table in we’re strategizing, we’re physically trying to figure out how do we save lives? So hints is why we just daily. This is, this is me dressing up today. I actually put this shirt on and my staff you’re dressing up too, because we’re serious. Only thing that we’re focused on is what resources can we do. And I think that’s what tele-health is about. I think if telehealth can be looked at differently, the way we’re looking at it, we’re not looking at telehealth as we don’t look at tele, we look at telehealth as a resource to reach the right person.
Dion Rambo:
So if we, since we look at it as a resource to reach the right person, it can be via a phone. It can be via an I pad. It can be via a person who comes up so that the demographic that you’re going after it’s about their capabilities. So it’s less about the telehealth industry that seemed to be growing in. It’s more about w what, how can you reach the demographic that when they use their cell phone it’s databased so they can actually do FaceTime because it’s going to eat their data up. No one thinks of the low-income in the, what those in the accountant does no electricity. So they’re choosing, do I take this therapy session? And she’s a talker, you know, or do I save that? Do I save it because we might need to order food or, or I need this. Like, those are things that aren’t considered, right? So people are just seeing the tele-health as a tele-health powerhouse. It isn’t, it’s not tele-health does not exist fruitfully within a lot of the low income and unhoused community.
Brandon:
So you started with a van and he’d started as a pilot. He said, wow, this is actually working. We’re solving problems. And you’re, you’re different agencies who are contracted with, you were saying, Hey, this is great. We’re able to connect with people. How did it start to grow from one to how many vans do you have now?
Dion Rambo:
I have a little bit over 2020.
Brandon:
So you grew from one to 20 vans and just about a year and a half. Talk about that journey from going from one pilot to turn into a full scale business with 20 vans.
Dion Rambo:
Well, I know when we just ordered another seven, it’s amazing. Yeah, my strategy, right? My, my and I don’t bill Medi-Cal or Medicaid, which we could start. We’ve been offered it many times. Hospitals have told us all the time, Hey, w you can bill Medi-Cal Medicaid with the clients that we send, but we decided to do a different route right now, which has really just focused on how do we keep things, price, where it’s low enough, where our clients can stay open, right? We need the doctors, the therapists, et cetera, and our families can see who they need to see. So I think keeping that type of attention based on lasting versus growing has been a good strategy for us. For example, we make sure that we’re not in debt. We make sure that we can afford the vans or not. And then that way we don’t have to stretch ourselves too much with trying to meet the demand because our overhead tide, Nope, we’re not in debt.
Dion Rambo:
We make sure that when we receive the profits that we receive, let’s pay off our debt to make sure that we can last. And so we, we have a different type of methodology on how we’ve been able to grow and expand. We don’t buy other vans until the, the old ones are paid off, no matter how successful we are, no matter what contracts we have coming, I’ve been approached by four investors so far who I’ve had meetings, and I’m just excited to meet them, but we haven’t even taken that yet because we want to stay focused on keeping things controllable.
Brandon:
I think that’s the best advice that I could give is just, don’t be distracted by everything else, focus on the problem. And just only do that. And you’ll be successful if you, if you keep that focus
Dion Rambo:
And understanding your community, know people are great at what they do, but they don’t understand their community. And it’s like walking into a room with a sign, right? So if, if I’m a black male and I put on this sign on for black, you know, and I put that up. When I walk into this large room, well, as I walk into this large room, I’m only going to kind of attract what I’m used to. I need to look at the sign and go, okay, who else can I help with this same system? Kind of write them on there and then learn about them. Oh, they don’t like black ink. This population loves yellow ink. You know? And I, I pay attention to that, oh, this population, yellow ink is bad. So they’re only going to need blue. Once I do that and I put the sign up and I walk out, I’m more sensitive to who I’m advertising to. I think that’s important versus making everyone go you better like black ink, you better record. That’s what I’ve been doing for 30 years. I think now the whole brick it’s open to virtual. We really need to be considerate of what makes them comfortable.
Brandon:
Right? It’s not about you and what you want. It’s about them and what they want. And if you can hit what they want, you’re going to be successful. If you don’t then.
