ADJUSTED
ADJUSTED
How is Telemedicine Changing Workers’ Comp? with Kimberly Labow
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In this episode, ADJUSTED welcomes Kimberly Labow, CEO of Medcall. Kim discusses what services Medcall offers and how telemedicine is changing the workers' compensation space.
Season 8 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Mike Gilmartin, Area Vice President, Sales & Distribution, for Key Risk.
Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
Got questions? Send them to marketing@berkindcomp.com
For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com
Hello everybody and welcome to Adjusted. I'm your host, greg Hamlin, coming at you from beautiful sweet home, alabama and Berkeley Industrial Comp. And with me is my co-host for the day, mike Gilmartin. Mike, do you want to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2Hello everybody. Mike Gilmartin, with Key Risk, I'm sitting here in Greensboro, north Carolina. We're coming out of the wetness, greg. It was like eight inches of rain last week, so it feels good to have some sunshine and excited to talk about some Metcalf. Yeah, you guys got some hurricane weather. Huh, we did. Yeah, we got like six inches on Thursday and then surprisingly to me, because I don't check the weather we got another three inches on Friday night. So that was fun.
Speaker 1Oh wow, we haven't been hit as bad, but once the fall comes, usually the hurricanes start heading our way and we'll get the tropical storm stuff that follows. So close enough, but not too close.
Speaker 2It's good times, always good times Well with us.
Speaker 1today we have a special guest, kimberly LeBeau. I hope I said that right. She is the CEO of MedCall. Do you want to introduce yourself a little bit to our audience, kimberly?
Speaker 3Sure, Absolutely. Thanks for having me. My name is Kim LeBeau, so pretty close. Oh, all right, Nobody ever gets it right, so don't feel bad. I am the CEO of MedCall. I've been with the company for about two and a half years. I live here in Wilmington, North Carolina, which is where our company is headquartered. We also had I don't know how many inches of rain, but it rained for about seven straight days and I'm very glad for it to be gone. I come from healthcare technology, so I spent 25, 26 years in healthcare tech and then moved over into this exciting world of workers' compensation. But healthcare in workers' compensation has been a fascinating learning curve and really excited to talk to you a little bit about what we do in this space that blends that healthcare delivery alongside the workers' comp workplace injuries.
Speaker 1Excellent. Well, I know, when you were little, you probably always imagined yourself working in healthcare technology, right?
Speaker 3working in healthcare technology right? Actually, surprisingly, both of my parents were in healthcare. My dad was a surgeon, my mom was a surgical nurse, and I am terrified of all things blood and guts, so it actually made perfect sense. I came into the business through marketing, sales and product management and kind of actually did fall into healthcare technology way back when electronic medical records were first coming out in the mid-90s believe it or not, to date myself. So, yeah, it's been a really interesting growth trajectory through the healthcare tech space and I really enjoy the application of healthcare and healthcare technology in different use cases and different reasons why someone needs healthcare or could use healthcare, and so that led me here into MedCall.
Speaker 1Awesome. Well, I'm actually super excited to have you on this episode, Kim. I think technology is really changing the way healthcare works and your company is doing some really interesting things in that space. Can you tell us a little bit about your organization, MedCall, what you guys do, Sure?
Speaker 3absolutely so. We are in the telehealth space, so you may hear telehealth, you may hear teletriage, you may hear telemedicine. You know a little bit of different terminology, a little bit different definitions, a little bit of different terminology, a little bit different definitions. But our purpose here is to connect an injured worker with a physician as close to, if not at the time of injury, as humanly possible. We call that time zero.
