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      How a Calling Has Led to the Evolution of Primary Care in the US

      Healthcare Rethink - Episode 34

      In the latest episode of Healthcare Rethink, a FinThrive podcast, host Brian Urban delves into this pertinent discussion with Dr. Gordon Chen, MD, the Chief Medical Officer at ChenMed. This conversation navigates through Dr. Chen's early life, the health ordeal of his father, and how these experiences galvanized the evolution of ChenMed into a paradigm of value-based primary care.



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      Brian Urban:
      [00:00:30]
      Yes, this is the Healthcare Rethink Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Urban, and today
      on our show we have joining us the chief medical officer now board member of
      ChenMed, Dr. Gordon Chen. Gordon, thank you for joining our show.
      Dr. Gordon Chen: So good to be here with you, Brian.
      Brian Urban:
      [00:01:00]
      This is going to be so much fun. We've gotten to know each other a good bit here
      and there before our episode here, and we're going to be getting into this book,
      one of your first, I think, probably of many books that you have, The Calling. But
      before we touch the book, we're going to get to know Dr. Gordon Chen before the
      MD, before ChenMed, before all the lives you've helped and the mission trips
      you've done globally too. Let's go back to the early beginnings to get our audience
      familiar with you. Take us through it. Who is Gordon Chen and how have you come
      to be here leading an amazing primary care health center across the US?
      Dr. Gordon Chen:
      [00:01:30]
      [00:02:00]
      [00:02:30]
      Well, I'm the son of immigrants, my parents came from Taiwan and I could spend a
      whole hour talking about my parents and just how amazing they are. We grew up
      in South Florida, in sunny South Florida. Now growing up in South Florida as a
      Chinese boy, you're like a minority of minorities. And especially my brother and I,
      we came out as six foot four, pretty big Chinese guys and we love sports and so we
      didn't really have our own, whatever, community other than the folks that we
      played sports with and the community that we created. And so we loved sports.
      We knew we wanted to go into medicine at young ages because we had already
      been doing mission trips to Nicaragua and really before the MD, I was pretty much
      a student athlete. I loved to compete, played football and wrestled in high school,
      then went on to play football at Brown. I was 260 pounds, if you can imagine that.
      Brian Urban: Man, you don't look 260 anymore.
      Dr. Gordon Chen: Yeah, I've trimmed down quite a bit since then. And then from Brown came back to
      Miami to do medical school, it was like the family tradition, and then launched off
      into medicine.
      Brian Urban:
      [00:03:00]
      [00:03:30]
      There's so many parts in between we're going to get into there because your story
      is so rich, individually but family as well, as the book dives into at a pretty good
      depth, The Calling. Thank you again for sending this to me, it's just so thoughtful.
      Our conversation got delayed a few times, so I'm so glad we got to reconnect here.
      I want to dive into so many things you just listed, but I've got to start with the
      ChenMed story because so many folks now cross healthcare and even outside
      healthcare are becoming familiar with your family story, your father's story, even
      your mother's business that she had as well developing a restaurant, multiple sites
      for restaurants, and then you're moved to Florida.
      This transcript was exported on Sep 28, 2023 - view latest version here.

