Why Clinical Mission and Business Strategy Must Scale Together

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

Hello, and welcome to the Healthcare Success Podcast. Today I have another very knowledgeable guest. We’re going to do some things a little bit differently today. So I have Vasanta Pundarika on our interview today. She is CEO of Lotuspring.

Welcome, Vasanta.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

Thank you for having me, Stewart.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

You’ve got a really interesting background. And as we prepare today, we’re going to talk about how to integrate clinical mission with scalable business strategy. But you have a unique perspective. So I wanted to start off for just a moment. Tell us about your background and because you’ve done quite a few different things and help our listeners understand what it is you do.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

Yeah, absolutely. This is, it’s crazy to think about, but this is my 20th year working in health care. Wow. So that ages me a little bit. But I started off in health care, you know, before the ACA, before people had electronic health record. You know, my first few years, I was creating these graphs of paper documents and paper files that people had.

And so it’s crazy to think about. But I started off as a health care investment banker in 2006, and I was working with hospitals and health care systems, advising them on how to finance building new bed towers. And a couple of years later, three things happened around the same time.

One was electronic health records becoming something that hospitals actually needed to invest in. And the second was the ACA coming on the scene. And the third was the market crashing. And so hospitals couldn’t really afford to build these new bed towers anymore. So they started merging together. And I did a lot of those transactions, merging these hospitals together.

And once you’ve merged many hospitals together, you’ve now have this integrated delivery network. And then the next question is, okay, what are we going to do with behavioral health, home health, hospice, dialysis, labs?

And so at some point or the other, I’ve worked on transactions across the entire healthcare ecosystem, basically anything that a health system would have owned, got really interested in behavioral health over the years and started really focusing in on that.

I am really interested in are behavioral health and women’s health. Those are the spaces I really want to have an impact on. And the companies in those two spaces, they need help selling, but they also need help growing. And so I wanted to be more flexible and nimble. And so I started my firm Lotuspring to be able to be an advisor to companies in both of those spaces and help them sell, but also help them grow and be in a position where I could help on both sides. I love that.

And as you know, we do a lot with private equity-owned providers. And also, especially in behavioral health and women’s health as well. So hopefully we’ll get to work together or I’ll be able to refer to you periodically because that’s certainly something we see a lot. And we’ll talk more offline about that.

But today you wanted to talk about integrating the clinical mission with the scalable business strategy.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

I would love for you to maybe start by describing the problem as you see it and describe what that means as well.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

Yeah, you know, and we’ve all, you know, when I start describing this, you’re going to think, like, oh, I’ve seen that before. We’ve all seen this happen, right? Either there are companies that have really good clinical mission, really good clinical vision, and they don’t grow it. And so it turns into a company that’s really positively impacting very few people. You know, the people that it’s impacting is doing a really good job with, but what about everybody else that could benefit from this company?

On the flip side, we have a lot of companies that really focus in on marketing and scaling and building this like snazzy big brand that they just keep growing, growing, growing, but without clinical substance underneath it. And so at some point, you know, the company flops on top of itself because, you know, there isn’t that connection between marketing and clinical strategy and operations.

So I really think in order to build a long -term sustainable business, that’s going to keep on growing, like, out into the future and still be around, you know, three, five, ten years from now, you need to integrate the two of those. Like, have that a clinical mission, but integrate it together with that scalable business strategy so that when you’re marketing, you’re actually connecting that in with the operations and the clinical mission of the business.

I just think that that’s how you impact more patients. That’s why we’re all in health care, right? We’re in health care to be able to positively impact as many patients as possible. And when a company doesn’t work when it fails, you’re really pulling a rug out from under these patients that have really put their trust into this company. And so it is really important from a lot of different aspects to make sure that that clinical mission is integrated with business strategy.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

So that’s great. And it’s funny because I’ve seen, as you would expect, both sides of this. I’ve seen, you know, businesses that weren’t willing to invest in themselves and just sort of kicked around for years, I’ve seen people that grew too fast without really figuring out what they’re going to do with it. And that sort of collapses in a more visible way and probably more painful way, right?