Speaker 3Our goal is to connect an injured worker at time zero with one of our physicians and we do that through technology, some very basic technology like the telephone, but we also do it through video as well. So it depends on the comfortability of the injured worker and the type of injury, et cetera. But we're basically an alternative, I think, a better choice to an injured worker having to leave their place of work or wherever they are maybe it's three o'clock in the morning on the side of a highway in Iowa and there's really nowhere for them to go if they do get injured to have an alternative to not have to go to an urgent care center, to not have to go to an emergency department if that's all that's available or that's all that's open, but instead to pick up their cell phone or pick up a phone and within minutes get connected to an emergency physician in their state, where they're standing right there to assess their injury and provide the appropriate care.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think you encompassed it really really well. I think the game at WorkComp is getting people seen as quickly as possible and also figuring out what needs to be done and maybe what doesn't need to be done. Yes, over the last four or five years, life has gotten very different, with a little thing called COVID and the pandemic and I think you know MedCall has been around for a while and pre-pandemic, I think people I don't want to say we're weary to use telemedicine, but I think it was still something that was like does it work? Should I just go see a doctor? How have things changed in telemedicine? But also for MedCall, post-pandemic?
Speaker 3Yeah, that's a great question and you're absolutely right. I think again, myself personally, coming from healthcare tech, the very first telehealth platform that I was responsible for as a provider of technology was in the early 2000s. So to me personally this has been around forever and of course I'm going to. It makes perfect sense. But to the greater population it really is. You know, healthcare is often a little bit of a black box or a behind the curtain anyways, you know, just in regular life. Now you add another layer to that of well, you're not actually going to be sitting in front of someone, you're going to talk to them or you're going to see them on a screen, and that is a little intimidating to a lot of folks. And there was a certain level of questioning and what is this technology thing that I'm being asked to do? And then, you're right, covid comes along and that's your only option. So I think that the good output of that time with respect to telehealth and telemedicine is that it brought people closer to it. It brought a familiarity to it. It's not as scary, it's not as unknown, it's not as unheard of. So the next time you're asked to do that in the case of a workplace injury, you're not as taken aback. I think, on the industry side as a whole, the opposite of the good news of what happened as a result of the pandemic in telemedicine is that companies that maybe believed that that was going to be the only way to see a doctor, or the main way to see a doctor, moving forward and double, triple, quadruple down into that business and three years later are getting out of that business because it's definitely.
Speaker 3I do believe as a full believer in telehealth, I do believe it is a critical and vital part of healthcare delivery.
Speaker 3I definitely don't believe it is going to be the be all, end all, and so that's what makes it so beautiful for workers' comp and workplace injury is this is a very specific use case, and what I've learned in the last few years is when someone's injured at work, no matter how seemingly quote minor it might be, it's a traumatic event because you might be asked to do restricted work or modified duty. And what does that mean and what does my boss think and what does this mean to my paycheck? And this is people don't know, people don't understand it, and so, no matter what that injury is to be able to pick up a phone, the most easy thing you could possibly do and speak to a doctor, not a nurse, not a PA, all great clinicians but to speak to an actual physician that is sitting in his or her home office, dedicated to you, listening and focusing on you, to learn about what happened and to get you back to work safely and quickly, is an enormous value that we provide to the industry.
Speaker 2I completely agree. Personal story I don't know that I truly appreciated telemedicine right and we've worked with you guys for a while at Key Risk and it's always been something that I push to clients. But I don't think I really appreciated it until I had a daughter and they see the doctor a lot and there's these little coughs and little things and it is so much easier to pick up a phone and call. It's like a telemedicine appointment. It is to drive 20 minutes, to wait an hour to then see a PA and then see the doctor. I mean it's just like. It's like a four hour ordeal it is. And I think it goes great to our next question. Medcall, you know, I think, solves a lot of problems in the marketplace, especially in the work comp arena, and we you touched on a few of them. But what are some of the biggest things you guys think you solve for when it comes to the ease of use of telemedicine versus maybe seeing a doctor in person?
Enhancing Telehealth in Workers' Compensation
Speaker 3Sure, absolutely. To me it's so obvious of an advantage when you have this service at your disposal. But when you start to break it down, you realize the breadth of what you're going to get out of a med call call versus a visit to an urgent care and emergency department. If you think about a normal, you know if you don't have med call, you get injured at work. Oftentimes you and your supervisor load yourselves into the car. You know. Obviously we're not talking about super serious injuries that are obviously need to go to the hospital or something like that. This is your 84% of non-fatal workplace injuries that are slips, trips and falls and bruises.
