Dear colleagues,
Having practiced clinical medicine for 15 years, I have met so many doctors who feel the same way I do: tired, frustrated, unfulfilled, and unable to provide care proactively because so much of our time is spent on phone tag, and unreimbursed work between visits. I wasn’t surprised when I read a study by The Physicians Foundation that reported 63 percent of physicians feel very negative or somewhat negative about the future of the medical profession.
A transformation in healthcare is long overdue.
I can feel the frustration from my patients too. They want better access and less unpredictability with simple phone calls. Did you know that the average wait time for a doctor’s appointment is 24 days? And it’s getting longer every year. I don’t know about you, but I found that I was spending about 80 percent of my time chasing insurance companies, talking to lawyers and pharmacists, and playing phone tag with patients. That’s time I could have been helping my patients and my practice. I went into medicine so I could help people, and what I found was that the current systems we have in place are driving a wedge between us and our patients.
Finally, I’d had enough, and I set out to create MediSprout. Our first product, a secure telehealth platform, was called V2MD (Virtual Visit My Doctor). That virtual care technology has now evolved into a full-scale hybrid practice management solution. I know that healthcare technology, when done right, offers an amazing opportunity to not only deliver better care, but also to run a more efficient practice, get reimbursed for our time and put patient care first again.
By implementing telehealth models and future-ready practice management solutions in our practices, we can offer our patients better access to more effective care, and the kind of support and tools that providers need today.
As the front line of healthcare, we are in a unique position to harness technology for good, and to do it right.
Please join me as we return to the relationship side of practicing medicine and simply provide better care. Once we do this, transformation in healthcare will really begin.
-Sam
Samant Virk, MD is the CEO and founder of MediSprout.
(This story was originally published in 2019 and updated in 2023.)