      [00:04:00]
      Let's start there. It's such a beautiful story, The Calling, and the humble beginnings.
      I'd love to know how your father got into the US and went for multiple high
      degrees, and ChenMed got started out of a very big health scare that he had. It
      seems like it oriented off of that, and he's obviously since recovered very well, but
      can you take us to those humble beginnings of why you decided to start ChenMed?
      And I believe it was because of your father's diagnosis and health scare nearing
      over a decade now.
      Dr. Gordon Chen:
      [00:04:30]
      [00:05:00]
      And so my father came from Taiwan. He was actually an incredible student and was
      the number one ranked student in Taiwan going into college, in National Taiwan
      University. They actually rank the students there. And then he came over to the US
      to get his PhD in biochemistry. He got that at the University of Wisconsin. And then
      he got into this competitive two year medical school program at University of
      Miami for PhD candidates. And so you can imagine with my brother and I going to
      medical school, we could never complain about medical school doing it in four
      years. He did it in half the time. And so we're a very tight family, just my brother
      and I and my parents. And while I was in medical school, I was in the middle of my
      third year of med school, I get a call from my dad and he was really shaking, you
      could tell. And he said, "Gordon, I need you to come pick me up." And I'm like,
      "What's going on? Something is really not right."
      [00:05:30]
      [00:06:00]
      [00:06:30]
      And he told me he had a mass behind his nose, a five centimeter golf ball size mass
      behind his nose, and it was terminal cancer. They thought it was a squamous cell
      carcinoma and he was given two months to live. And at that point in time,
      everything just slowed down. I was in the hustle and the bustle of school and tests
      and whatnot, and none of that mattered. And we were thinking, " What do we do
      to help my dad, help save his life, prolong his life days, weeks, months if we can,
      and help him to fight this cancer?" And my fiance at that time, Jessica, she was a
      classmate in med school, we were already engaged and we said, "Let's get married
      because I don't know if my dad will have a face. I don't know if he's going to be
      around." And so I called her on a Friday and then the next day we got married, and
      it was emergency wedding and families flying in from all over the country and even
      internationally.
      [00:07:00]
      And students are all showing up to show us support because they knew what we
      were going through. And at the wedding we hear back from MD Anderson's
      pathologist for a second opinion, that the diagnosis that we thought it was, was
      actually a B-cell lymphoma that was potentially curable. So best wedding present
      ever. I'm giving my dad a big hug, and my brother, they were my best men. My
      pastor at that time, he pulled me aside, he said, "Do you still want to go through
      with the wedding?" I'm like, "Yeah, let's continue to go through with the wedding."
      Brian Urban: That's a good question. You never know. Yeah.
      Dr. Gordon Chen:
      [00:07:30]
      So Jessica and I, we've been married, that was 20 years ago, and we know that
      because we're about to celebrate our 20-year wedding anniversary and 20 years
      This transcript was exported on Sep 28, 2023 - view latest version here.

      [00:08:00]
      [00:08:30]
      from when my dad had this cancer fight, and thank God he's alive. But from that,
      we really suffered at the hands of a broken healthcare system. We had ER visits for
      neutropenic fever, seizures, even a stroke. And we were experiencing what it's like
      to be so incredibly vulnerable and feel like the system is working against you. And
      we realized with all this education, connections, resources in the field, my dad
      barely survived. And what about all the people that don't have doctors in the family
      or connections or resources, how are they making it? And we realized many of
      them don't. And so people fall through the cracks all the time. And that became our
      why. We need to fix this as a family. We've experienced what it's like to be on the
      other side. We know the medicine component, how do we create a better system
      that actually takes care of those that need it the most and how do we start to think
      about healthcare differently?
      [00:09:00]
      [00:09:30]
      And so once my dad got healthy, we went from that one medical center that he
      was initially running and we figured out how to get it to two, then to three, then to
      six. And then we were pouring into our patients with this outcomes- based, what
      we call transformative care approach, which is like an extreme version of value-
      based care, and then we learned how to scale to other states, Virginia, then
      Kentucky, then Louisiana, then Illinois. And we were growing all over the map and
      we're realizing that the need was just so tremendous. We'd go into these
      communities that have no access to care and once we were there, we would start
      pouring into them from a relationship and trust and a health standpoint.
      [00:10:00]
      And then the ER visits would come down, the hospitalizations would drop 30 to
      50%. And we're doing this in a very replicable manner where we could plan a
      center and know in one to two years the health outcomes would be dramatically
      better, and it was a financially sustainable model because we're taking the savings
      from the reductions in hospitalizations and we're pouring it upstream into
      prevention and proactively going after health outcomes.
      Brian Urban:
      [00:10:30]
      [00:11:00]
      I love that. And I love now that you've taken this and you've actually put this into
      how-to content that you've distributed on YouTube, aside from ChenMed's main
      website as well. I think it's also an amazing use case of how things can function and
      work in a value-based care model and how you're taking things upstream, like you
      said, that then have better downstream impacts in terms of health. The currency of
      trust is incredibly difficult to build in healthcare ecosystem nowadays. And you've
      gone into the right places at the right time to help the people with the highest
      social health needs, not just healthcare needs. So the story of your experience with
      your father, your educational blend, has all played out to an amazing startup that's
      now no longer a startup, it's quite a mature business, ChenMed. I love the story in
      The Calling that you walk through there.
      [00:11:30]
      Let me bounce quickly into your athletic days. So there's one thing the book didn't
      cover, and I should have looked this up beforehand, but by far probably the biggest
      Chinese guy to ever play football at Brown University, let alone break records of
      many kind. And I remember in the book your father had mentioned after a big
      snowstorm that you had seen in Rhode Island of a foot or more of snow, maybe
      This transcript was exported on Sep 28, 2023 - view latest version here.