Speaker 3Injuries that are slips, trips and falls and bruises, contusions, strains, sprains, light lacerations, et cetera that can be handled by telehealth. So you're not getting two people into a car driving to a facility waiting, like you said. However long you wait, speaking to someone who may or may not be a physician, having an unclear potentially understanding of workers' compensation and what it means to the recordability of the injury, if you are writing a prescription or you're giving time off, having maybe a gray area there, and then the after effect of that is did you just stub your toe and this person just gave you seven days of restricted duty and nobody even wants that. So, with a call to an emergency physician who, by the way, was trained and is trained on an ongoing basis from MedCall when they join the MedCall Medical Group Network on occupational medicine, on workers' compensation, on what OTC versus prescriptions means, on what restricted and modified duty means to the employer and to the carrier, when you have that at your disposal, you have no drive time, no wait time.
Speaker 3We typically can get a physician in about two and a half minutes when we are finished with the initial intake of the injury. So it takes about two and a half minutes to get a physician on the phone with somebody. That's impossible to do anywhere else. We have the knowledge of the policies, the designated medical facilities or preferred medical facilities if someone does need to be referred to be seen in person. So, in addition to having that doctor there, when we onboard a client, whether it be a carrier or an employer directly, we are taking in all of that information about restrictions, pointing that worker safely in the direction. That is best best practice for that carrier, employer and worker all together.
Speaker 1I think that that's a huge savings and we've seen that with some of our injured workers. I mean just the fact that the employer and the injured worker don't have to leave the job site, since we do mostly catastrophic work. So they're out there working on a cell phone tower, let's say, and when they get hurt, taking the supervisor off that job with the employee, that's a lot of time lost on the job that could be saved trying to get them to a facility, which has been really huge for us. I actually really love technology. I love all the ways it's solving things, but I've noticed that whenever you're trying to get people on board with a new way of doing things, it can be challenging. What are some of the reservations that you sometimes get, or some of the challenges of onboarding a new client so that they can take advantage of the cost savings and easability of what you're doing?
Speaker 3so that they can take advantage of the cost savings and easability of what you're doing? Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's a few things. So the obvious or the most common reservations are things like non-English speaking or non-English as a first language. What do we do about those folks? Or what do we do about folks that are just nervous about telehealth? Can you help us educate our employee base? And so that is a huge tenant of our program and the success of our program is that education, awareness, communication. So to handle, for example, just to handle non-English speaking, we have bilingual Spanish and English in-house. We have all languages that we can handle. For example, just to handle non-English speaking, we have bilingual Spanish and English in-house. We have all languages that we can handle with our translation partner that we've been using for years and years and years. And when it comes to the education, the awareness, the comfortability, we really double, triple down on what we call our client marketing kit, our educational materials.
Speaker 3Everybody learns differently. Every industry has a different way to communicate with their employees. If you are in an over-the-road trucking company, they're not sitting in an office all day, so hanging posters up or whatever isn't going to be helpful. But what can we have for them in their truck so that it's really, really easy to know what to do, or stickers on hard hats or QR codes? You like technology you mentioned.
Speaker 3So one of the great things that we've been doing in the last couple of years is creating individual QR codes. So every employee, first thing they do, download the QR code. Now, medcall is a contact in their phone. It has the policy number, it has any other information that the carrier or the employer wants that individual to have. You have to make it easy and you have to make it stress-free and barrier-free to utilize the service, and that's one of the things that we really focus on. We have folks with all different educational levels, all different languages, all different types of work. They're in an office, or they're in a warehouse, or they're in a truck, or they're on a cell phone tower or they're in a restaurant. You have to be able to reach all of those folks and it's not easy. It just requires time and dedication to get those messages out.
Speaker 1We've used the exact same thing for our podcast. We actually use QR codes on the back of a card and when I go to conferences I just hand those out. It takes people directly into the podcast. So you're right, like just simple ways to get people to adopt. Technology is a big first step and once you can get over that hurdle and they can actually see where it adds value, it gets a lot easier, for sure.