Because it’s hard. Then you need to go repair versus just fixed. But beyond that, like synchronizing this all together, like, why is that so critical? And then especially how should the CEO be involved with this and to frame this in their decision-making internally? And I have a follow -on question of this in a second, but answer that one first.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

Yeah, I mean, I think it comes back to, like, what is the product in health care services, right? The product is patient experience. And what is tied into the patient experience? So, you know, obviously, it’s health care services. They need to have really good clinical care. But also, what is their patient journey, you know, what are all the operational systems that they’re interacting with as they go through that patient journey? And, you know, how are you getting that patient?

And so if those three different aspects are not actually coordinated together, then you end up in a situation where either the company doesn’t grow or it doesn’t have a clinical mission or it starts growing with the patient experience suffers, right?

So I do think that, you know, as a CEO, thinking about these aspects together in an integrated way is really important. I often talk to CEOs who, you know, their marketing team is doing something over here and their operations team is doing something over here and their clinical team is doing something over here. You know, as a CEO, like, you need to bring all those pieces together and need to think about that in a coordinated fashion.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

So having worked in this business for quite a while, even longer than you, when you know a, for example, like if you’re talking about mental health or you’re talking about women’s health, a lot of those providers are multilocation, private equity owned. And I always say, if you know one of those businesses, you know one of those businesses.

So what I mean by that is, yeah. Some businesses, the CEO is very strategic, hands-on, has the internal respect to get stuff done. Other times, it’s like more of a figurehead. You know, the CEO has come in, has been placed in there, but doesn’t really have the backing.

Sometimes the founding doctors are still really in charge and as things are being done by committee. Sometimes  the CEO, especially when they get bigger, that usually falls apart and that’s when they need a CEO, but there’s kind of a continuum there.

And then thirdly, the PE company can be either really hands-on or really hands-off.

So I’m assuming you must have to navigate through that when you’re… these issues, like to bring everybody on the same page. Is that an issue for you or how does that work?

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

I mean, absolutely. I completely agree with you, Stewart. Like when you’ve seen one of these businesses, you’ve seen one of these businesses and that’s it, right? Every single one of these businesses is so different. That said, all of the patterns that you were just describing, I’ve also seen before. Yeah.

You know, situations where the physicians are still in charge of the business, so there isn’t that one figurehead CEO that’s over everybody. And then secondly, where the CEO is just a figurehead and is not actually plugged into the strategy and the integration of all of these things.

So I do think every situation is unique, but if you don’t focus on this and you don’t focus on the patient experience and you don’t focus on synchronizing mission and strategy, then you end up in one of these pitfalls. So I do think it’s on the company’s board to really make sure that there is a CEO in place who can integrate all of these things together and on the company’s boards and be asking these questions.

Like what metrics are you actually tracking for the company? Do you have a lot of clinical staff turnover? You know, all of these things are really important to help you understand whether, you know, your mission, your operations are actually moving in the same direction as the growth of your company. And I think it all kind of connects together.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

So last question before I go back to this, some of the pre -questions we had was, so getting on the same page is often so important. Is that like, so I’m assuming you may be getting engaged by the CEO, by the board, by somebody else.

Is that often a part of you just to get everybody aligned on this whole idea of bringing the clinical and the business strategy together? And is that easy to do or difficult to do sometimes?

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

It’s not easy to do because it’s, you know, every situation has different personalities, right? And it goes back to when you’ve seen one of these, you’ve seen one of these. And each situation has different people involved. And a title does not mean the same thing in different companies.

So you could have somebody who is the chief medical officer in three different companies and what they actually do, what they’re in charge of are very different things. And so you have to take the time to, first of all, sit down with the CEO. And that’s how I start with. I start at most of these engagements with the CEO.

How does your company work? What is your company culture? Is there a reason why mission and strategy are not synchronized with each other? Are these groups actually speaking to each other or are they completely separate?

And, you know, as you bring those two groups together, what do you think the issues are going to be? What do you think the pitfalls are going to be?

Because I do think it’s like a triangle, right? You’ve got. elements that you always talk about whenever you’re thinking about a brand. And one of them is product. So what is the product here? The product is the patient experience.

And so if you are the marketing team and you’re trying to grow the brand, how can you do that if you’re not plugged into what the patient experience actually is? And how can you do that effectively, right? You can do it, but not effectively. And so it is really important to be plugged into what the patient experienced, which ties in very directly to what the clinical mission and vision is and very directly to what are all the operational systems that are in

place to make sure there’s no friction.

