How can health systems expand access, improve quality, and reduce costs at the same time?
In this episode, Stewart Gandolf talks with Dr. Lyle Berkowitz, Founder and Executive Chairman of KeyCare, about building a national “virtualist” medical group on Epic, aligning incentives for physicians, and using AI to amplify, not replace, clinical care.
Why Listen?
- Apply AI where it fits to capture histories, structure data, and free clinicians to practice at the top of their license.
- Operationalize a virtualist model that offloads lower-acuity demand from clinics while preserving longitudinal continuity for complex patients.
- Coordinate care through Epic to ensure patient data, scheduling, and messaging flow seamlessly across organizations, without creating a “third-party vacuum.”
- Adopt the “3 Cs” for physician buy-in—Coordinated care, Compensation redesign, and Cultural change—to drive real utilization.
- Align incentives so office-based teams focus on complex care while virtualists manage routine, preventive, and gap-closure work efficiently.
If you’re a healthcare leader aiming to expand capacity, reduce leakage and ER dependence, and improve physician experience, this episode is a must-listen.
Key Insights and Takeaways
- Use AI to amplify, not replace, clinicians
Pre-visit data capture, ambient documentation and workflow automation reduce admin time, allowing clinicians to focus on judgment, counseling and complex decision-making. - Rebalance care with a dedicated virtualist layer
A full-time virtualist workforce excels at addressing lower-acuity, high-volume needs, creating office capacity for complex cases and shortening wait times.
- Leverage Epic to eliminate the “care vacuum”
Epic’s native interoperability and Telehealth Anywhere allow cross-instance scheduling, data access and documentation so virtual care remains inside the longitudinal record. - Turn access into downstream value
Shifting routine visits online increases throughput, reduces leakage, improves quality metrics and care-gap closures and drives appropriate downstream revenue.

Lyle Berkowitz, MD
Founder and Executive Chairman, KeyCare
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Note: The following AI-generated transcript is provided as an additional resource for those who prefer not to listen to the podcast recording. It has been lightly edited and reviewed for readability and accuracy.
Read the Full Transcript
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
Okay. Hello, everyone.
Stewart Gandolf with another podcast, and today we are interviewing Dr. Lyle Berkowitz. He is the founder and executive chairman of KeyCare, and I’ve got a pretty good sense that Lyle will be able to share thoughts and ideas pretty easily.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
Glad to be here. I think Lyle and I are not known for being shy on these kinds of topics.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
We’re going to have a fun and stimulating conversation. I’m really looking forward to this.
Lyle, I’d like to start off. Our audience, I’ve gotten to know you and know a bit about KeyCare, but I’d love for you to share and brag a little — it’s okay — about your background and then specifically about KeyCare and what you’re doing. Then we’ll take it from there.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
Sure. I wear a couple of hats. I was a biomedical engineer who became a physician, who became a system executive, who became a doctor-preneur.
I’ve been able to meld all these things in my career, and often they happen at the same time.
I spent much of my career as a primary care physician and a system executive at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
My executive skills focused on IT and innovation — rolling out EMRs, looking at new companies and ideas, and figuring out how to get them up and running in a large academic medical center.
Along the way, I was pulled into a variety of business activities. I was chief medical officer for two publicly traded companies and an advisor and eventually founder of multiple other digital health companies over the years.
After twenty-something years at Northwestern, I left and went full-time into the business world, serving as an executive at MDLIVE, one of the big telehealth companies.
I did that for a few years, helped them scale up. They sold to Cigna. Then I focused on one of my other companies, called Healthfinch, which was in the workflow automation space.
We sold that to Health Catalyst. I thought I would focus on investing and consulting, etc., but got pulled into one more company called KeyCare, which we’ll talk more about today.
The idea took all of my history — as a doctor, as a health system executive, as someone who rolled out and worked with Epic, both as a user and an implementer. One of my health tech companies was among the first apps on their App Orchard.
We started the nation’s first and only telehealth organization using Epic as our base EMR and telehealth software so we could provide access nationally, but in coordination with the many other health systems already using Epic, rather than provide access in a vacuum and separate care from their typical health system care.
I’ll stop there. That’s my two-minute overview.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
That was really helpful. One thing I want to clarify about KeyCare. You’re not just providing a software platform that others can use. You’re actually providing—
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
In fact, we do not sell technology.