Speaker 3And we also, if I may, we also have different ways that you can reach us. So the common utilization right now is picking up the phone and making you know, making that call, connecting to a video or taking photos or whatever the case may be. But we also have the ability to. We have a service we call injury outreach and that's where the client can send us a text, send us a very short web form or even an email, and we will have our team reach out to that injured worker or supervisor, injury outreach, to take that report and connect with the physician.
Speaker 3So you know, we're also trying to break down those barriers of you know, some folks work in warehouses or whatnot, where they're not allowed to have their cell phones and they have to go, you know, to a certain place to make the outbound call, et cetera. So we're trying to do, we are doing these other mechanisms by text, by email, by web form, and then we also have a little self-service bot that is baked into our process right now where if you make that call, you start that call and you want to enter your name, address, phone number and basic details yourself from your phone, we have the ability to do that as well. So then, when you get connected to that human, that's going to connect you to the physician. They already have that basic demographic information, so you're not. You feel like you're well using your 45 seconds to a minute on hold while you're waiting to be connected. You can start entering that data yourself.
Speaker 2Well, I think, greg, you make a good point about technology. I think people do get worried about technology, but I also think it's a little bit of like the school nurse analogy of like when you were a kid you went to the school nurse, you know I have a stomachache, you know, like here's an ice pack, like, I think a lot of like historically. When you call into like and I'm talking about like health care plans, right, you call into a telemedicine visit and like, it's kind of round robin of like what kind of doctor am I going to get today and what specialty?
Speaker 3are they, they really?
Speaker 2trained in, in knowing like what what I have is an issue is a specialty for them, and I think that's another big, big difference for MedCall as well. And, kim, you spoke about it a little bit but the fact that all the doctors are emergency trained medical physicians and not like a podiatrist or a cardiologist, that's a huge difference and it's a comfort level of saying, okay, yeah, getting past the technology, I also want to make sure it's worth my time and I'm going to have somebody that aligns with what I need. So can you speak on that just a little bit?
Speaker 3Yeah, I think that's great. So it's very intentional and we do get asked this question quite a lot about. You know, why did you choose emergency physicians? Why not this or that? And I've worked with emergency physicians before and I have a great, great respect for them. They are the specialty that has seen everything, anything and everything that could happen to a human has walked through an emergency room door somewhere. And these folks, they have a really broad and varied experience and they're also very used to being under a time crunch right.
Speaker 3So normally if they're in an emergency department, unfortunately for those of you if you have visited an emergency room they're often very chaotic, there's a lot going on, they're always on their game and they have to be very mindful of everything and they have to be mindful of time. Here you have this highly skilled, highly trained, highly experienced, varied, experienced physician sitting in the quiet comfort of their home office or their den or wherever they are, dedicating their entire focus to these calls. And I think it's the best of both worlds, because you have that experience level, that breadth and depth of experience. But you don't have it in an environment where they're just being bombarded with everything else around them. So it's very intentional to have this specialty because of their breadth of experience.
Speaker 1I think that's great, Kim, and one of the things that I think and you sort of hit on this before MedCall and even maybe 10 years back that we started to see nurse case triage going on, where some companies were utilizing this, and I think sometimes folks get what you're doing confused with that kind of a program and I think you hit on some of the big differentiators. But I do think it's important for our audience to understand the difference, because I think they serve different roles in the marketplace. They're not actually probably the direct competition that the others might think just because of how they're doing it. So, Kim, can you talk a little bit about why you're different than a nurse triage? And I think you've you kind of hit on this.