And when I talk about operational systems, it could be anything from, hey, they made an appointment and then they showed up and the appointment wasn’t there on the books, right? Like that is a big operational friction.

Or even on the reverse, they made an appointment, the appointment didn’t appear. They’re a no-show and that’s now a problem for the company, you know, for the patient and company. That’s a problem for the clinician that was waiting for that patient.

So on either end, that’s an issue. Or as a patient, I’ve been on the receiving end of a text message the day before my appointment that asked me to download yet another app that I then have to remember the password to just press confirm for my appointment. Like, answer one to confirm.

I don’t want to have to download another app that I’m going to forget the password to, right? And so all of those little points of, those are all systematic, you know, operational, systematic issues that if they’re all streamlined, and if you think about them from the patient experience perspective, that can all help.

From a marketing perspective, if you are not thinking about that patient experience, I really don’t understand how you can effectively market because that patient experience is the biggest part of what you can market.

Like, people make it easy for you. That’s a huge part of the brand.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

For sure. And it’s funny because we’ve been talking about patient experience now on this podcast since about 2011 when I spoke at a patient experience conference, but now it’s finally getting some traction. I mean, it took forever.

They used to have conferences on this. How did we get patient experience even being discussed? And it used to be like, well, I don’t care if they like me. I just want them to get better. It’s like, that’s kind of missing the point a little bit.

So as the…

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

And also in behavioral health, in behavioral health, that’s like really missing the point, right? Because in behavioral health, if they don’t like you, they’re not coming back. And, you know, in behavioral health, we have a lot of patients that we don’t just have to convince them to, you know, come to us. We also have to convince them to get care in the first place.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

Yeah, and I think the whole idea of patient experience and health care consumerism, it’s finally beginning to recognize what’s been happening all along. And, you know, as consumers have become more empowered, they recognize they’re more empowered. And so, and eventually, finally kicking and screaming, the provider’s like, yeah, I guess they do kind of have a point. So, you know, things are changing.

So, as you know, one of the things that, you know, you’re talking about the kinds of companies we both deal with, scaling is always something that’s an important topic. So sometimes as organizations grow, how do they ensure that they’re going to scale and it doesn’t dilute the clinical mission at the same time, but actually even it strengthens it.

How do you guys do that?

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

So I think that comes back to, again, it’s like when you’ve seen one company, you’ve seen one company. Like, what is the clinical leadership of this company? And making sure that all of the other systems are in place so that it’s easy for the patient and the clinician to see each other and for that care to be delivered.

But also, you know, how do you continue to build and grow and recruit additional clinicians that are bought into what your clinical vision is, right? A huge part of that is being very clear about what your clinical mission and what your clinical vision is. And if you, as you were growing the company, if you don’t have that integrated in with your brand, then it’s not that clear what your clinical mission is.

So if they’re integrated, then as you grow, every new clinician that joins knows exactly what the clinical protocols are.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

So it’s so important to realize that.

And we talked a little bit offline about sort of hiring the right people, letting the wrong people go. But, and in fact, in our company, we just got through looking at our mission, vision, and values, and we are our holiday party’s in a couple days here, we’re really reinforcing the values because we had values before and they’re still good values, but like where we are and today is a little bit different. So we want to really focus that.

But I think if you don’t really reinforce that, hire for that, reward for that, fire for the lack of it, then it becomes a joke. Nobody believes it anymore. Like, you can have, I don’t know if you have any comments on that, but this can be empty promises that everybody recognizes isn’t real. The patients, the staff, the providers, everybody.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

Yeah, it’s not. It’s lack of alignment, right? I was actually just speaking about this with the CEO yesterday. We were talking about, you know, he was saying the most expensive decisions he’s ever made was, you know, hiring the wrong people and holding onto them too long.

And, you know, when you hire the wrong people that are not aligned with your values and the culture of your company and this whole concept that we’ve been talking about, which is integrating clinical mission with scalable business strategy, they have to both believe in the clinical mission and want to scale it, right?

All of those things have to happen and the company value, it would be very aligned with company values. And if you don’t hire for that and keep people for that, then you end up breaking that whole system. and, you know, I talk about this a lot, but there’s, it’s really hard to, it’s really hard to go back on the concept of sunk costs,

You know, when, when you have paid for something or hired someone and it’s not working, you know, a lot of times I hear people say, this is, you know, it’s already spent so much money on it. I’ve already spent so much time training this person. And so it’s going to be hard for me to go in a different direction.

