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Join us for a podcast that explores the inspiring stories of individuals who are using telemedicine in extraordinary ways.

Follow the Telehealth Heroes podcast to learn about everyday healthcare providers doing extraordinary things with telemedicine.

S2 Ep6 - Improving Access and Controlling Costs with Shawn Valenta

Until recently, it was widely accepted that when more people use healthcare services, costs inevitably go up. In his role as Administrator of Telehealth at the Medical University of South Carolina, Shawn Valenta, MHA, discovered that telehealth, when administered effectively, can improve healthcare quality and access while also decreasing costs. He shares his journey from respiratory therapist to telehealth leader in this interview.

Telehealth Heroes - S2 Ep1 - Level Up Your Therapy Practice With Private Practice Skills

On this episode of Telehealth Heroes, licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Marie Fang talks about embracing a private therapy practice, creating youtube videos to solve her own problems, and the journey to discover herself as both a therapist and content creator.

Dr. Marie Fang wasn’t always excited by the idea of running her own private practice. When she was first starting out, beginning a private practice meant she would only be helping people who could afford to pay cash or who had private insurance. Working in a clinic would have allowed her to give care to the people she felt needed it most: those underserved, without a lot of other resources. However, she discovered the value of helping others in a private practice setting. People with means still need help too.

Dr. Fang ran into a lot of roadblocks when trying to start her own private practice. One of the biggest challenges was that there weren’t a lot of existing resources to reference for beginning a private practice. In most medical education nationwide, the emphasis is placed on learning how to provide care. Very few curriculum ever bother to teach about starting and running a practice. Most private practitioners must act as entrepreneurs in that way, learning the ropes of business through trial and error.

From her own struggles and solutions, Dr. Fang created the YouTube channel and business, Private Practice Skills. She figured out how to face the challenges of private practice, and created resources to help others do the same thing—without all the hardships. However, starting a YouTube channel was nothing new for Dr. Fang.

“There’s a theme in my life that when I need something, I make a YouTube Channel on the topic. I don’t know why that became a theme, but it did.”

However, the Private Practice Skills YouTube channel was her first channel to really take off, and she said that most of her success came from being genuine and trying to solve her own problems. She picked topics by discovering which questions she had about running a private practice. “I sat down one day and wrote down about 50 questions I had and wanted to answer. Then, if I did one video a week, that was an entire year’s worth of content.”

But isn’t this podcast supposed to be about telehealth? Well, like many providers, Dr. Fang began using telehealth at the start of the pandemic. In fact, the first day she used doxy.me, she created a YouTube video of her experience figuring it out and setting it up. That video now has nearly 80,000 views, and is one of the top-performing videos on the subject of using doxy.me. Notably, it has outperformed many of doxy.me’s own videos on the subject. Not bad. But, out of the telehealth options available, why did she choose doxy.me? For the sake of her patients. “One thing that was important to me… I wanted something that my clients could just, here’s a waiting room link, it’s HIPAA secure, click the button you’re in. Because I need it now, like, yesterday.”

S2 Ep 1 — Level Up Your Therapy Practice With Private Practice Skills

Telehealth Heroes S2 Ep2 - Navigating the Telehealth Landscape with Christopher Wolfe, OD

On this episode of the Telehealth Heroes Podcast, Dr. Christopher Wolfe talks about how he uses telehealth to supplement his physical practice and warns patients about imitation telehealth services that ignore important factors in eye health. Auto-renewal prescription services may be convenient, but they’re also dubious!

Dr. Christopher Wolfe, OD has been in the field optometry since 2008—and possibly even earlier when you consider that his father was an optometrist too. He’s held many important positions throughout his education and career: president of the American Optometric Student Association, Chair of the American Optometric Association’s State Government Relations Committee, and the Legislative Chair for the Nebraska Optometric Association. Dr. Wolfe is also an expert in healthcare billing and coding, and teaches online courses through Eyecode Education. Yet, despite all his knowledge and experience in the field, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit he had to learn how to use telehealth just like everybody else. 