Future of Telehealth in Workers' Comp
Speaker 3Sure, yeah, absolutely so. The main difference really is that our clinicians are physicians and just by fact of being physicians, it gives them a little more flexibility and ownership power whatever word you want to use in the assessment and recommendations for those injured workers. So, as an example, our physicians can write a prescription if necessary. Now we don't often write prescriptions. About 4% of our triage calls will result in a prescription and that is because of the training that they have around. Hey, if this person needs you know a pain med, you're going to say, hey, over-the-counter ibuprofen or whatever the case is. You know here's. You know on-label recommendations. You're not just going to whip out a you know prescription strength, tylenol or something like that, which they understand the implications of all that. So they have that sensitivity to the recordability and other issues. But I think the other big difference is that, medcall, we empower the physicians to practice medicine, and physicians are well known for wanting to practice medicine the way that they see best and not to be told how to practice medicine. So we don't have algorithms, we don't have templates, we don't have you know a specific way that says you know, if you ask these 10 questions and these are the answers, here's what you do you send them to be seen in person or you, you know you can, you can handle it with self care. Our doctors are looking at each individual injured worker as an individual patient and they're deploying their best practice then their best experience.
Speaker 3The other nuance that I think is really impactful, that I always like to tell folks, is the other thing that our doctors, in the way that we encourage them to practice here, is maybe somebody does need to be seen in person, but it doesn't have to happen right now. So take a, we have a lot of restaurant clients and so you have folks that might get injured, a minor injury at work. They're off their shift at 11 o'clock at night. There are no urgent cares open at 11 o'clock at night. Their only choice is to go to the emergency room.
Speaker 3Well, when you call MedCall, even if it's something that should be seen in person but could be seen the next day, our doctors are well-equipped to say hey, this is. You know, you should probably go in the morning, and here's why. But this is what I want you to do between now and tomorrow morning. Now they have an opportunity to walk into an urgent care. It's during normal business hours, the wait is less, the cost is less, the hassle is less. So having that ability to practice medicine, the way that they were trained and their experience leads them, is a huge advantage over a system that might be more algorithm-based.
Speaker 3Now, saying that, I do also want to bring up that we have partners that are nurse triage companies, so we do have clients that utilize both nurse triage and med call, and we then become the where does that nurse send that caller? Maybe that caller does need to be sent to be seen in person, but maybe that caller can be sent to med call and then we handle the rest of it from there. And still we were saving a trip to the ER or a trip to urgent care.
Speaker 1No, I think those are great examples and I think there definitely is a place for both, but it just depends on what's the problem you're trying to solve for, and we've really enjoyed our partnership with you guys and noticed the difference it's made for our workers, especially in our space. Now that you've been in business for a while, are there some success stories that you could share from your organization where you guys were able to add value or do something that really moved the needle for an employer or carrier?
Speaker 3Yeah, I think overall, when I look at the ROI, so to speak, of a med call, what we get from our clients is a 50% plus reduction in urgent care visits and emergency room visits all day long. So that is something that there's just not a lot of options for folks either. Off hours we are I neglected to mention this, but I should say we're 24-7, 365. So there's not a lot of options outside of your nine to nine or nine to five, depending upon where you are in the country, to find affordable, quality care. There's a lot of rural hospitals, et cetera, that now don't even have a physician on staff in off hours because they can't afford it Right. So there's access to to physicians in and of itself.
Speaker 3We could do a four-hour podcast on that and I think everybody's feeling the pain of access to physicians, of urgent care and emergency visits with a MedCall visit, as well as, even more significantly, the adherence to the best practices and or the policies of that employer or carrier when it comes to things like modifying duty restrictions and time off the number of times that I've heard clients that have moved to us and adopted MedCall say what a joy it is to not have that, you know can of tomatoes that fell on that person's big toe and they were out of work for seven days because they just went into a busy ER and whatever happened happened.
Speaker 3So I think that in addition to, or maybe more so than, the direct medical costs and the savings of seeing a med call physician over being seen in person, that longer term the next three to five to seven days and what happens with that worker is the biggest value that our employers and carriers get. Are their employees back to work or at least back on modified or whatever the case is. They're back to work when they might not be if they were just randomly sent in person.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think you know and I agree with Greg, we've worked with you guys for a long time and I think there have been plenty of success stories and one of the coolest things I think for me are stories where, like you know, emergency physicians not only tell you kind of to your point what to do and where you should go and the things you should do leading up to a visit, but like also like what not to do.