Dion Rambo:
Yeah. And then bet down on it, then bet down on it. Right. Bet down on it. I’m trying to get one of my things in LA is really trying to get more because I’m over 20,000 small businesses in LA as well. One of my goals is to get more just minorities, black, brown, and others, to get more involved in tele-health right. This is the future. This isn’t even the future. This is here. Things aren’t going to change. Job levels would never go on employment. Overall in LA specifically would never go back to where it was. Digital is here. So it’s one of those things where we really have to start considering teaming with the larger companies that are more established, who has those signs and say, Hey, I’m great at I’m great at yellow, I’m great at yellow and team with them and work together on kind of demonstrating the opportunities that they could. And these are opened up new markets, Medi-Cal Medicaid, Medicare, et cetera. They don’t care. They just, if you qualify for certain insurances, you qualify for certain insurances. Meaning if you can go now and just team with these people, billing is billing, right? Financial, but billing is billing. When it comes to them, our goal is go get more of these people. Let’s save more people. So that’s, that’s my philosophy that we do here at the office.
Brandon:
So you, so you guys get contracts with the different healthcare providers. Is that your primary, I guess, source of revenue for,
Dion Rambo:
Well, for the last year, for the last year, it was mental health agencies. You know, the
Brandon:
Agencies would fund
Dion Rambo:
You guys to get agencies would. So we found this really unique spot because remember a lot of the mental health agencies they’re usually funded from what’s called like department of mental health or department of social worker, social services, right. DPSS things like that. They would fund agencies based on how many families. So let’s say you had a contract for a $60 million, your $60 million was based on how many people you’re meeting. Right? So you’re meeting, you’re meeting a hundred people and that’s going to equate to $60 million budget. So without you meeting them, you might not get your entire 60 million because you only met with out of a hundred. You only met with 40, right. Which is what would happen. Right. So that’s how we were getting contract. The problem is they didn’t have a budget for a van, right. You only have a budget based on per person. So what we were able to kind of slide into is where outreach. So the tele-health event marketed itself, where we’re not tapping into your contract where the outreach that you have to do to reach that person. So we fit into that line item called outreach. And because we fit into the line item called outreach, they could use us and it was billable. Gotcha. And so we don’t need to know the people’s names. They just put them in, they could put them as John Doe, but we’re considered outreach, like, like doing an event.
Brandon:
And so, and then for every visit you, do you get paid per that visit?
Dion Rambo:
Nope. Per day. We’re
Brandon:
Not just going out and driving.
Dion Rambo:
We just going around to there, they schedule in the 10 to 20, isn’t this fascinating. And it says, we just, we, we, they have, they owned the van. We, I got the idea from what Rambo house did have a house is an outsourced marketing department. I made up Rambo house while I was homeless. Like how can I always be used forever versus always looking for that. And I created the outsourced support. And that’s the same thing with the tele-health van. We’re simply a turnkey, outsourced support, meaning when they hire the tele-health van, when they get that one van, that one van has a driver, the entire technology, I, all the vans are equipped with solar now to make sure, you know, I can control the cans for example, but that one van has everything that you need for your therapists to meet. That’s it. Right.
Dion Rambo:
It’s changed a little bit now, though, to be honest with you, like the way the, the way we doing on the military basis and the way that we’re doing now with the encampments, we’re providing the mental health therapist, we’re providing the medical insurance support. So this is the first time ever. We’re hiring people full time to be the therapists to be, because now that we’re getting contracts from cities and now they’ll be getting contracts from cities and counties, they don’t have those specialists. They have the budgets to deal with the challenges. Right? Right. It’s like having COVID money, they have COVID money to give the vaccination shots, but they might not necessarily have the people who can execute it. And so that’s happened in space or whatever, or the space, et cetera, which is, which is like our, our military support is they don’t necessarily have the space or the rooms to do it in the vans. Just kind of slide in there and the guests can just walk in and out. So,
Brandon:
So does the agency like having fan dedicated to them or is it just part of the pool and just like, Hey
Dion Rambo:
Yeah, they have their own van. Cause one was about our community, just the low-income and the unhoused community in general is repetition. And they need to see the same person over and over again to trust
Brandon:
The driver and the van stay the same. And they S they continue to see the same people,
Dion Rambo:
Great families. Like they stay in the same areas in the same council districts for the same Columbia. And that’s what made them comfortable. And, you know, when they see the driver, you know, when they come out of their tent or come out of their campers, or when they come from their apartments, they’re seeing the driver that they’d been seeing for the last year, six months. And that’s, what’s giving them that it’s okay to get in it. And the dry events don’t go anywhere. Right. So they’re just sitting there the whole time, while they’re meeting with the therapist could change the agencies. They know that’s one thing that people don’t understand about the minority community is in the sixties and seventies and probably early eighties, the minority community were always used to having their own doctor. They trusted because they operated just within their little, few blocks.