Well, this person isn’t working for your company. You know, it’s, I mean, their person is working for your company, but it’s not, like, they’re not working for your company culture, right? Like, it’s not working out. And then the system that you have in place, like your patients don’t like it or your clinicians don’t like it. Why are you continuing to invest in it?

Because every single day that you continue to invest in something that isn’t working for you, you continue to have something that isn’t working for you is a day that you’re continuing to invest in it, right?

And so, you continue to… That’s a problem. And, you know, like just we came to a little corollary, and we just said, so one of our values that we are really enforcing is loyalty to our clients, loyalty to your team, and loyalty to our company. And we’ve had people that are loyal to one or two of those, but not all three. And it’s like, you have to be. You have to be. You cannot be loyal to, well, I’m loyal to the clients, but I don’t care about my company or team. Or, company or I care about my team but I don’t care about the clients of the company, like none of that works. You have to be consistent, and so for us that was an important value and I think you have to be really clear on these things and why it matters so much and that word “loyalty” may sound antiquated today but I think that’s why we needed even more, by the way, just saying “so let’s talk about trust,” you mentioned that you alluded to behavioral health a minute ago. Tell me about patient trust and behavioral health and also women’s health. Like, what factors matter there?

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

Well, I think both in behavioral health and women’s health as well, which we’re going to talk about more, is these are spaces where there are a lot of patients that feel like the health care system hasn’t been working for them. And so when you have a situation like that they’re like these patients are trying to find someone to put their trust into, right?

And so that patient trust, like if you’re a behavioral health company or you’re a woman’s health company and a patient comes to you and becomes your patient, that patient trust is like gold. And it needs to be treasured at all costs, right? It’s really important that you really nurture that patient relationship and really make sure that that patient stays with you because if if you break that patient trust, this is now a person that might not actually go to another behavioral health provider. They might not go to any behavioral health provider, right?

And the same thing in women’s health. This might be a person who decides that they are no longer going to be accessing this type of health care because they feel like the system isn’t working for them.

And so I do think that just by the nature of those two parts of those two sectors within healthcare, where there has been a lot of disjointedness in the past and a lot of healthcare companies that have not really been providing high -quality behavioral health and have not been not actually treating women’s health as it should be treated, I think a lot of those patients are really hesitant to put their trust in a company.

And if you are the company that they’ve decided to put their trust into, if you create brand loyalty with them and you cultivate that patient experience, they could be with you for a very long time.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

 So let’s talk about the women’s health. It’s funny, when we were talking about this offline, people have different imaginations or different viewpoints on what women’s health is. So how would you characterize what women’s health is? And is there a different approach with women’s health than anything else, behavioral health or whatever else?

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

I’m actually going to share my story of how I got into women’s health. I had a number of different behavioral health, I’ve been in behavioral in a really long time and I had a number of different clients in behavioral health that were residential care companies and I kept hearing the same thing coming out of COVID: “You know, our men’s unit has filled back up but not our women’s unit.”

And I heard this and I was thinking, well, obviously that would be the case. And, you know, they’re looking at me like not really understanding why obviously that would be the case. And I was thinking about a lot of the people that I know, a lot of the women that I know, and they’re worried about their kids and their spouse and their parents and their spouse’s parents, their job.

You know, you’ve got five fingers on one hand, five things that you can worry about. They’re on the other hand of things that you actually don’t have energy in time to worry about, right? And these companies were asking these women to leave that whole ecosystem that they were the linchpin of and come into residential care.

By the time they got into that residential care, they were going to be a much more severe patient and they were going to be treated as if they were the same patient that would have walked in there earlier, right?

So that led to that concept and seeing that happen in front of me with clients is actually what led me to start thinking about obviously we’re missing women in behavioral health. What I was just talking about is the logistical side to it. There’s also the clinical side of women have different markers of depression and anxiety.

And women make less of that enzyme that breaks down alcohol sugars. We also make more or less of that enzyme depending on, you know, where women are on their estrogen cycles. And that made me start thinking, like, okay, what else are we missing in women’s health, right?