      [00:12:00]
      you can come down to Miami and finish medical school here and you jumped down
      there. But take me around that time at Brown and your experience there, because
      Brown is a leader not only in medical and public health sciences, but a leader in
      diversity and community health too, I think. So what was your experience like at
      Brown and take me back to the football days for a moment here before we dive
      into ChenMed again.
      Dr. Gordon Chen:
      [00:12:30]
      [00:13:00]
      All right, so I grew up in South Florida, used to the sunshine, the heat. I love sports
      and I loved the opportunity to go to Brown where they had a combined eight-year
      medical school program. And so I knew that I could play football there and I didn't
      have to be 100% pre-med hustling and bustling and trying to get into medical
      school because I had a spot at Brown. And so it was amazing to be able to go there
      and be a part of a team. We won an Ivy League championship my junior year, which
      was the second one in school history. And Brown had been around for a couple
      hundred years, right? So a huge history without many football championships and a
      whole lot of losses. And we went on to have the winning-est record at that time in
      Brown history, which by the way, it was only 30 and 10, but it was still a great
      record for Brown standards.
      [00:13:30]
      [00:14:00]
      I had a wonderful opportunity to get to play as a sophomore when somebody got
      injured. And I started as a sophomore junior, we won the championship. Senior
      year my roommate and I were captains together. My roommate Drew Inzer, he was
      an offensive lineman, and we had a wonderful four years there. He continued to
      the NFL and he got a Super Bowl ring with the New England Patriots as they were
      just getting started. And of course I loved Brown, loved being able to take medical
      school courses during undergraduate, but it was very cold for me. So I did take the
      opportunity to apply back to Miami and University of Miami were kind enough to
      give me a scholarship for medical school. So I came back home. And we have this
      long legacy, my father, my brother, two of my uncles were all UM medical school
      alums. And so I came back to South Florida to finish my medical school training.
      [00:14:30]
      Brian Urban:
      [00:15:00]
      I love to hear that. I'll be up there in January in Providence, so I'll let you know how
      the temperatures feel versus South Florida. But I love that story. Didn't know your
      roommate went on to the NFL. I mean, what a cool connection and culture that you
      experienced in both places, in New England and then of course back in South
      Miami where ChenMed got its early days. So I had to get back into those days
      because such a great athletic background, yourself and your brother have and then
      share. So I just wanted to hit that real quick. But let me jump back into ChenMed
      here. So you operate in a value-based care model, very successful, I'll say early
      adopter of that if you think about the whole healthcare ecosystem from the
      bottom to the top. And you've made it work. You've shown large healthcare
      systems how this model can work not only for the patient, not only for the
      payment system, the business side of healthcare, but also for the community as
      well.
      [00:15:30] So I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into that fostering patient relationship side.
      This transcript was exported on Sep 28, 2023 - view latest version here.