Dion Rambo:
That’s no more, a lot of the larger companies have kind of acquired them. So if someone in Los Angeles to go to a doctor, doctor, they would have to go all the way to Kaiser, or they would have to go all the way to these hospitals. Right? So there’s this timeframe that we’ve lost this immediate, what telehealth van did is tele-health van kind of gave them that consistency again. So you could have whatever doctor on, on the inside, but the community loves seeing that driver. They knew, they knew the technology was going to be there. You can pop up, you could pop a caseworker up, you could pop, pop a domestic violence person up, or a therapist. They knew they were going. The van said it’s okay. So it must be okay. So I had that from a marketing standpoint, and that helped us stand out with the consistency and building up more vans as well, that consistency. So
Brandon:
The driver, they trained, are they, are they like a social worker? Are they like a nurse? Or is it just some random person that knows how to drive?
Dion Rambo:
Well, we do have medical assistant drivers. We haven’t, we never had to use that. We were kind of, so we, we paid as if we’re paying a medical assistant to be in an office. We’re paying the same rates as the drivers. And ironically a lot of the medical assistant drivers that we have were, were actually homeless. So we went, we teamed up with pathways to bring their homeless community. People who had the resumes of the, you know, they’re maybe currently unhoused, but they were former medical assistants. So they’re still certified in those areas. You know what one of the drivers right now is what’s homeless for five years, we brought her on. And because we have the agency that we have, she knows the community, she knows her, et cetera. And now she, you know, she has her own condo. And I thought it was like less than six months later.
Dion Rambo:
And we have this new, so that’s one of the things that we’re not afraid to do is hire the unhoused community to work for us and give them some stability. The second thing that we do, which is pretty unique, I’m 20 with it right now, though, to be honest is I don’t want to hire based on race. So we bought a translation system and we’re coming up with the manual. So they were able, people can communicate with each other before they get into the van. Now their therapists and doctors may know them one-on-one, but I don’t want to hire my drivers just based on race. If they can pass the background, check that they could pass all of these key things, they shouldn’t be chosen just because of their skin color, whichever color it is. As long as they have translation items that are available right now, to be able to communicate, making them safe, getting in. Because once they built the relationship up with them, with that translation device, they’ll trust Lisa, you know, cause they know Lisa is going to make sure that when they get out, they’re going to get their little sucker and they can, which is actually very, very popular. Giving a sucker is interesting.
Dion Rambo:
You would think give it a separate win. I think, I think we only had a few occasions. They were like, oh no, I’m diabetic. But usually people love the that I got when my mom used to take us to the clinics. But when you’re young, are you always, and we don’t have a sucker this and that’s so simple, but that’s one of those things that’s on the sign that when you put the color that they want a sucker, they look forward to they’ll meet. They’ll do their whole hour therapy session just to have that sucker. We get out. So we give those out to,
Brandon:
Oh, that’s incredible.What do the drivers do during the session?
Dion Rambo:
They wait outside. They
Brandon:
Wait outside, just hang outside and wait,
Dion Rambo:
But a covered chair, comfortable with a tent and everything. And the entire time they’re outside.
Brandon:
Wow.