Because prior to that, I had really thought about women’s health as OBGYN care. But women’s health is so much bigger. And once you start looking into it, you realize that women’s health is actually all of the health care from the tops of our heads to the bottoms of our toes.

I was just talking about behavioral health, but there’s also brain health. 67 % of Alzheimer’s patients are women. You know, a huge majority of migraine patients are women. Heart health. You know, a lot of women’s heart disease doesn’t show up, first of all, with left arm pain, but rather with jaw pain and nausea, and women often have heart attacks without blocked arteries, orthopedics, where women are much more susceptible to ligament tears, like ACL tears, things like that. And it goes everywhere.

We can talk about oncology, we can talk about gastroenterology, endocrinology, etc., etc., etc., etc. Lupus, I just learned, is a predominantly women’s health issue. A lot of autoimmune that goes into that category.

So what is women’s health is all of health care for women, right? And it hasn’t been studied separately and hasn’t been cared for separately. And it’s something that, you now see a lot of companies really focusing in on that.

And there’s a lot of national conversation about menopause, which is great because that’s really something that everyone can talk about and hear about and understand. But there’s so many other things that go into this as I was just talking about.

So I do think, when it comes to behavioral health within women’s health, as far as there are reproductive changes that women have, hormonal changes that women have, and also how women relate to behavioral health is different than how men relate to behavioral health.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

Great. A whole sea and ocean of things to talk about here.

So going back to the business implications of approaching women’s health within behavioral health, what do you mean by that? Help me understand.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

Well, I think that to come at women’s health, we need both companies that are in health care generally to create—it can’t just be a marketing play. It needs to also be that they had like clinically thought about a different way to treat women.

So I think the business implications of approaching women’s health specifically within behavioral health needs to include both the marketing and the actual clinical strategy and the operations to make sure you’re getting, you’re meeting women where they are, right?

I was just talking about the logistics of residential care, for example. You need to think about the different logistics as well. But there are a lot of women that, it’s not like you are going to have to take them from another health care company. There are a lot of women out there that are actually not getting care at all.

And so the business implications of creating a woman’s health line of business within a larger company is a whole new set of patients that you could be bringing into your company.

But it can’t just be a marketing plan. It needs to actually be like a real thing.

Again, one of our clients is in Florida and has a large residential treatment center. We had this exact conversation. And unfortunately, they recognize we can’t just call ourselves having a Christian group when we’re not really that. We can’t just say we’re communicating for women if we’re not really doing that. So I totally agree with that.

You mentioned boards earlier and kind of bringing us back to their governance, their financial stability with clinical priorities. Like, how do you do that part? Is it something you do over a period of time? Do you establish objectives? Like, how does that all work?

I think this comes back to metrics first and alignment. So metrics to me are what, like, what are you tracking? It could be the CAT ratio. And so I think that boards should also be seeing some of these metrics.

I see a lot of companies that, first of all, don’t even track some of this stuff. They’re really focused on the financial, what are the total number of appointments that you have? Which is a no,

I’m not saying that’s not an important metric. That is an important metric, but you also need to be tracking the turnover on all these things. And I think boards asking for that type of information is important so that they have a better understanding of what’s actually going on within the company. Because if you start having this huge meteoric rise of the marketing theme and the marketing plan and the company looks like it’s growing, but meanwhile, you’re just getting new appointments in and now those patients are coming back. That’s a very different company than a company that has been getting new appointments and repeat appointments back, right?

And you can’t see that if you don’t ask for those types of numbers. So I do think, specifically around that metric, we always care about it. And I was talking about one of our big dermatology businesses that has millions of dollars of potential economic incentive to go to their charts and make sure patients are coming back. And if they’re not, what’s the problem there?

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

The last question for today is, what do you see as trends? Like in terms of this whole idea of clinical mission and scalable business strategy and balancing and all that, where are we going next. I do think that you actually alluded to this earlier.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

I do think that consumers have taken a stronger position in this whole conversation because people are loud when they don’t like something and they’re loud when they like something, right? So a patient experience being really good and really smooth is something that people are going to talk about to other people.

And I think as a result, companies are starting to look at this imbalance between clinical mission and scalable business strategy more. I do think that a lot of the investors that I’ve spoken to are really focused on one sector or the other.