We are a tech-enabled service. We provide access to a virtualist workforce that works on our instance of Epic, which we’ve optimized for highly efficient virtual care. We’ve also optimized for coordinating with other Epic health systems by using Epic’s built-in interoperability functionality for data sharing, cross-instance scheduling, messaging, etc.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
I find it really intriguing. It’s funny, I think about this a lot lately in terms of my own career.
I spent about ten years interacting with thousands of doctors, leading a couple hundred seminars, and that was priceless.
I wish I could take all the knowledge from that and put it into the brains of people on my team because it’s a different perspective having done that.
In your case, having worked at the doctor level, the technology level, and the health system level gives you, I’m assuming, some insane insights about the world and where the opportunities are. Does it? In my experience, you can’t read that in a book.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
Working in a health system gives you that experience. It’s a large matrix organization, and different people have different ideas and thoughts.
There are common goals. When I walk into a health system and say, “This is what we’re doing. We want to partner with you. We want to help see your patients,” they need to trust that I know what I’m talking about.
I need to know who to involve — how much is IT versus clinical versus strategic versus financial — and think strategically that if I’m asking them to change anything, I have to make their life a lot easier.
Different executives have different levers for what that means. Yes, it’s an advantage to have been inside, as well as having rolled out Epic.
I’ve also been on the other side — the person people would pitch. As head of innovation at Northwestern, I was the person people came to and said, “Use our technology or service.”
So I know ahead of time what questions they can or should be asking. I’m more prepared and more empathetic to the issues they face when working with a new partner.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
We see, fortunately, because we’ve been working for a long time, our SEO and AI SEO bring people to us all the time.
Often, we get calls from startups. Sometimes they’re VCs — I just got off the phone with a VC-backed startup minutes ago — and sometimes mom-and-pops.
I’m always intrigued with the product. When I speak about marketing, I say amateur marketers go straight to promotion; smart ones start with the product.
They think about what needs to be filled. How did that journey happen? What insights led to KeyCare as something worth spending your considerable time, brainpower, and resources on?
That’s the most exciting part — the seed of the idea. Where did that come from, and how did it develop based on your experience?
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
On one hand, as an engineer and innovator, I like to rethink what I’m doing every five years. I spent four to five years in telehealth and thought, okay, I’ve done that. What next? AI, etc. This was around the dawn of COVID, 2021 or so.
On one hand, I said I don’t need to do telehealth again. On the other hand, the problem with traditional third-party telehealth companies is that they’re not integrated into the fabric of healthcare.
Pre-COVID, it was a niche. Post-COVID, everybody was doing telehealth. At one point, for a couple of weeks, that was all you could get.
I recognized an opportunity to do telehealth in a way that made more sense because it was coordinated with longitudinal care.
I took my background as a primary care doc who likes lots of background data and as a health system leader who recognizes that more data makes care better and easier.
With my knowledge about Epic — which had only recently developed a mature telehealth product — it all came together. Post-COVID you had:
- Patients and doctors are exposed to telehealth as a viable option.
- A funding mechanism that wasn’t there before. Insurers would pay for telehealth.
- The best automation technology, from AI to other automation, makes the most sense in a purely virtual world.
- Decades of population health understanding: treat different patients differently. The most complex need more time and attention, but those at the bottom of the pyramid could be load-balanced to lighter, quicker care.
That’s where the concept of the virtualist became important. We lived through the rise of hospitalists. What if virtualists could not only take care of patients online but do it faster and better because they have different thought processes, technology, and business models?
All these things came into play, but the true impetus was that COVID made it a much more viable option, and health systems became much more interested in telehealth.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
It’s funny. I remember that period. We were doing webinars with a leading telehealth platform. I’ve spoken for years about patient experience — what patients want versus what hospitals and doctors want — and they’re often diametrically opposed.
Patients want to communicate with doctors and make appointments online. Historically, many were opposed.
Telehealth was another category where, within weeks, health systems that said they could never do this were fully engaged.
You mentioned reimbursement was a big issue, and HIPAA was another, and suddenly, those were temporarily suspended, and that changed everything.
What’s interesting to me is when you have that inciting incident, it’s not just what’s happening now, but what it means long term. I love that you got that.