Dion Rambo:
Okay. But the drivers and the drivers just wait outside. When the session’s over the client on the inside, simply pushes a button. The doors automatically open. They walk out, receive their sucker, receive their stamp because they want their groceries. They want this to count
Brandon:
Their
Dion Rambo:
Stamp. They leave until next week or in a few days, then the drivers simply goes in PPE and cleans the space completely net to tear it out and goes to the next stop.
Brandon:
Oh, that’s amazing. And they have a schedule like, Hey, you gotta be this here this time. They
Dion Rambo:
Oh, the calendar, the calendar every day is, and now they have their same clients. Right? So keeping that because AB just continue to continually see their therapist. And now they’re spoiled is spoiled. They’re spoiled because now the clients, they don’t want to leave their house. It’s really hard to get them now to get back on trains or somebody in their family to take them. It’s actually harder now because they love the consistency of all I have to do with walkout, with my rollers in my head. And I have to do my session and I can go back inside. It’s much easier to bring up your visitation rates based on that.
Brandon:
Yeah. Yup.
Dion Rambo:
And this actually works well, honestly, I’m with high-end clients, people who need high-end clients, people who need to check up on their, if they got a facelift or if they got any texts or if they got, if they need to check on their diabetes levels or things like that, this actually works well with them because it definitely the older population, but definitely those wealthy, they would love to have a high end quality private vehicle that came to them. Especially if it’s just for checkups, if it’s just, they don’t have to. These high-end like, like me with people who have their time is valuable. It’s hard to make your whole day around that visit. One hour visit is really a three-hour day, right? Getting ready the whole nine. So the van makes it much easier. I would rather have a tele-health van pull up outside of my office for me to do my, my, my meeting and could come back in and keep doing what I do then having the schedule with my wife
Brandon:
And maybe for the high end clients, you have a telehealth limos shows up.
Dion Rambo:
I know I was thinking about that. We had a, we had immediate, we had a meeting with, I think they were a, I forgot what kind of company it was. It was Beverly Hills. And they took me to a very different type of meeting. Took me to lunch the whole nine and asked me, can we make a tele-health van for these high net worth clients, especially the older ones. Right? They wanted to send her quality, you know, they can step in beautiful conditioning and screens are a little bit larger, you know, and you can just simply just have a quiet plush meeting, seeing how they are. How’s your blood pressure been? Have you been getting dizzy or let me see, how’s that going? How this going? Yeah. We’ve been getting that a lot to transitioning into the more exclusive high-end side. So we’ve been thinking about doing that too. We may, we may pull off some pilot clients and give that a try.
Brandon:
So what is your plan for the future of the tele-health fan?
Dion Rambo:
They’re going to be more tele-health vans from other companies who, who are going to probably look at us as competitors, but we don’t look at that. We look at if you’re saving the community, save the community, how you use your profit margin is up to you, but let’s just save as many people as we can. Our goal is to be in as many cities as we can until we’re kind of overtaken. And that’s, that’s. My mission is to cook tele-health van in every city that we can right now we’re in about five, which is pretty good considering
Brandon:
Area
Dion Rambo:
Like LA county area. Well not, but today when we signed the contract, we’re now going to be in different states to Wisconsin, Virginia, and some others like that. Sure. Now we’re going to have those other six states, the three where we’re deploying now, the vans too, in the whole system. So now we’re able to, to expand and spread, I think in about a year, about thinking about to two years to two and a half years, we’re probably to be a little bit over maybe 150 vans. We’ll also have virtual systems. That’ll be in place. We’re moving pretty fast. And the way we positioned ourselves we’ll were pretty fast to work, kind of in a, in a conjunction with people who are already established. We’re not trying to be doctors. We just simply want to make sure the doctors do meet their patients,
Brandon:
Right. Connects to the patients where they’re at,
Dion Rambo:
That’s it. And we just happen to be where they are that we just happened to be where they are. So we make it easy.