Speaker 2Right, like there are a lot of injuries, where somebody's first inclination would be I need to put pressure on it or I need to do this and they are like, well, hold off.
Speaker 2You probably don't want to do that. So I think there's there's there's really really good flexibility in their ability to guide in what to do and what not to do, which is awesome and we've seen a lot of those in working with you guys and just the ease of use for the clients is great. We've talked a lot about telehealth and telemedicine or however you want to say it, but what does the post-pandemic and everything going on, what does the future look like in your opinion for telehealth? Do you think it just grows, or what does that look like?
Speaker 3I do. I think it grows. I think it's a specific kind of growth. I think it grows in specialties. It grows in different methodologies.
Speaker 3We're starting to see it here, even in the workers' comp space, where we're starting to get asked by clients about telehealth for mental health and how does the mental health work, you know, and it's obviously a more challenging topic than your straight up injury management but specialties, methodologies and access points where it could be used not just at the initial injury but being used ongoing for, you know, ongoing care and things like that.
Speaker 3I do think that the somewhat rapid up arrow during the pandemic and then the oh geez, maybe this isn't going to be the only way to access healthcare forever and ever, that shocking realization to some of the larger companies that doubled down, I see that stabilizing and it's a part of a comprehensive healthcare plan and injury management and illness management plan. It can play and does play and can continue to play an enormous role. I just think we all have to realize that it's not going to be a complete replacement, nor should it be, nor should it have planned to be. But in workers' comp as well, I just see it growing again in breadth and depth and type of methodologies that we would use to employ it within the overall injury management and back to work process.
Speaker 1I would agree, kim. I think there's some real opportunities there. When you start looking at what an ER visit costs and what could be avoided and how that could impact an insured or an employer's bottom line, it's huge, definitely huge. Well, kim, I'm so glad to have you on this episode. We're excited. This is the beginning of our season eight. This will be our 96th episode, which is pretty crazy that we've been doing it this long.
Speaker 1One of the things that I wanted to do this season is, you know, I've been reading a little bit. I like to when I have time, which isn't often with my six kids, but I've been thinking a lot about putting good vibes back out in the universe, and one of the things that I heard the other day was that people's capacity for happiness is limited by the depth of their gratitude, and so one of the things I'm trying to work on personally is just putting more gratitude out there for the things in my own life and, kim, I thought a nice way to end each of our episodes this year would be to ask the guests we have something that they're grateful for. So, kim, is there something in your mind today that you're grateful for?
Gratitude for Telehealth Success
Speaker 3Wow, talk about going in a different direction and catching me off balance. Right, that's what I'm here for. Yeah, I guess my family, my friends, my colleagues, my animals. I'm very fortunate to live in a beautiful city in Wilmington, north Carolina, even though it is now half submerged underwater. Very fortunate to live in a beautiful city, working with a great company. We have great clients, so I appreciate this opportunity. I appreciate you all and all of the clients that we have, for trusting in us and partnering with us in this telehealth world. I'm very appreciative for all of that for our clients, for our partners and for the ability to offer a service like this, because, even though we're still a relatively small company and there's a lot of opportunity out there for folks to adopt what we're doing, there's just an enormous amount of value that we deliver and I think everybody, even at MedPol, is thankful for the ability to be able to help people on a daily basis.
Speaker 1I absolutely love that. I think you know I can echo your sentiments in that I work for an amazing organization and feel like I have a lot of great people in my life Friends I work with friends outside of here and, of course, amazing family, and it makes everything worth it when you have those things going for you. So certainly appreciate your time with us, kim, and remind folks to check out MedCall and remind folks to check out MedCall. You can reach out to Kim on LinkedIn or look up their website. They're a great provider and are definitely solving our problem in the work comp space. Remind our listeners to do right, think differently and don't forget to care, and we hope you'll follow us on future episodes that are released every two weeks on Monday. Thanks, everybody.