I wish we had more time. That’s a fascinating topic — how that change enables everything. Mental health has fundamentally changed. Real healthcare has fundamentally changed.
Even basic stuff — fortunately, all I need — I still get options from my doctors for a virtual follow-up. Do I want that or to go back and sit in their office for routine checks?
It’s amazing. Let’s talk about the virtualist. I love that terminology. How do you see that playing out?
Right now, it still feels new, but will it be integrated completely into care, as common as hospitalists?
And in healthcare, there’s always status quo. Even if it’s available, they may not use it. How is that going? Where are you in development?
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
What I started finding a couple of years ago, and even more so now, is an increasing number of doctors want to be virtualists full-time, not just on the side.
All doctors can and should do virtual care now and then, like doctors did hospital care off and on.
But we recognized it made sense to have someone dedicated to the hospital so the doctor could focus on the office.
Similarly, asking an office-based doctor to do some office care and some virtual care causes cognitive dissonance and inefficiency.
The best compromise might be dedicating a block, like Thursday afternoons, to virtual care, but they won’t become true experts.
Meanwhile, virtualists do solely virtual care and become experts in efficiency and quality. They compensate for not touching someone physically by observing online, sometimes seeing things they wouldn’t in an office.
Seeing someone’s home can offer helpful clues. We’re seeing technologies for vital signs and other metrics presented to the virtualist.
Virtualists have a different mindset: how can I take care of you as best I can, even if I don’t know you?
They focus on routine care efficiently. Patients love it. Virtualists want high volume of routine, lower complexity cases, and they love helping patients who lack primary care.
They prefer high volume of lower acuity rather than small volume of high complexity. Specialists want higher complexity.
Office-based primary care may need to see more complex cases in the office and leave lower complexity to online.
That shift may involve many aspects. Patients overwhelmingly want options and quick online access.
The decrease in virtual care isn’t because patients want to come back; it’s because office doctors don’t want to do a lot of virtual care.
It’s often less efficient and less economically viable in a pure RVU bonus model. The rise of the virtualist should work with office-based doctors shifting to more complex care, but only if we pay them appropriately.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
It always comes back to reimbursement as a critical part of all this.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
There’s so much to unpack there.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
I moved away from my primary care doctor, even though I liked him, because he was with a local medical group.
The Hoag system here in Southern California is amazing. My kids — and I figured this out once — about 74 percent of the time, a normal doctor is closed.
Everybody’s sick on the weekend or after hours. We had small kids. We changed to Hoag because they have multiple urgent cares. It’s always fast.
Convenience is a big deal. In this market, which is generally upscale, people are used to being treated this way, which is part of why doctors offer telehealth.
But there are a lot of people kicking and fighting. Meanwhile, telehealth is the emerging part. I used to see my primary care provider when I was sick. Now I go to urgent care. Instead of waiting two days, you can get in immediately.
In my experience, the primary care is more the quarterback of your healthcare versus your everyday doctor.
I can see that evolving. The telehealth aspect is interesting. The doctors you contract with — from their point of view, are they part of a larger group or health system? Are they individual doctors? Who are your customers for KeyCare?
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
Who are our providers?
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
Yeah.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
The virtualists I’m talking about are often independent providers.
They are not part of the health system. Sometimes a doctor works part-time for a health system and part-time for us.
But more and more are full-time with us. They’ve left the health system. One reason they want to be a virtualist is flexibility.
They want accessibility and convenience. They might be a mother who wants to work during school hours and be there when the kids are home.
Someone else might want to do other things during the day and work evening hours. Many tell us the same story. They worked at a large health system and were treated like a commodity.
They wanted to be on their own, maybe live in a rural area, and not be a cog in the machine. We’re trying to create an old-fashioned medical group. We meet every month. We talk amongst ourselves.
We listen to our physicians and their needs and try to give them the right life balance. I worry about health systems that hire a bunch of bureaucrats to oversee doctors and tell them to increase RVUs and see more volume.
That ignores the holistic reality. Burnout often comes from being slaves to RVUs, with non-doctors telling them to work harder and faster without understanding everything it means to be a doctor today.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
Do you find recruiting relatively easy at this stage? There’s a balance as people move away from primary care. Primary care is competitive. There are nurse practitioners and PAs.
I think you told me before that it’s almost all MDs currently, too. Is that correct? How’s your recruiting going?