Brandon:
So I understand the use docs to me as the telemedicine platform, how did you come across, dox me and decide, Hey, this is a good fit. And, and what’s your experience been
Dion Rambo:
Well for us with doxy me. That’s what started tele-health van sharp, Southern California health and rehabilitation. And some of our other clients we’re using doxy me gotcha. In their offices. But the tele-health Ben was able to do. We learned from how the doxy MES system, the, the link worked with choosing the doctors, et cetera. It just made it easy for my drivers because doxy me allowed the drivers. When, when the agencies put that set up, doxy me for the agency, they kind of put in there where all the doctors can simply be dropped down of information. The driver, when the vans would kind of remember the regular people would live here, agencies and our doctors would be here. The van just simply went in and was able to just click on which doctor visit they had and all the information was there already. And that’s, that was the first van we’ve ever had. And that’s probably all the vans that we have currently the doc DME system.
Brandon:
Right? So, so like, you know, the, the driver knows that, oh, Jane, she’s going to meet with Dr. Smith. And so that the driver gets the patient all set up, checks, doc checks the patient in to the right room, says, here you go. And then the patient walks in and sits down and ready to see the provider right there. This was a patient doesn’t really have to do anything. They just,
Dion Rambo:
Nothing, nothing. The patient gets in once the patient gets in. And in fact, the doxy me link is, was simply just in Google. It wasn’t a complicated piece. We just, you know, once you went there, doc seems pretty much set up easy anyway. But once I clicked it, they popped up through the screen or they accept it right. Popped onto the screen, check the volume, check the volume. Okay, good luck. Close the door. And that was it. The kind of the transition time of them getting in and the doctor or therapist or the caseworker being selected. It’s literally less than three minutes.
Brandon:
Yeah. I can imagine super quick in and out now, do you have a laptop set up or how, how, what is the actual device that you use in the van?
Dion Rambo:
And that was just a large computer monitor.
Brandon:
Oh, that’s all, it is just a computer monitor. But,
Dion Rambo:
But I must say, I thought it was going to be that easy too. But when you turn the vans off, what’s the computer plugged into. So the technology I had to really rewire the entire van that we had to convert all of the technologies and all the vans. If the vans running with gas, being about four 50 or something in LA, you could imagine hints as why we had to invest in solar so we could turn the fans off and they still have the electricity in the, the electrical support that all the system needs. We had to even change how the, the comfort of the van, because they’re going to be sitting in there for a while, right. To make them feel like you’re at home. So we had to change all these things of even the sound, right? In most cases we give away, like we got it from err, err, err, err, err trips or air travels when you have your two.
Dion Rambo:
Yeah. So we had to buy the ones with the microphones, just in case they just wanted to be away from the screen and still be. So we had to kind of incorporate it. We lost a lot of them. We ain’t even had even had to learn. And we even had to learn and lose money on what software work, the best would wifi system work the best with the whole five GS with the member for the last few months, the internet kind of drops in and out. We had to do all of that. And so we’re kind of just building that whole system up together. We’ve lost funds on it, but it’s been such a fun ride because right now we have no competition. So it’s been such a fun ride because we’re able to fix things and change things up in real time and not lose a beat.
Brandon:
Right. Right. Andy create a better experience. So it’s, it’s fascinating that you are thinking about the inside environment because you know, it’s essentially a mobile clinic room and you, you don’t need two layers of seats when you’re doing a visit with one person. So strip out that first layer of seats and then make it more comfortable on the sound. And it’s very fascinating with the, the, the computer and the monitor. You have, it needs power. Southern California is great. It’s got a lot of sun. You can do solar there. W what other things do you look at looking to tweak or optimize within the vans,
Dion Rambo:
Within the vans? Other things that we look at to make it more of a comfortable experience is of course the tent, right? Keeping it dark enough where they
Brandon:
Can, people can’t
Dion Rambo:
See it or whatever you can’t see in. So behind the drivers, I’ve seen other vans that are similar and they’re not that detailed. But with me with kind of a marketing background in a community background, I know I need them to only see that face, not see anyone walking by and not see, you know, they know that their friend, the driver is outside. They love Lisa, Lisa got their back and they could just spend the entire time and vent to that one face. So it’s not like we just tossed a computer in. I think we tried to do that in the beginning, but it just wasn’t really engaging to save money, but it just wasn’t really engagement. The floors had to be converted to make sure they’re more comfortable on the floors. You know, the thing about I’m lucky because I don’t own a physical hospital.
