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Revolutionizing the American Healthcare System with Dr. Faisel Syed from ChenMed

by | May 2, 2021 | 122, Doctor, General Medical News, Health & Nutrition, Telehealth, Top Doctors of the Week | 0 comments

About Dr. Faisel Syed Dr. Faisel Syed, MD, earned his medical degree from the Iberoamerican University in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He completed his residency at the Columbus Regional Medical...

About Dr. Faisel Syed

Dr. Faisel Syed, MD, earned his medical degree from the Iberoamerican University in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He completed his residency at the Columbus Regional Medical Center in Georgia and became a board-certified family medicine physician. From then on, he has dedicated his time to serving the Tampa community with top-notch primary care.

Fueled by his passion for providing healthcare for the underserved, Dr. Syed decided to join ChenMed, a physician-led, family-oriented primary care organization dedicated to serving seniors in low-income areas. He is now the National Director of Primary Care for the organization and continues to advocate for holistic medicine and a healthy lifestyle.

ChenMed’s Value-Based Care Model

Dr. Syed takes great pride in working with ChenMed. What makes it so unique is that it operates on a full cost, value-based care model committed to giving seniors VIP care. In other words, they take 100% responsibility for their patient’s care, and assume 100% of the cost. Both patients and doctors no longer have to worry about billing fees. Such an approach contrasts with other healthcare systems that follow a fee-for-service model, which means there is a transaction for every healthcare visit.

The problem with a fee-for-service model is that doctors are forced to become more focused on filing documentation for billing their patients and less on giving them care. In ChenMed, doctors have a team that takes care of all the paperwork, leaving the doctor focused solely on providing outstanding care to their patients. That is also why ChenMed has a smaller panel size of about 400 patients per doctor. Most doctors in America see about 2000 patients per year. Since their focus is on quality over quantity, ChenMed can build a solid and lasting doctor-patient relationship, the heart of good primary care.

The Number One Cause of Bankruptcy in America

Did you know that the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is medical billing? Why? Dr. Syed spills the secrets of hospital administrations and how they’re sucking your wallet dry. Here’s the truth: “People are getting bankrupted by bills from emergency room visits.”

Dr. Syed shared a personal experience of a time when he was rushed to the ER for pneumonia. He was charged $10,000 for treatments consisting of X-rays, EKGs, saline, Tylenol, and many other tests. And now here comes the crazy part, Dr. Syed said that when he told his colleagues about it at ChenMed, they told him this: “What they did for you in the emergency room would have cost us $7 in the outpatient setting.” Ridiculous, right?

Is Your Healthcare Money Going to Waste?

The cost of healthcare in America today for people over the age of 65 has surpassed 1 trillion dollars, and that is only for 45 million out of a 330 million population. When you look at such statistics, it makes you wonder where all that money is going. Dr. Syed brings the spotlight to medical waste described here as unnecessary procedures and visits to the hospital. “As of last year, we crossed the $1 trillion dollar mark for medically unnecessary procedures,” he said.

The top cause for medical waste is unnecessary hospitalizations which are fueled by unnecessary emergency room visits. Most of them do not depend upon medical assistance, and the same care could have easily been done in an outpatient setting at a cheaper cost, just like Dr. Syed’s experience. But because emergency room visits cost more than outpatient settings, hospitals continue to promote this practice as they earn more from it.

The second cause of medical waste is unnecessary specialist visits. Dr. Syed shares his father’s first-hand experience of being sent to multiple specialists by his previous healthcare provider without having a true purpose of doing so. When Dr. Syed’s father finally decided to switch to a ChenMed physician, he found that the cure to all his problems was just a change of mattress. This simple and inexpensive solution improved Mr. Syed’s back pain and memory loss and his overall quality of life without being prescribed dozens of drugs – which brings us to the third leading cause of medical waste.

Overprescribing brand-name drugs when generic drugs are just as effective also contributes to the incredible amount of medical waste. Moreover, the overprescription of medication is not as effective as prevention, which we will discuss a little more in-depth next.

Prevention Is Better Than Cure

There is a saying that goes, “When you’re young, you sacrifice your health for wealth. And when you’re old, you spend all that wealth on health.” This is especially true for Americans,” Dr. Syed points out. “The thing is, Americans do not receive adequate education on living a healthy lifestyle. People run on this mentality that they wait for a problem to arise and then fix it instead of focusing on prevention.”

Healthcare systems are doing little about that because they are focused on generating revenue by billing. And the sicker patients become, the more revenue they can generate. “So it’s really not healthcare. Truly, the system we have in place is the sick care system,” Dr. Syed conveys to Top Doctor Magazine.

In ChenMed, Dr. Syed says they are centered around prevention and enhancing the quality of life for their patients and their doctors. They even go so far as providing a wellness program for their doctors and limiting their work capacity. They believe that a healthy and well-rested doctor will serve a patient with much better care, which is the ultimate goal of ChenMed. A happy doctor equals a healthy patient.

Seniors Love TeleHealth

Since ChenMed treats seniors, the most exposed population at risk for COVID-19, they did everything to keep them safe. Their new pursuit was to keep patients healthy, happy, and at home. To do this, ChenMed moved to telehealth, and their patients loved it. It even strengthened the doctor-patient bond because the doctors are spending hours of virtual face time with their patients and getting a virtual glimpse of seniors in their homes. They even went to the extent of providing groceries for their patients who were unable to go outside. Talk about going the extra mile! ChenMed’s success through quality service is proven in their recently published study of a 40% reduced mortality rate based on the healthcare system they use.

Conclusion

Even though this model only makes up for 1% of the healthcare systems in America, ChenMed is dead set on its goal to become the country’s leading primary care provider. ChenMed is on track to open 500 more new locations in the next five years devoted to giving affordable, compassionate, and human-centered care to medically underserved communities. “We are leading this primary care revolution,” Dr. Syed announced, and Top Doctor Magazine is here to cheer them along for the ride.

Derek Archer
Derek Archer

Derek graduated from Patrick Henry College in 2009 with a classical education and degree in political science. After working with government programs, including White House initiatives, and working with non-profit government watchdog groups and big names like Star Parker, he concluded that he could bring even more value to these initiatives and groups if he helped them work on their storytelling.

More than 10-years later, Derek has worked with big brands and initiatives, like serving as Robb White’s chief marketing officer to convert his Robb Report business principles from magazine to digital catalogs and online market reach and expansion. He’s also worked with Tony Robbins’ own coach and helped launch business-to-business as well as business-to-consumer initiatives with Top Doctor Magazine. He actively serves on the advisory board to Speaking Empire which has trained prodigious entrepreneurs like Russell Brunson for the past 10+ years. He continues to bring value to non-profit organizations like Love of Gray that has seen a strong boost during the COVID-19 pandemic in connecting the younger generation with the elderly, bringing awareness and love and service to their doorsteps. Most recently, he’s worked on initiatives with Danny Bauer and Better Leaders and Better Schools to help school teachers, administrators, and principals navigate the tricky waters of reopening education in the U.S. and abroad for Fall 2020.

Honestly, the best way to tell any story is through positioning, branding, and storytelling and the best way to tell stories is through video. Derek attributes much of the success of the brands he serves to simple, powerful, consistent, and visually compelling messaging. Working with cutting edge technology tools like Virtual Reality videography as well as traditional video production helps craft stories that sell because they communicate.

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