      What has it meant to you and what has it meant to your brother, Chris, too, Dr.
      Chen, to develop these community-based relationships and actually see health
      change center by center, state by state, location by location? Take us through what
      it's meant for you personally.
      [00:16:00]
      Dr. Gordon Chen:
      [00:16:30]
      It is amazing to see the impact that our model can bring to communities. And when
      you go to the neediest communities, you have so many different ways that you
      impact. Number one, you're taking care of the sickest of the sick, and all of a
      sudden the family members don't need to do that as much and they're relieved.
      Their loved ones are actually living longer and spending more time at home with
      their loved ones rather than in the ERs and in the hospitals. You're investing into
      the poorest communities. And what we often see is we often see these
      communities get re-gentrified because we're investing in them, we're providing
      jobs, and then we're pouring into our employees who come from those
      communities and we're training them and we're teaching them how to build
      relationships and trust in situations where you have to earn it back because there
      isn't a lot of trust with healthcare in a lot of these communities.
      [00:17:00]
      [00:17:30]
      [00:18:00]
      And once we're there, we have the relationships and have the trust, you literally
      see these communities just thrive and blossom. And what we have as a vision for
      each of these medical centers, we want them to be like a city on a hill. We want
      them to bring light to the darkest communities across America and start to break
      the negative cycle of sickness and disease and despair and start the virtuous cycle
      of health that actually brings more health and renewal as you invest back into
      primary care. But a lot of that has to happen with the right financial infrastructure,
      what we call full risk model. That allows us that if we can prevent a hospitalization
      and we know that 40 to 50% of hospitalizations can be completely prevented,
      erased, and then you take those savings, that could be like a $20,000 savings, and
      then you pour it back into primary care or into going into needier communities or
      whatnot, then you're getting upstream.
      [00:18:30]
      And when you get upstream, healthcare is a lot cheaper and you're stopping bigger
      problems from occurring by catching them early. So that's just been very powerful.
      What we've learned along the way is if you can get the right talent and train them
      into behavior change and accountability for outcomes and really empower them to
      live out this beautiful mission and connect with their purpose, then you can
      unleash that potential and you can transform American healthcare.
      Brian Urban:
      [00:19:00]
      That right there, if that doesn't inspire our listeners a lot through healthcare
      technology, researchers, advancing health equity leaders, I don't know what else
      can because you've proven it. A couple of things you said I wanted to pull out, re-
      gentrifying communities, that has got to be one of the most challenging things to
      do is working through perhaps a very impoverished community and helping reverse
      the cycle. Folks that were pushed out, bringing them back in. I think that says so
      much about not only the economic impact, but the love, the trust impact, as well as
      what your purpose base, your foundation, has done with your business as well. And
      This transcript was exported on Sep 28, 2023 - view latest version here.