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
We started with MDs, but we’re starting to add NPs now. It’s still a majority of MDs, but we’ll add NPs. We think they make great virtualists.
In a world with a bit of a doctor shortage, you’d think we’d have trouble, but we’ve been fortunate in recruiting.
Two reasons. One, more and more doctors are interested in the virtualist lifestyle. Two, they don’t have many options. Some options involve working for a company that prescribes one drug repeatedly or only does urgent care. If they want to be true doctors, it’s important to be on a true EMR. The fact that we have Epic became a bigger recruiting selling point than I realized.
Most doctors today have trained on Epic. They trust and respect it. There’s no perfect EMR, but on Epic, there’s access to past information via Care Everywhere’s interoperability network. There’s clinical decision support that they may not find in homegrown systems or some other EMRs. They get best-of-breed.
That’s important to them. On top of that, we let them act as true primary care doctors, not just a one-medication or urgent-care mill.
They can do urgent, preventive, chronic, longitudinal care — things they can’t do in many other virtual settings.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
That makes sense. I love these insights. If someone just prescribes the same drug all day, that can’t be fulfilling.
Some doctors just want to be done — see a case, be done, move on — others don’t want palliative care.
Some want long-term patient relationships. Some are drawn to the virtualist idea. You can live where you want, set your hours, and do what you want. Within that, they still have choices. That’s exciting.
Let’s talk about the software side in a moment. Before I do, in terms of the customers you’re pursuing, is it usually health systems? Who are your customers typically, and will that change over time?
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
Phase one was Epic-based health systems with access issues that want to expand capacity because patients can’t get in. If we add capacity, that’s great. They get downstream revenue, improve keepings, decrease leakage, make room for new patients, etc.
Additionally, they recognize load balancing. They can shift lower-complexity care to our virtual team and open room for more complex patients who have more value to the health system and need to be seen in the office.
So there’s access, quality, marketing, and business value. We’ve also found that as the rest of the health ecosystem recognizes how many are on Epic, payers, labs, pharma, and others say they want a national virtual medical group helping their patients.
Because we work on Epic and have easier access to past information and can share what we do with doctors regionally via Care Everywhere, they see that instead of working with a third party that sees patients in a vacuum, they can work with us and get timely, coordinated care. We believe the nation needs a national virtual primary care group, and being on Epic makes it easier to deliver higher-quality, more efficient, coordinated care.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
I want to talk more about Epic, but one question. Considering problems like rural healthcare or value-based care, I assume health plans and various entities are also interested, not just local systems. Serving rural populations is tough. Making value-based care affordable is tough. Are those growth areas you’re looking at as well?
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
As we talk to health plans, we hear: we have patients we’re at risk for. Some have no primary care doctor. Some have one but aren’t getting needed care.
Can you close care gaps and be available so the patient talks to you instead of going to the ER?
As you said, it’s about reimbursement and incentives. I never got an MBA, Stewart, but I learned one thing in business: incentives matter whether you think they do or not. When we talk to health systems or plans, we ask what problem they’re trying to solve. Is it increasing access and capacity? Improving preventive care and care gap closures for an at-risk population? Making sure patients go to the right level of care to avoid the ER? Who’s at risk, who’s paying?
Often, with health systems, we credential and enroll into the health system so we can take the same insurance and be aligned.
If they have value-based operations, even better. We are custom-made for value-based care. We decrease ER visits and allow quicker, efficient closing of care gaps and wellness visits. I want a company that works in fee-for-service but can really explode in value-based care. Plans are aligned toward value-based initiatives because they’re often at risk. Providing fast, efficient, available online care usually decreases costs over time.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
Yes, especially with rural healthcare delivery. Those patients are often older, poorer, not seeing doctors, and end up in the ER. That’s a real problem.
Let’s go back to Epic. Any other key insights about riding the rails of a common technology?
You could try to partner with every practice management system or EHR. You picked one, the leader. I assume that’s central to everything you do.
If someone said, do these others too, what would you tell them?
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
We picked the market leader. I’ve seen different stats on how many health systems they work with, but a reasonable estimate is 60 to 70 percent of healthcare runs through Epic in some form.
There aren’t many other EMRs that could handle this technically. Epic’s Care Everywhere interoperability network is powerful and unique.