Dion Rambo:
And so what I would like to see happen is I would like to see the best doctor for the job, not just the only doctor there. And I think that’s what telehealth is going to eventually evolve into. Who’s the best doctor who could deal with diabetes for this type of woman who has these type of illnesses along with it. And they might be in Miami. They might be in long beach. And that’s what I hope the evolution of digital turns into is the best doctor for the job can meet that person. Right. That’s great doctor for the right person. Yeah. That’s it. That’s really what I would like to see the best job guest caseworker for the job to meet the person best this. Well, you know, they might be in a hole, it might be in Europe, right. We know how to deal with cancer, that type of cancer for that type of human being.
Dion Rambo:
That’s what I’m, I hope in my lifetime, I can see the evolution of that. My dad, my father just died actually what, two weeks ago. And yeah. And it’s that type of same situation. Right? I created one of the reasons I created the tele-health van was also for my mom who had diabetes. And she was inside saying, I just waited for my doctor. I don’t know how to use this. How do you use this? I try to show her, I’m trying to run my company. I’d say, mom is easy. Call me FaceTime advocate. Can’t do that out of you. They’d go. But doctor told me I had, so I said, mom, one day I’m a creative van. That’s going to pull her front and it pulled down and you could see a diabetes doctor or something. Is it going to be my doctor or somebody who know what they doing? And then I thought I get it.
Brandon:
She gets it. She gets it.
Dion Rambo:
I was like, I need to one day see that evolution of that type of system in place. So I hope the tele-health vet itself is kind of a part of that evolution. I hope doctor offices and clinics alike can now start hiring just the
Brandon:
Best people for the job versus who’s just local. And they can leverage the, they can leverage the telehealth industry to kind of be their hand. So that’s what I hope happened in my life. Right? And a lot of, a lot of folks are limited by such a convenient sample. What providers closest to me, that’s all I get access to. But with telehealth, there’s really no reason that the care’s become just as good as a person. So why not? Right now you get people who are hyper specialized, seeing these people all the time, instead of just being like, oh, this is a patient I see once a year, like I do this.
Dion Rambo:
And it definitely opens up, come up, financials, thigh right now, these doctors and clinics. When I think doctors and clinics offices should look at their office as kind of a corporate office of medical management, not the actual. So just to make that up, that’s actually a good idea. It’s kind of a corporate office of medical management. You can have a hundred doctors and therapists, et cetera, because now when the patient walks through the door, they should be able to see who’s best for them, not just working that day, especially when you dealing with a prenatal care and preventative care, right. It’s less about if they’re overworked and busy and it’s. So if you had, if you kind of incorporated this in the beginning meeting with these virtual sites, which my job is to get my community used to it, I’m going to, I’m going to work hard at getting my people like my mom, comfortable and more used to the virtual war world because they’re meeting better people, they’re meeting people. They don’t have to explain that cough to, they’ve heard that cough a hundred times and this is what they do. This is how you fix it. So I think that if medical office is considered transitioning, instead of trying to force telehealth into their office, they become tele-health. They become tele-health, it can open up more opportunities and more professionals for every single client that they, that comes through the door.
Brandon:
That’d be awesome. And the, the, the type of work you’re doing, you’re, you’re building that future that you envision one van at a time really,
Dion Rambo:
And exactly
Brandon:
One at a time, one at a time that eventually you’ve done it. And so I think it’s phenomenal work that you’re doing so Rambo. Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been a fascinating conversation and I really hope and support the mission you guys are doing. It’s it’s our, our mission with doxy is to make telemedicine available to all. And you are truly serving a segment of the population who has had a hard time getting access to telemedicine. So we are behind you 110%.
Dion Rambo:
I appreciate it. And this is my first ever podcast, but that’s how much you hate what you guys are doing, how you doing it. And so I’m really honored on many levels from the doxy. Me, just in general for you guys, my first to, to what you tried to do in terms of that mission of tele-health us becoming, tele-health not just incorporating it into our philosophy. So thank you so much for your time too.