      [00:19:30]
      [00:20:00]
      the other side, the financial infrastructure, I think this is so gratifying. It has to be
      for your family, for your providers, for your whole operation, to show that this
      model works. That you can have these savings that you're generating, that you put
      them back upstream and then you can have a better reinvestment and a better
      focus on attracting the right talent that are teachable and trainable and that can go
      into these communities and be able to appeal and connect to diverse populations.
      [00:20:30]
      [00:21:00]
      It's so amazing that this has just worked and I love it in a healthcare system in the
      US that really doesn't allow for this traditionally. So I love what you said and I want
      to go into the Chen culture a little bit more now, Gordon. So you built a culture
      with your wife, Dr. Jessica Chen, again you said you had done some schooling with
      back in the day, as well as being married at the same time as your medical
      academics. Your brother, the CEO, Dr. Chris Chen and sister-in-law as well, the chief
      legal and culture officer... love that title by the way... Stephanie Chen. And of
      course your parents, Dr. James and Mary Chen. How do you balance the demands
      of business and family? I think a lot of individuals would see this as, man, how do
      you work with your family? Is the business going to fail? It hasn't, but how have you
      been able to balance the family and business relationships and that dynamic while
      you're growing ChenMed?
      Dr. Gordon Chen:
      [00:21:30]
      [00:22:00]
      Well, Brian, I mean there are so many different aspects of this. Let me see how I
      can kind of piece it together. First of all, I mean, you may know that as a family
      we've been pushing really hard together for a long time. And just recently, just over
      the last month or two, when we've identified just amazing leaders that we thought,
      "Hey, they're ready," we've actually had the opportunity to take a step back out of
      our day-to-day operating roles and work in a more strategic way to figure out how
      we can get the organization to that next level. So we're functioning more as board
      members and trying to work on strategy. And we've got operators and I have a new
      chief medical officer in Gianni Neil who's taken the reins with just grace and
      strength and love, and she's doing a fantastic job. And same thing for many of our
      other new executives.
      [00:22:30]
      [00:23:00]
      But as a family throughout this journey this has been, and continues to be,
      something that we're deeply passionate about. And we're deeply passionate about
      this because we were homeless. We were dirt poor. We understand what it's like to
      be a minority or just suffering at the hands of a broken healthcare system. And we
      understand just the amount of need that's out there and the amount of rebuilding
      of relationship and trust that needs to occur. And so when you hear things like
      social justice or healthcare disparities and that makes folks just upset, it's not right.
      You shouldn't have to have a shorter life expectancy just because where you grew
      up, like growing up on the wrong side of the tracks leads to 20 to 30 years of lower
      life expectancy. I mean, that's not right. Anyone can just hear that and see that and
      get upset by it.
      [00:23:30]
      But at ChenMed, we give folks an opportunity to apply that passion in a very
      constructive, beautiful way in the neediest communities where you can take that
      passion and turn it into love in action. And so that's been part of, I think, this
      This transcript was exported on Sep 28, 2023 - view latest version here.

      [00:24:00]
      movement, this healthcare revolution that we as a family have had the privilege of
      starting, of kindling. Now, back to your question about how do we make it work as
      a family? Let me just say it hasn't been easy but it's been very meaningful and
      rewarding. And what has brought us back time and time again is really our faith.
      And I don't want to push my faith or my belief in God, I don't want to push my
      beliefs on anyone, but I will say that having an aligned faith and having a continued
      ability to humble ourselves in the side of God and each other when egos flare and
      we realize, hey, it's not about us.
      [00:24:30]
      [00:25:00]
      It's about how can we serve others better and how can we pour into others? And
      then whenever our egos would get out of check, having the same aligned values
      and the ability to just ask for forgiveness or reconciliation, and then understand
      that we all have the same goal. Life is short. I mean, almost losing my dad was very
      real. And also we almost lost my brother to Covid. So life is very short, how do we
      make each of our days count? And that's how we came up with this family purpose.
      And again, not to push my beliefs on anyone, just to be authentic with what we're
      trying to do as a family with our purpose, and our family purpose is to glorify God
      by spreading more love and promoting better health in all who come into contact
      with ChenMed.
      [00:25:30]
      Brian Urban:
      [00:26:00]
      It's so true to your faith and your philosophy with family. You've taken that
      replicable model and you've put it out to the world through healthcare, literally,
      with the ChenMed centers. So being able to hear how you've done it and knowing
      that it was tough and it's not perfect and never is perfect, is really humbling of you
      to say. And I think it's great for our audience to be aware of as well. In terms of
      major US healthcare systems, you've said it, a lot of other leaders that we've talked
      to on the show have said it, we're stuck in a sick care system in which you're sick,
      you exacerbate conditions, you come in the ER, urgent care, hospitalizations, and
      then you do it again. There's no prevention upstream, no lifestyle health science
      injected in medicine right now. But with your model, do you think ChenMed is a
      blueprint for how large healthcare systems can drop down to serve communities
      better?
      [00:26:30]
      Dr. Gordon Chen:
      [00:27:00]
      There are really, Brian, three things that we do that's very transformative, and what
      we do is we focus on patient and clinician and caregiver behavior change. So we're
      really a behavior change organization. That's number one. The second thing that
      we do is we bring accountability for health outcomes. And so we know what we're
      focused on. We're not focused on sickness, we're focused on health outcomes. And
      the third thing that we do is we pour into clinicians and non-clinicians and business
      leaders alike, and we teach them how to lead themselves and lead others together
      in a way that produces better health. And if you call those three things a blueprint
      for the future of healthcare, well, that's what we are.
      [00:27:30]
      Brian Urban: And I hope it's taken up, I hope it's listened, I hope it's replicated for the good of
      This transcript was exported on Sep 28, 2023 - view latest version here.