They exchange millions of health records daily. People say it’s hard to interoperate with Epic, but when our doctors see a patient, they have access to every piece of data from other Epic instances they know about.
That’s powerful and not easily replicated. If I pick one, I’ll pick the one I know most, that’s rated best repeatedly, and has the largest market share by far.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
That makes sense. Another question. How do you combat inertia with health systems? They’re notoriously slow — decisions, committees.
You mentioned a sales VP approach: push pain points. Which pain do you have — this, this, or this?
You’re not claiming benefits; you’re addressing problems. Is that the secret to breaking through? Any other secrets to help health systems move in positive, win-win directions?
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
Generically, health systems are like the proverbial elephant. Depending on what the blind man touches, they feel different.
Every health system is unique. Each has a CEO, CMO, CIO, etc., but those roles vary. One CIO may focus on minimal technical functions; another is deeply involved in clinical tech, akin to a chief digital officer. How and where we get in depends on the organization.
Commonly, the technology team is told, We need a virtual care partner. Over half the time we replace one they already have, which isn’t easy but works well for us.
The health system decided to have a virtual care partner. They used a third party, but that vendor is on a different tech stack, requiring constant interface upkeep.
The patient has a bad experience. Data isn’t shared. Doctors aren’t happy.
We say, you’re willing to share care; work with us. It’ll be a better patient and doctor experience and more financially viable.
We replace in many cases. De novo is harder because they consider doing it themselves. A common story: they say they’ll do it themselves. Six months later, they come back — no one did anything.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
Yeah, we keep saying we’ll do it, but no one actually does anything internally.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
Epic has set up interoperability beyond data. Telehealth Anywhere allows us to connect to another health system and be available within that health system’s MyChart.
From a patient’s perspective, it’s easy. From a CIO perspective, they flip a few switches, and Epic connects our instances.
We’ve made IT happy. We’ve made the CFO happy because increased access and volume are desired. The head of access is happy. The biggest risk might be the head of primary care who says, we can do it ourselves, then doesn’t, and struggles with sharing care.
Elsewhere, heads of primary care love it. They want us to take what they don’t have time to do. They have 36-day waits because doctors are overwhelmed with minor things, annual wellness visits, and small tasks. If we shift that to you, even better.
It depends on the setup. You can’t please all the people all the time, but our goal is to please technology, clinical, and financial leaders so that this works.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
One thing about building it on your own — I just went through this personally. I read a book years ago called “Scaling Up.”
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
It’s one thing to read a book. It’s another thing to implement it across an organization.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
Multiply that by a health system. One obvious point: this isn’t a technology issue. It’s a recruiting issue. You have to get the right people. Technology is the part we’re talking about here, but finding the right doctors, getting them on the same page — recruiting is huge.
Even with the right platform, they must recruit. Do that in your spare time.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
And do it for something you lose money on because you have a higher cost basis.
We are very asset-light. We can see a high volume of minor cases and still make money. It’s harder for a health system.
It’s not only recruiting and economies of scale, or recruiting for evenings and 50-state coverage.
We put time and money into making our Epic instance highly optimized for virtual care.
For us, saving two minutes per visit is important at scale.
A health system won’t spend millions to make minor urgent care ultra-efficient. We will, because we scale across 20-plus health systems, then 50, 100.
It makes sense for us to do it and create economies of scale an individual system won’t have. When we build technology, we:
- Fine-tune and tweak Epic’s features, which keep improving.
- Use Epic App Orchard or Showroom partners where helpful.
- Build our own tools where Epic or partners don’t, or when it’s better, faster, cheaper.
We’re not just giving health systems a workforce. We’re delivering an AI, tech-enabled, optimized workforce that can do the same amount of care better, faster, and cheaper than they could ever hire themselves to do on a standard Epic instance optimized for the office.
We’re running an instance optimized solely for virtual care.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
You brought up something earlier that I thought was a great insight. Urgent cares or family groups integrating telehealth have a different mindset.
How do you switch from one to the other? I can see why that’s an issue. A related operational or human issue is getting individual doctors and staff to buy in and change habits. How do we get them to really think of you? We’ve got a contract at the system level, but how do we spur usage? Frame that with what you said on our last call — making doctors happy and patients healthy. Once you’ve signed a contract, that’s not the same as utilization. I’d love to know more.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
There are two or three parts, with subparts.