For Dr. Wolfe, one of his reservations with telehealth was what to do when he couldn’t solve a patient’s problems over a video call. His big break-through happened when he realized he didn’t have to. He had a telehealth call with a patient, but couldn’t fully diagnose or treat them through the video feed. So, he simply told that patient to come into the office. It was a simple solution, but the patient really didn’t want to be seen in-person; without the initial telehealth call that diagnosed the severity of the situation, he may not have gotten the care he needed.

“I think there are so many people that think if I commit to this, if I start this conversation virtually, then I have to have an answer for the patient virtually. And you just don’t…It’s not like it’s telemedicine or in-person, it’s both,” Wolfe said during his interview. 

However, even though he feels he’s successfully integrated telehealth into his clinical practice, he had a warning against what he called “dubious telehealth services.” Most of these in the field of optometry come in the form of services that auto-renew prescriptive lenses. Here’s what he had to say: 

“I think there can be this real challenge within telehealth when a patient is coming in to try to get a renewal of a prescription. Cause they want more of a thing and potentially they could do an online service that’s basically having them read a chart and then renewing whatever it was, but they’re missing all the other things that can go wrong with their eye health. In many cases, it’s a dubious telehealth service that’s kind of masquerading as telehealth, but all it is is just a conduit for a company to sell you more stuff.”

To catch the full interview, listen to the episode!

S2 Ep 2 — Navigating the Telehealth Landscape with Christopher Wolfe, OD

Telehealth Heroes S2 Ep3 - Moving a Full Clinic to a New State with Teletherapy

In this episode of Telehealth Heroes, we talk to one of the early users of doxy.me, Psychologist Dr. Rees Chapman. He talks about the skype call that convinced him telemedicine might work and then changing states while keeping a full clinic of patients.

Dr. Chapman is a clinical psychologist who practices psychotherapy and teletherapy. However, back in 2015 when he and his wife lived in Georgia and he only saw clients face-to-face, he believed telemedicine was an impossibility for his own practice. He said: 

A lot of people are doing therapy, and I don’t really do that. My approach is much more client-based… [My approach] looks at facial expressions and developing an interpersonal rapport. The relationship, the interaction in the room is critically important. And that’s the reason why I was opposed to the very idea of teletherapy for many years. 

So what changed? In 2016, Dr. Chapman and his wife decided to move to Virginia. Several of his clients asked him if he would switch to teletherapy so they could continue seeing him, but he continued to doubt the merits of telemedicine. However, everything changed when he had a skype call with his son and grandkids: 

I was resisting [practicing teletherapy] until I had a skype session with my son and daughter-in-law and kids, they were going to Richmond. And at the end of that session, I was gasping for breath. I’d been crying. I had had a really powerful, emotional experience. And I said to my wife, you know, maybe something really does travel through the internet. Maybe there really is emotional validity.

So, he started practicing teletherapy in Georgia, then moved it with him to Virginia. For a long time Dr. Chapman had been preparing to travel to Virginia and to make new clients and a new practice there, but through telemedicine, he actually arrived with a full caseload of Georgia patients. 

Later on, Dr. Chapman joined another clinic. He was there when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and found his colleagues worrying about telemedicine. He told them about doxy.me, and shared with them the tips he’d learned through his years of experience to improve the quality of video care. The clinic was up and running through telehealth in no time.

S2 Ep3 — Moving a Full Clinic to a New State with Teletherapy

Telehealth Heroes S2 Ep4 — Redesigning Hospital Ambience with Dr. Susan Mazer￼

On this episode of Telehealth Heroes, we talk with the founder of Healing Healthcare Systems, Dr. Susan Mazer. She explains the importance of hospital ambience and recounts the history and evolution of the C.A.R.E. Channel, a private television program currently used in over a thousand hospitals and clinics.