      [00:28:00]
      what you've done and to be able to spread that across the US healthcare system
      and the lives that are being served too. So thank you for that breakdown, all of this
      is extremely insightful. I actually want to take a moment to talk about your medical
      humanities as well. So mission trips to Nicaragua has been a part of, I think, your
      routine for maybe a couple decades now. Can you take us through your journey
      with mission work and how that's maybe influenced your approach to the lives
      you've served as a practicing physician, let alone a healthcare strategist and
      business leader as well?
      Dr. Gordon Chen: We've been going down to Nicaragua for almost 30 years.
      Brian Urban: 30, wow. I thought it was just 20.
      [00:28:30]
      Dr. Gordon Chen:
      [00:29:00]
      [00:29:30]
      In high school we would go down and do mission trips and repaint schools and
      build basketball courts, and we would go with our church. And then in medical
      school we started Nicaragua Medical Missions and we would go down there and
      see patients and really give free care, we'd raise money for supplies and
      medications, and we'd bring hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of supplies
      and medications down to Nicaragua and those medicines would serve those
      communities. And that was very rewarding, but we realized that there needed to
      be more partnership with the folks in Nicaragua. And so working closely with a
      group for the last decade and a half, called AMOS, a Ministry of Sharing, they are
      working tightly with the Nicaragua government and the Ministry of Health. And so
      together they're trying to figure out how to bring much needed care to some of the
      poorest communities across Nicaragua. So we've partnered with them. We
      continue to take medical mission teams down there, both with ChenMed, a couple
      of trips per year, one led by Chris and Steph, and one led by Jessica and I.
      [00:30:00]
      [00:30:30]
      [00:31:00]
      And then we also have the University of Miami Medical students have been going
      down there for almost two decades now. And so we continue to build this long-
      term relationship with the communities there. The main community is in Nejapa,
      which is about 40 minutes outside of Managua. And what we do when we go down
      there, when we realize that we do, I think, help the communities down there, but
      who really gets transformed every time we go there are the people that go. We go
      down there and we realize how precious life is, how joy doesn't come from things,
      it comes from relationships, it comes from inside. And many of these trips are great
      for relationships. They're also great spiritual awakenings as well. When I go down
      there personally, I feel like I can just connect with God and others in such a deep
      way without the noise, without the hustle and the bustle that we have in the
      states, and you can get that clarity of purpose. And so that's what it's meant for
      me.
      I know that many people that go down there also have the same experience. Now
      also, in addition to these things, both Chris and Stephanie and Jessica and I, our
      relationships before Jessica and I were married, and right when we started dating,
      that all came from these Nicaragua medical mission trips. And so there's a part of
      This transcript was exported on Sep 28, 2023 - view latest version here.