Part one is before the doctor is involved. When a patient calls the call center or uses MyChart, the health system has the opportunity to guide them. Within Epic, you can propose questions. If it’s a minor urgent need and you want to be seen today, we can say that there are no appointments now. I could tell you to go to the ER or urgent care, but we also have this group that takes your insurance. I can point you there. Click a couple of buttons and be on a video visit in 10 to 20 minutes. We have to make it clear and obvious to patients that this exists, whether via call center, MyChart, or the website.
Number two is getting physicians bought in so they tell patients, this is a good, safe option. “I can’t see you today. Go here.” To do that, I call it the three Cs for physician adoption. C1: Coordinated care. They must feel comfortable that if they send a patient, the other doctor has access to the records and shares back. That’s what we do. C2: Compensation redesign. This may be the most important. If you pay primary care on base salary plus RVU bonus, they’re incentivized to get as many RVUs as possible. Seeing quick, easy stuff boosts RVUs. They won’t be happy sharing patients. If you want buy-in, consider how you compensate. At least a straight salary, regardless of RVUs helps.
Better, pay based on panel size and give them a team to expand their panel. Now you have alignment. We’re starting to see that. It’s the most obvious model, but it involves comp redesign, which causes angst.
My suggestion: don’t try to do it across the board. Pick a few doctors to start, show it works, then spread.
C3: Cultural change. Doctors, patients, and staff feel comfortable with virtual care’s effectiveness.
Without comp redesign, it’s hard to get doctors to promote this.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
That’s brilliant. I can see how that works. Getting people to work toward common goals instead of cross-purposes is hard, especially in healthcare, which is so complicated.
We didn’t design healthcare from scratch. It grew, like a house with 75 rooms added over time.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
Joe Flower, a futurist, wrote a great article years ago. It’s a big game theory problem. Complicated weaving of incentives. It’s hard to move someone’s cheese.
My experience as a doctor on comp committees for 30 years — you don’t move someone’s cheese without giving them some extra cheese. Don’t say, “But it’s good for the patient.” You won’t get adoption if you don’t make doctors’ lives easier and better financially.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
Great way to end, and an excellent quote we’ll probably promote. We’ll have your LinkedIn profile on the blog and podcast summaries, as well as a link to the website.
Any final thoughts? This has been fun, as I knew it would be. Anything we should have covered that we didn’t?
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
One quote I like: “We don’t have a shortage of physicians in this country. We have a shortage of using them efficiently.”
Whether we use tech to amplify office-based doctors or virtualists will be important for our future.
For a health system to transform, it can’t just do the same things faster. They have to rethink how they manage a population. Much of what we’re doing at KeyCare focuses on bringing population health and team-based care to life, now that virtual care is accepted and reimbursable.
We’re not inventing new ideas. We’re applying what Kaiser and others have known.
If we do it right, patients get more access. Doctors focus on top-of-license.
Imagine telling your doctors, we’ll decrease the number of patients you see in the office while increasing your salary and panel size, and we’ll give you a team to ensure quality is evenly distributed and everyone gets what they need.
We can improve access, cost, quality, patient experience, and physician experience at the same time. People say you can only choose three, but I think we can do it all.
People wind up in the ER less, which isn’t bad. ERs don’t want lower-complexity cases.
It’s a big vision, but it’s possible now.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
We’re in enough pain that health systems are willing to try something. You can’t squeeze the lime forever. Everyone talks about burnout. Squeeze harder, and the lime falls apart in your hands. It’s such an innovative idea. I wish we had more time.
For example, we could talk about triage with AI chatbots answering calls. You can check all these things faster and get people where they need to go.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
Virtual care has the most promise for automating a big chunk of care.
You still need a doctor, but imagine the AI spends 15 minutes and the doctor spends five.
Much more efficient use of the doctor. More patients seen, online, with the patient still getting what they need, and the doctor focusing on the high-value work.
Ambient AI is helpful, but even better is capturing more information ahead of time.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)
Lyle, this was fun. I appreciate your time. Great job. Lots of insights.
It’s exactly what I love — new insights for me and the audience.
Dr. Lyle (KeyCare)
Thanks. I appreciate the conversation. Good stuff.