Susan Mazer, PhD, is one of the cofounders of Healing Healthcare Systems, the organization that developed the C.A.R.E. Channel. C.A.R.E. is an acronym for “continuous ambient relaxation environment,” and it began in the 1980’s as a television program that combined soft ambient music with nature scenes. Around that time, important research had come out on the impact of hospital design, and Dr. Mazer referenced an article written by Dr. Roger Ulrich in 1984 that showed that patients who had views of nature outside their windows had shorter hospital stays and better outcomes than patients who had no natural views. 

Dr. Mazer and her husband, Dallas Smith, were professional musicians, and wanted to create a healing environment for hospital patients based on Dr. Ulrich’s research. As musicians, they knew music had transformative healing power, so they wanted to discover a way to deliver comforting music to hospital patients. “It began when a nurse asked us, ‘what can I do for my patients at three in the morning when I’m not there?’” 

Dr. Mazer quickly realized that the television was the common piece of technology in every room, so they began preparing a television program that could deliver music for 24 hours a day. The first tracks created for the C.A.R.E. Channel were original songs composed and performed by Dr. Mazer and Dallas Smith. They combined those songs with relaxed natural images to complete the program. 

The C.A.R.E. Channel is now a widespread phenomenon in the hospital industry. Over time, it’s evolved to include works from many other musicians, always hand-selected by Dr. Mazer and Smith. Their photography team travels the world to find the best places to include in the programming. And, more recently, the C.A.R.E. Channel has expanded to include other formats. 

There are now many different ways to consume the C.A.R.E. Channel outside of the hospital environment. They’ve even begun a virtual reality version of the program. If you’d like to learn more, check out some of the links below.

S2 Ep4 — Redesigning Hospital Ambience with Dr. Susan Mazer

Telehealth Heroes S2 Ep5 — Coping with War and Helplessness featuring Dr. Stephanie Rossitch￼￼

Psychologist Dr. Stephanie Salcedo Rossitch has experience helping veterans who suffer from PTSD and other mental health problems associated with war or military service. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine dominating news and discussion around the world, we wanted to bring her on to discuss how individuals can manage their own mental health in times of crisis.Disclaimer:The views expressed in this podcast episode are those of Dr. Rossitch, and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the United States Government or Department of Veterans Affairs.

When asked about the consequences of war on the human psyche, Dr. Rossitch explained that trauma manifests in a wide variety of ways. But what she wanted to emphasize before continuing was that it is absolutely normal to experience one or several of the many common symptoms of trauma: stress, panic, or anxiety. For people who live through crises or wars, these feelings are normal, and no person should be ashamed of their own emotional state. 

In fact, her first piece of mental health advice for those suffering in war is to allow themselves space to grieve and feel their emotions. She said, 

“Sometimes you need to push your emotions away just to get through the day, but you don’t want to hold onto them too long. I always describe emotions like an inflatable beach ball you push underwater. You can push it down for a little while, but eventually it’s going to shoot right back up with force.” 

But it is also valuable to take breaks and take time away to yourself if you feel like that’s something you need.

The conversation later shifted to helplessness. Helplessness has been a growing sentiment in the world for the past couple of years. Between the COVID-19 pandemic, isolation, and war, the problems of the world often feel too big for one person to deal with. Dr. Rossitch emphasized that in times of helplessness, it’s important to think about what you can and can’t control. Then, once you understand what you can control, focus your efforts towards the things that are within your power. She gave a few examples: 

“Think about organizations that you want to get involved with, check in with your friends and family, ask how they’re doing, especially if you know anyone in Ukraine. Focus your energy on how you can help, because even helping one person—that’s still huge.”

Again, Dr. Rossitch emphasized how normal it is to not feel your best in times of crisis. However, because it’s normal to feel panic, anxiety, or stress during these times, those are not automatic indicators that you need professional help. The biggest sign someone needs professional help is when their mental health is interfering with their day-to-day life. Examples include: losing sleep, being unable to work, feeling your personal relationships suffer, and feeling worthless.

S2 Ep5 — Coping with War and Helplessness featuring Dr. Stephanie Salcedo Rossitch

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S2 Ep6 - Improving Access and Controlling Costs with Shawn Valenta

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