      [00:31:30] us that were like, "Wow, these trips helped me find my wife." Chris and Stephanie
      can say the same thing. And so there's a little bit in our hearts that is attached to
      what happened and how our life trajectories changed by going on these trips.
      Brian Urban:
      [00:32:00]
      It's such a beautiful beginning, not only to marriage but also to your philosophy in
      medicine. And also it's a continued repetition that you have in your life and you've
      passed down to your children as well now. It's amazing. It's a uniter, and I hope
      everyone can find that type of meaning in mission trips or purpose-based giving,
      things like that. I love that, Gordon. That's so cool to hear. Do you think that's
      directly impacted your view on US health equity and advancing health equity in the
      US?
      [00:32:30]
      Dr. Gordon Chen:
      [00:33:00]
      [00:33:30]
      It's been so precious as we've been building ChenMed and then continue to take
      these mission trips to Nicaragua and learn how simple healthcare can be if you
      break it down into its core components. And so when we talk about transformative
      care, what it really is is the pursuit of health and wellness for everyone involved,
      both the patients and the caregivers. And if you think about the drivers of health
      and wellness, whether or not you're in Southside Chicago or in Atlanta or in South
      Florida or in Nicaragua, there are really five key drivers of health and wellness that
      anywhere you go, it's the same. There's a personal driver, a community
      component, there's a physical, certainly, and we see a lot of that with healthcare
      but it's only part of the story. There's a nutritional and clearly there's a spiritual,
      which ties back to bringing meaning and purpose back to people's lives. And if
      these five drivers, personal, community, physical, nutritional, spiritual, if we're
      thinking about those things in a cohesive way to drive health and wellness, then
      we're going to be on our way towards transformative care.
      Brian Urban:
      [00:34:00]
      [00:34:30]
      I think that breaks it down to how simple health and achieving health and wellbeing
      can be. Man, I could talk to you for hours. I know you don't have that sort of time,
      but this has just been just fascinating. I want to take a look into the future, Gordon,
      here. So in terms of contributions to the healthcare ecosystem, what do you think
      all of your work with ChenMed will amount to over the course of the next several
      years? Is it going to be change in processes, policies, healthcare business models,
      the way large systems become more community-rooted more than ever? What do
      you think ChenMed's legacy is going to be? What's the big contribution you think is
      going to be there over the next several years?
      Dr. Gordon Chen:
      [00:35:00]
      [00:35:30]
      So we have this beautiful vision to be America's leading primary care provider,
      transforming care of the neediest populations. And that's why we go into the
      neediest communities, and that's why we set such high expectations for ourselves
      to be the leader, to actually transform American healthcare. I think it can be done
      and it needs to be done through primary care. And my hope is in the future, in the
      next five to seven years, that we can see that through. Our new president, Steve
      Nelson, has set out a goal for the whole organization to reach 700 communities by
      the end of the decade and take care of over a million of the most vulnerable senior
      patients throughout the country. And if we can do that, and you know how the
      This transcript was exported on Sep 28, 2023 - view latest version here.

      Pareto works, right, if you're taking care of the sickest of the sick, then you're
      having a huge impact on the broader healthcare ecosystem.
      [00:36:00]
      And if you can do that in an efficient and effective way and pour those resources
      back into new communities' growth and get further upstream, that's how you
      transform American healthcare.
      Brian Urban: I can't wait to continue to follow the impact ChenMed makes, not only across the
      healthcare ecosystem, but the communities, the lives that you'll be serving. Just a
      truly informative and inspiring conversation today. Gordon, thank you so much for
      being on our little show.
      [00:36:30]
      Dr. Gordon Chen: Brian, thanks so much for having me, and hopefully we're encouraging our listeners
      that this can happen. We don't have to be stuck in this sick care model. And if they
      want to learn more about ChenMed they can go to chenmed.com. If they want to
      check out the book they can find it on Amazon. It's The Calling, A Memoir of Family,
      Faith, and the Future of Healthcare. Or they can follow me on LinkedIn. That would
      be great. Thank you very much, Brian.
      [00:37:00]
      Brian Urban: Thank you, Gordon. The book is amazing. I highly encourage everybody to learn not
      only your story, your adventures, but the impact you're making. It's just so, so
      amazing to get to know you more, Gordon. And for more exciting insights and
      excerpts, please visit us at finthrive.com

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