And so they often don’t see something that happens in another sector when there’s a company that really grew from marketing perspective and then fell on itself or collapse on itself. I don’t think that they see that as much, but patients do. And so I think it’s really important that we make sure that we understand what patients are seeing and how they’re reacting to these things.

I also think that as healthcare continues to evolve, and we have more technology, we’ve been talking a lot during this conversation. We haven’t talked about AI yet, but AI is also going to be a huge part of mission and scalable business strategy.

But I just really think that you have to integrate both of them if your goal is to impact more patients positively, which I do genuinely believe when people start a healthcare business, that is their goal.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

Yep. So to wrap of that, I mentioned about AI. So when people are thinking about AI, this is something we think about all the time. So what do you mean when you say AI? There’s lots of different variations. And so in healthcare, like one place to look is, okay, how can we automate clerical task? How can we automate marketing tasks or marketing things?

But more, it’s usually things like, how do you answer the phone with AI? How do you do your calls of AI? How do you, like the patients and what, you know, taking notes with the AI so I can be more present with a patient if I’m a doctor.

You know, there’s other things like revenue cycle management. How do we do that? So there’s many different applications.

But I guess if you had to pick one thing that gets you excited, I have mine, but I want to hear you first. Like, what is the number one thing you think will help the patient experience with AI coming forward? I’m curious what you think.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

 Oh, that’s a big one: to help with the patient experience?

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

 Well, I can share mine first if you want. Selfishly, the biggest problem I’ve had to solve in 20 -plus years of doing this is we drive hundreds or thousands of calls and they can’t answer their phone, which is a disaster from a marketing standpoint, but it’s even worse from the patient experience.

And if you look at surveys, I went to a conference a couple weeks ago and my friend Aaron Clifford from Press Ganey was there. And he asked the audience, “what’s the number one thing people will complain about?” and everybody around the room shouted out different things.

I’m like, scheduling an appointment, that’s it. It’s the number that drives people absolutely insane. It sounds so mundane, but it’s the stuff that they know. It’s the stuff they can feel.

So the idea of having AI agents that can direct patients and help them sign up either on the phone or through whatever else is a pretty substantial. There’s other things obviously, but that was mine.

So curious if you have any thoughts.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

First of all, I completely agree with that. I think two things to ask that. One is when you have to fill out your patient forms, like 500 times.

Stewart Gandolf (Heatlhcare Success):

Oh, there you go too. That’s a good one. Yeah, that’s a great one.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

It just would be so much easier if you could have AI do that. And then sometimes I have to fill it out before I go to an appointment. And then I have to fill out it again when I show up to the appointment. And then sometimes on paper, too, while I’m physically there, I’m like, why am I doing this so many times? I already gave you the same information.

So I find that to be frustrating. And I know I’m thinking about it from a patient perspective, but I do find it useful to think about the friction in the health care system from like when I actually interact with the with the health care system because that’s when I actually get to see what’s actually happening.

And then I do think on the reimbursement side, there’s a lot that can be done there to reduce friction for patients.

I, for example, hurt my knee. This phone call came and told me that my MRI was not authorized. And I’m in a position where I did not want to also pay for that, but I could have if that was the case.

But I also knew that it had already been authorized. So I told him that, the person who called me. And I think that call was a call like didn’t need to be made, right? And if AI can help us solve that challenge, because that call could have been made to someone who could not have afforded to pay for the MRI if it hadn’t been authorized. And that would have put them in a really tough spot.

Stewart Gandolf (Heatlhcare Success):

Yeah, I agree.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

And so I think if some of those types of things can be alleviated through AI, that would be amazing. As well as there’s a lot of things that we miss in the health care system because people are not able to, people are not handed off with a warm handoff, like leaving from one type of care, one side of care to another side of care with the list of people they should call as opposed to already having an appointment made for them or wanting to access something in the middle of the night where there might not be someone on a call center or something like that.

If we can alleviate all of those types of friction points, that would also be huge.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

Awesome. Very good. Yeah. Vasanta, how do people reach you if they want to network with you or inquire about what you do?

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

You can find me on LinkedIn.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success):

All right. Awesome. Hey, Vasanta, it has been great working with you today. It’s been really fun. I hope we get to work together sometime in the future as well.

Vasanta Pundarika (Lotuspring):

I’m looking forward to it. Thanks so much, Stewart.